The Hub

Hello to the Council of Elders! My name is Joe Byron, and I am president of the Stringed Instrument Makers of Southern California (SIMSCal). We have been around for over 30 years and have a large number of members and followers. Our membership includes both professional and non-professional luthiers. SIMSCal meets 4-8 times per year (both live and virtually), and we share tips, processes, stories, and show off our work. We frequently inclu…

Hey, I'm working on a 2017-ish Taylor GS Mini which has a delaminating headstock...see photos... I was surprised to see that the laminate was plastic... I reckon quite a few of the community will have done this job many times, so I'm after group wisdom :). Just a small request I know... Just Fyi...I haven't quoted the customer yet, but I reckon (with some other work I'm doing on the instrument)...our budget will be limited.…

I have a Taylor Acoustic in for a setup and I had a couple of questions: 1. My main one is how you would go about gluing the label back on? I'm probably overthinking it but I'm curious if there's a universally recognized way of doing this? 2. I have some very minor finish damage which I'm not planning on touching, but I am curious how one would go about repairing it. Would this be a case of drop filling lacquer? What would be the…

This repair came into the shop on Thursday. The crack appears to go most of the way through the neck but hasn't opened up at all. What is the current best practice to address cracks like this? Shout out to @member as the resident Taylor expert. Thanks in advance for your help.

So this 310 came into the shop and had a pretty gnarly crack that splinters some toward the lower left bout. Going to do a crack repair with the TJ Thompson crack corrector and some hide glue. The issue I'm inquiring about is the finish is delaminating around the area. I'm curious as to what type of finish it is. Seems a bit flexible and spongy to be a nitro alone. There's shards of finish missing, and dirt has found its way underneath…

when setting up acoustic guitars, from time to time I have a lot of trouble with getting the G string to ring true when fretted. Starting from lower frets and at its worst at about the 5/6th fret, the G string buzzes when plucked "heavily" (when no other string does so)...most recently a Taylor 724 which had a neck adjustment to reduce action (to 5/64-4/64), relief about 0.003 or 0.004. Increasing relief to about 8-9 helps somewhat.…

Hello! First time poster, long time lurker... I thought you guys might get a kick out of this. I got fed up of having to re-mount my workbench lid after pulling it off a particularly bumpy/cold/hot/anything truck ride and began searching for a mounting system that would hold everything up when the lid was open, but also crucially not fall off when it was closed after the show. I happened upon multiboard, which looked like it could do the…

I've had a mini come in for setup...I know that the minis in particular are designed with top (lower bout) and back "bulge"...I'm wondering if anyone knows the "acceptable" (Taylor factory) range for this? cheers, Steve

This is just a rant against the Stew-mac touchup pens. Ive just never had them functionally work, without creating more of an issue than there was in the first place. Through an "act of god" I chipped a small bit of freshly buffed and polished laquer off the headstock of a Taylor that I refinished. The guitar had that nasty bubbling around the tuners and CA glue didn't fix the issue, so I stripped the front of the headstock and airbrush…

I have a customer bringing in a Taylor 410CE with intermittent problem pickup output cutting out. It has the 2 AA battery system I understand that Taylor no longer makes any repair parts for this system. If it is the output jack assembly causing the problem, I assume then that the whole system would have to be replaced. I have also heard the replacement system that uses 2 aa batteries does not have great reviews from customers online…

Hi there looths, Hoping you guys can help me identify what uv resin or other compatible finish can be used to finish this crack? I'm comfortable true-ing up the material and gluing, however I've only really done nitro or polyurethane finish touch up. Thanks, Aleks

Listening in on the great zoom call today, a question was asked by the Stewmac representative, if the shop in the hot seat was an authorized repair center for any major brands. How many of you shop owners are authorized repair centers for the major brands? Gibson, Fender, Martin, Taylor and so on…. Do you have any wisdom you can share or contacts to get signed up to do work for the major brands? Also do you find doing warranty repairs i…

First time here on the forums, not sure how often I'll check in, but thought this the best place to post it. Was playing with an idea proposed by Buck Van Laarhoven on a parametric model for bolt-on neck shims, and found the formulas I wrote up translated easily to Taylor and conventional acoustic neck joints so decided to add boxes for those as well. I'm not well versed in Google Sheets, but couldn't see a way to upload the file direct…

It’s a Taylor 114e. There is a dent that I think might steam out, but would that make the finish around the dent white-ish? How would I proceed after steaming it out? I’m still learning and would like suggestions if anyone has any. It’s a satin or almost matte looking finish, btw.

Howdy folks, Y'all may know that over the years I've had my hands in all sorts of varying degrees of our beloved lutherie bizz; from my current modest restoration shop focus to work for 'The Man' in big production. Throughout this I've built up contacts of various sorts and recently, as I've started to get back into building (to some degree) I've had some of these contact ask me about moving some wood on their behalf. So, here I am wo…

I was recently asked to do some set up work on a Taylor GS Mini when I noticed the bridge beginning to lift at the back corner on the treble side. The pickups/electronics are mounted through the bridge plate and bridge, which is not something I've dealt with before and I'm wondering about how you all approach bridges like this. Any tips, tricks, warnings, etc. Would you tend to remove the bridge and reglue (if so, how nightmarish is it d…