Article

Surgery of a broken headstock

Throughout their lifetime, old guitars will sometimes develop different problems and issues, making them more difficult to play. Sometimes even making them totally useless. In some cases, owners may believe their guitar can not be salvaged and that purchasing a new one is the only solution in sight.

Well you must know it’s sometimes surprising to see what a luthier can do to give its life back to an old beat up guitar.

NOTE: Click on any picture to enlarge it.

A guitar teacher I know had a student playing with a guitar onto which the tuners were in a really bad state. While trying to change them, he noticed the damage were far greater then the tuners themselves. The teacher then suggested he brings his guitar to me to see if I could do something with it. The instrument he brought me turned out to be quite an interesting guitar, which indeed had a headstock in a pretty bad shape. It also had a few minor issues that had to be fixed, but nothing I couldn’t handle!

The guitar had been made by a luthier from Argentina named José Jacopi. This luthier is not exactly your average Joe. His guitars have been appreciated by many great guitar players, Eric Clapton amongst them. He even has a patented bracing pattern, which corresponds to something like an inverted version of the traditional fan bracing.

Although the guitar label did not mention anything about it, it seemed to me that it was some sort of a ‘study’ model, meaning it was made with somewhat cheaper materials, sometimes having slight defects, and where aesthetical details are kept to a minimum. In other words, a guitar aimed at beginners. One of the most obvious indication of this was the fretboard that seemed to be made out of mahogany, a wood usually too soft for this part of the guitar.

At first glance, it was easy to see that this guitar had known quite a lifetime! It was covered with scratches and dings. Right below the soundhole, an large area of the top had been scratch so much that the finish was totally worn off. The wood on this area was darken with dirt. This type of wear is more common on acoustic guitars that do not have a pickguard, but more rare on nylon string guitars. It was probably used to play something else than classical music!

Also, the bridge looked quite strange. The finish had been scratched to bare wood all around it. In addition, although it doesn’t show too well on the picture, it seemed obvious that the finish on the bridge was not the same as the one on the rest of the guitar. Harder, glossier and most importantly much thicker. All seemed to indicate that the bridge was replaced with another one, taken from some other guitar, and that the operation had not been done too gently! Seeing the quality of this work, I thought it would be wise to check if the bridge had been glued at the correct position. As you probably guessed it, that wasn’t the case! The saddle was about 3 mm (3/32 in.) too much forward. Last problem with the bridge, the saddle slot was filled with lacquer! Therefore the saddle couldn’t sit well at the bottom of the slot as it should have.

But the biggest problem was located on the headstock. This guitar had known multiple sets of tuners during its lifetime. Since the mounting screws on those different sets of tuners were not all located at the same places, both sides of the headstock were so much covered with old screw holes that there was almost no wood left to support the tuners! And unfortunately, one of the two sides of the headstock, weakened by the screw holes, had cracked lengthwise between the tuner post holes. Also, the existing tuner post holes were not only mispositioned between one another, but were also much too large.

All in all, in addition to the smaller issues here and there that needed to be fixed, the headstock was in need of nothing less than a major surgery! Therefore, this is the first problem I decided to attack.

Since the holes are too large, I will start by plugging them in order to drill new ones, at the right places and with the correct dimensions. I start with temporarily gluing the cracked side, simply to insure that nothing will move while plugging the old holes. So I apply two clamps on each side of the headstock, and let sink in a few drops of cyanoacrylate glue (Super Glue, Crazy Glue, etc.). This will be more than needed to hold on until I later repair the cracked headstock for good.

Using a dowel cutter installed on my press-drill, I make small wooden plugs having the same dimension as the existing holes. With a little luck, it turned out that I had a dowel cutter the exact same size as the holes to plug. Since the neck and the headstock are made out of Spanish cedar, I decide to use this same type of wood to make the plugs. Once those plugs are made, I then glue them in place by simply sliding them in the existing holes. All goes without problem.

Once the holes are plugged comes the more delicate operation of repairing the cracked side of the headstock. The large quantity of old screw holes filled with wood putty convinced me not to try to simply slide glue in the crack and hope it will hold in place for good. So I decided to literally replace the section of the side where the wood cracked. After setting up my guide on my router and clamping the headstock solid in my bench vise, I proceed with slotting the side of the headstock through almost its entire length, on a width of about 5 mm. I will afterward make a small replacement wooden stick, again made out of Spanish cedar, having the same dimensions as the previously made slot. As I did for the tuner post plugs, I will simply slide the wooden stick in place to glue it. The stick being very tight in it’s slot, clamps are not required in this case.

Although I used the same wood for the replacement parts, them being a lot younger than the guitar, they turn out to be quite paler and far less yellowed out. Therefore I proceed in slightly staining the new wood in order to make the repair a little less visible. Although the majority of the new wood will be hidden under the tuners mechanism, I prefer not to take any chances, just in case a little bit of paler wood might show up somewhere!

The last step, I drill the new tuner holes guiding myself with a headstock drilling jig. This jig makes sure not only that I drill the new holes at the correct distance between one another, but also insures that the holes are drill in line with the headstock surface. Once this step is finished, I’m done with the headstock repair!

I then attack the bridge problems. As I mentioned further up, the saddle slot, in addition to not being at the right position, is almost completely filled with lacquer. In a case like this, the ideal repair would have been to remove the bridge and glue it at the right place. Or even better, to replace it with a new smaller bridge, more adequate for this guitar. But since the guitar owner did not plan for such a repair in his budget, I therefore fall back on a plan B. I decide the re-slot the bridge, again using my trusty router and guide. This will allow me not only to remove the lacquer inside the slot, but also to make the slot wider. Once the slot is widen, I then proceed to make a new saddle, sculpting it in a way that the strings will leave the saddle from the back of it, thus giving to the strings their original and correct length. Of course, this is not the best solution, but it is definitely a lot better than it was before!

The only thing left to do is a little cleaning up here and there, some finishing touch ups below the soundhole and around the bridge, as well as a basic setup to call it a day. With bran new tuners, this guitar can once again let its great voice be heard. All in all, with its scratches, dings and marks, this guitar is still in not too bad of a shape. After more than thirty years of life, the wood did not crack, the neck has a good angle and the top does not show huge bulges neither in front or behind the bridge. And its sound is still quite remarkable even thought the bridge is a little inadequate. While he was afraid he’d need to buy a new guitar, the owner, quite happy of how it all turned out, will be able to enjoy this one again for years to come!