Here's that Martin again

 Neighbour Kier came round the other day, with a broken Martin:

Nothing too disastrous, just an open top joint in the lower bout:

You can see it here. The x-brace is loose too:

Here, I’ve got the joint held open with wedges while I glue it up.

The usual spool clamps do the business on the rib, while the cam clamp takes care of the x-brace:

Following clean up of the top, a strange creak revealed more damage. The opposite end of the x-brace is also loose:

That's a bit of a fiddle to fix, but with a 'spoon' made from bent wire and wielded through the sound hole with a torch and a dental mirror, it was soon glued and clamped up.

Revelation RJT60Q

This here is a Revelation RJT60Q, an unusual asymmetric body guitar built with four pickups selected individually by slide switches, coupled to the usual tone & volume pots and supplemented by a chickenhead switch offering several selectable RC filters which can be used to alter the output style of the guitar.

Its relatively tidy on the outside...

Less so on the inside, where there is evidence of human activity manifesting itself as insulating tape and a non-functioning guitar...

Two issues: one, the two wires to the additional filters have been cut and joined together. This earths the output of the pickups...

and bending the output of the volume pot so that it touches the shielding doesn't help either!

Fixing those two issues, and re-wiring the ATN-5 circuit so that it functions as the makers intended has the guitar working again.

Apparently it now plays as intended, and as demonstrated here

Another fall

Another guitar appeared this month, attached to a sad looking chap concerned about the health of his daily player. "The sounds is not coming out" he said, as he explained how it had landed on the kitchen floor with a sickening crunch.

No wonder. The back to rib joint of this Martin OO-X1 Java has opened from upper bout to lower, fortunately quite cleanly:

No matter though - it's an easy fix. After a practice run with the spool clamps, we can open the joint with some wedges and introduce some Titebond:

One glued up all the way along, we can align the back and rib and clamp up, cleaning off squeeze out as we go along:

After a couple of days, we can release the clamps and clean off any more glue. Fortunately these guitars don't have any binding, so we just tidy any marks in the joint with a little matt black acrylic to match the original finish on the bevelled edges.

Stratocaster Setup

My daily player is an old cheapo strat-style guitar made by Manhattan. I've been playing it a lot more since discovering Yousician, and its needs the setup attending to; the bridge pick up is generally unresponsive and the action is a little buzzy on one or two strings.

First I wanted to check the fingerboard radius, prior to setting the action. These radius gauges were supplied by GMC Luthier Tools and are very nice indeed. They are laser cut stainless steel and have a precise, rugged feel about them; whats more, they are made in the UK and the are supplied within a few days of placement of your order.

I use this string ruler to set the height I want.

You use these little soccket head set screws to adjust the string height on a tele or stratocaster style bridge.

Bellini Accordion

This beasty came my way recently when a friend was clearing out his loft. It's a Bellini piano accordion, 41 treble keys, 120 bass buttons. It's very grubby, as you might expect, but the bellows are sound and the case is in good shape.

Obviously missing is one of the bellows straps, which I will probably make in the workshop. The straps are in very poor shape; one of the feet is missing and the grille is dented. None of that is insurmountable though!

The bass buttons are something else though. Obviously this machine has been sitting around for a while, and much of the filth outside is probably also inside. The bass buttons are not supposed to look like this:

New OM Project

I built a OOO/OM cutaway for my son Tom, years ago for his 18th birthday, and I like this small guitar over the dreadnought I usually play. Inspired by the Martin OMCPA4, I'd like to build another.

Sometime in the dim and distant past I acquired some part finished items for an OM sized cutaway. I have most of the parts in a semi-finished state. I have this spruce top, with a tacky rosette and full length split... usable? maybe...

I have a set for the back in Sapele, in usable condition:

There is a matching set of ribs, partially bent

There are some nasty plywood end blocks:

I have a semi finished neck, design for bolting. It's very shallow and could be very comfortable

It's got some damage at the peg head. I might do a peghead overlay on the back as well - it has a rosewood overlay on the front already.

As I said...

I've got a couple of rosewood fingerboards, saddles & bridges in stock:

 And some fretwire left over from another project, along with a mock tortoise pick guard:

To supplement that lot I bought a nice block of spruce for the bracing. We'll split that down on the bandsaw.

I'll need to sort out some back bracing and some tuning machines & some binding & purfling; but I'm sure I have some bits and pieces in stock.

Fender Stratocaster

This is a genuine American Fender Stratocaster, with an unhappy finish. It looks like someone has covered it in stickers, and then removed them with sandpaper. It's another guitar that belongs to our friend John from the most excellent Straits Fish & Chip shop here in Sheringham.

4 hours with wet & dry, from 1500 to 2500, followed by Farecla G3 & G10, plus a dose of Autoglym and it is right as rain.