Repairs Gallery

SGL Guitars Repairs Gallery

No.1

Repairs and Servicing to the highest standards available

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Galleries will be added regularly from ongoing jobs... depending on how interesting they are!

This badly damaged Hofner acoustic had been crushed a long time ago. The complication there is that the wood expands and contracts over time so the bits don't fit together properly. The sides were quite badly twisted and the top warped.

	The frets on this well played 60's Strat were worn out right down to to the fretboard! It is a heavily gigged guitar and the customer wanted another 40 years use from it!
	After the frets were renewed and the fingerboard reconditioned it was a dream to play. The secret with a vintage guitar like this though... is NOT to make it "feel like new", but to keep the vintage worn feel of a "played in" neck or it will just feel synthetic and characterless. Also the customer needs to feel at home with his lifelong friend when he gets it back!
	This badly damaged Hofner acoustic had been crushed a long time ago. The complication there is that the wood expands and contracts over time so the bits don't fit together properly. The sides were quite badly twisted and the top warped.
	Some careful heat treatment and a little persuasion, not to mention a fingerboard skim and re-fret returned it to its former glory.
	This 19th century parlour guitar was fully restored and heavily modified The varnished finish had deteriorated badly, the body was very badly split on both front and rear and the neck needed resetting due to a very high action. The fingerboard and the bridge were damaged and needed replacing.
	The original neck was way too narrow for the customers hands.... so after removing the fingerboard I split the neck down the middle and widened it with a 12mm core of walnut down the middle ! As you can imagine, recutting the neck joint for a neck that was now 12mm wider was tricky... but it came out just fine. ( The line on the back of the body is a crack repair... that's why it's not in the middle!!).
	I totally disassembled the guitar, repaired the splits with cleats and spruce inserts, repaired the internal strutting, rebuilt it with a new fingerboard and handmade bridge and refinished it in French polish
	Major restorations can be tricky This VERY old violin was in bits and warped. The finish had almost completely gone....
	Rebuilt to last another hundred years! The whole thing was stripped, dismantled, rebuilt and refinished in French Polish.
	Looks nice now! I managed to re-use 98% of the original materials..... 100 years old and like new! The finish was applied in such a way that the vintage character, colour and appearance was kept authentic.
	This customer (the owner of the Hofner above) wanted something "different" to mask some pretty bad damage that had been done to an area spanning three frets on this old Les Paul. But he didn't want the expense of a re-fingerboard job. I had some very pretty abalone inlay, a piece of mother of pearl and some rosewood and maple strips. So I used them all!
	This Status Graphite 5 string Bass suffered a very common form of damage... The owner (or his friend!) tightened the TRUSS ROD in an attempt to lower the action. This will ONLY result in the neck and fingerboard shattering, sometimes as in this case, severely! The only option was to remove part of the fretboard, repair the internal area around the truss rod and rebuild the end of the neck and truss rod. This picture, interestingly shows a rare view of the graphite reinforcement bars either side of the truss rod.
	After the repair... you would never guess anything had ever happened!

SGL Guitars No.1
Repairs and Servicing to the highest standards available
Please double-click on the image of your choice to view a larger picture
Galleries will be added regularly from ongoing jobs... depending on how interesting they are!