Restoration Corner
Our skilled luthiers and repair techs have over 75 years combined expertise, along with skills from high-end violin restoration. You can be assured your instrument will receive top-tier care, from simple adjustments to complex restorations.
This is a Gibson B-25 restoration.
Restoration work:
Replacing the stock bolted on plastic bridge with a new custom-made rosewood bridge.
Process:
- Removed the plastic bridge.
- Taped off with blue painters tape around the bridge area. This does not damage existing varnish while allowing for safely removing varnish under bridge area to ensure a good glue surface.
- Plugged bolt holes (that were used to hold the plastic bridge in-place) with spruce. - Glued on a custom made rosewood bridge.
This ultimately improved sound quality substantially because of the wood to wood surface area contact between the bridge and top, which also increased the value and improved the visual look of the guitar.
Below is a photo of a 1924 Loar era K-4 Mandocello. We replaced a cracked end block on it. What is unique about this restoration is that all other shops would usually remove the back to do this work. This block was replaced without removing the back plate in order for the process to be minimally invasive to this vintage instrument. We lovingly refer to this type of process as laparoscopic surgery .
This additional work was also done:
- Tuner machines were replaced with high end Rubner tuners.
- Custom adjustable bridge to match the tuner’s theme and aesthetic.
- Full setup and refret with gold fret wire.
This is a 1955 L-5 guitar that was unfortunately badly refinished once before. Somebody many years ago sanded all the color off and then applied an extremely thick, splotchy green tan finish.
The guitar was carefully striped of the bad finish of and then coated with a professional classic tobacco burst finish. The finish was also much thinner and made the sound much better. Then a full set up was done.
.png)
This vihuela was in 3 pieces. After glueing all the pieces back together, the missing checkered wood binding was replaced.
