The Hub

I was approached by a local music venue about finishing over the signatures on this Dean guitar. I have finished over signatures before, but never an entire guitar. The main challenges, as I see it, with this endeavor is prepping the existing finish. Cleaning the existing finish without disturbing the signatures will be time consuming enough, but abraiding/sanding the finish will be cost prohibitive. I have already experimented on a test…

Greetings Wise Elders and fellow seekers of the Looth Group! I hope you're all keeping well. I humbly beseech thee for thine sage wisdom and experience. I purchased a 1971 Hagstrom Swede. This guitar was basically put in a case and then forgotten about for a few decades. I felt sorry for the old man and have taken it in as a stray / project. I would like to get it playing again. There are many scars on this guitar, I have looked for as…

I've owned this Jersey City made 12-string/drone 'harp' guitar for a few years and want to get on the repair. I've taken the necks off many dozens of Schmidt-made guitars but never one with two necks. I've searched the web looking for harp guitar neck removal and didn't find anything of use. Asking for any tips/aids/experience from the loothers. My plan is to make a custom neck removal jig that fits the necks, and then drill the typical…

Anyone have plans/drawings for a vintage spec AJ they can share, or a link where I can buy them? I haven't been able to find anything other than J45 plans with general notes on the differences that aren't clear enough to follow. Thanks!

I am repairing a damaged Stella parlor guitar. The original top was birch, plain sawn at 0.100 inches thick, ladder braced with multiple beefy braces and irreparably split, warped and generally separated from the sides. I want to keep the instrument ladder braced with a movable bridge and upgraded tailpiece, all firsts for me. I would be grateful for input on 2 issues. 1. The new top is Adirondack spruce that I’ve reduced to about 0.110…

So the first real "full build" I'm doing is a Stewmac 000 kit. I was wondering about the back brace shape. I'll was planning to taper the ends at the side joint to about 1.5mm. Should I do some scalloping of the braces? Suggestions and comments are welcomed and appreciated. Regards, Gerry Images

Does anyone have a good glue pot they can recommend. I'm planning to try some hide glue work. Regards, Gerry

Greetings fellow Looths! I recently received a request from a customer to replicate Kurt Cobains 59 Martin, starting with a Sigma DM3. I have pasted the customers email to me below. While I have been a looth hobbyist for many years, I just recently opened my official business, Finger Lakes Guitar Works, and am just getting off the ground and a good flow of repair work is already coming in. While I feel 100% confident in my abilities to…

Greetings and thanks in advance for your help. I live in one of the most inhospitable places in the world for wood storage (Mojave Desert CA) and later this year will be moving to another more inhospitable place (Sonoran Desert, Buckeye AZ). The realative humidity is currently 16% and that will drop when summer comes. I'm attempting to collect and store wood for future builds and today I spent some time wrapping all of it in seran…

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…

Hello everyone, I hope you're doing good. I'm very much a new guitar repair enthusiast, any advice or feedback would really appreciated. I'm working on this Yamaha FG410A, as you can see, it's in rough shape. The guitar lived in a case in a storage container since the 90s. The guitar was really dry when I got it, so I started my slowly introducing moisture. I removed the frets and then put the guitar in a bag, with a hygrometer…