The Survivor Page

I recently had a lady call me to see if I could fix a broken guitar. When she brought it in, it really was broken! She said that she did it, and wanted to have it repaired for a surprise Christmas present for her husband. I think it turned out pretty well.


SG Body Before	SG Neck Before


SG After	Ready For Battle Again!

Here's one I did a little bit back for my neighbor at Sunset Recording Studio beside of me. It was laying on the bed and his son jumped on it somehow. I can't believe that it held together long enough to repair it. I need to get an after pic of it.


Too	Nasty!

Here's another busted Gibson head. I didn't get a chance to get a picture before I started clamping this one, I'm not sure how the head didn't snap clean off, maybe the truss rod was helping. You can't really tell by the pictures. He didn't care how it looked as long as it was playable.

Here's an old Hagstrom acoustic that has some stories to tell. The truss rod was definitely the only thing holding the head on this one, even the fingerboard broke away. I had to glue this in sections to get it right. After getting it all back together, I didn't want the repair to blatantly show. So, since the clear was coming off the neck in places, and the woodgrains were different, I filled in just the crack where the wood matched up with superglue and sanded it to match the old looking part, so you can hardly tell it was ever broken!

Look! A Gibson with a broken neck! Imagine that! The pictures just can't describe this one. I stared at this one for a few days before even thinking about getting it together again. Like everybody else, he didn't care what it looked like as long as it was playable again, which grinds on my nerves, but there was no way to match up 22 year old white anyway. It sure doesn't take away any of the pure badassness of this guitar!




	Did I tell you I love this guitar?

Here's a real sleeper tele that I hopped up for a guy. It doesn't really look all that crazy, but all the magic is under the pickguard. I put in a Duncan tele hot rail in the bridge, and opened up the neck hole in the pickguard, so I could fit a Duncan strat hot rail in there, which was a real bitch. I routed it out to add a strat pickup in the middle, so it is like a nashville tele. A five way switch and push/pull volume knob allows this thing to get about any sound you would need out of it. From mild to wild, but it still looks like a traditional guitar!


	Here's a good one. It's my cousin John's guitar that he leaves out for everybody to play, but it finally bit the dust, or the floor maybe. It turned out pretty well.


	Here's one that's in progress right now, of course a broken neck. This page is proof that it's a good idea to have a case to keep your guitar in!

This isn't a survivor story but, here's a guitar that I built for my friend John McIntosh. He had the body painted by Sophia Body Shop on Hwy 311, and it came out really good. It is kind of a burgundy color with prism metalflake, so it changes all different colors in the light.

A guy brought me a Fender body and didn't have anything else to go with it, so I ordered a 70's style neck, and an EMG David Gilmour pickguard setup and slapped it all together. It came out pretty great!

This is one of my mentor students that brought in this crazy v body, and he worked his neck into a Dimebag at school. He calls it a "Randybag" since it is a Randy Rhoads V with a Dimebag style headstock. This is the best one so far, he really did a lot of work to get this thing to fly!

This is not a repair, it is proof of the garbage that Fender puts out these days. THIS IS A NEW $700 GUITAR! A guy bought this at one of the major stores in Greensboro. I can't believe it made it out the door, but the strings were almost 1/4' off of the neck!



	Here's one that had a pretty clever repair from before, with three screws through the side of the head that halfway worked, but not as good as a good glue and clamp.

This is one of my buddy's guitars that was broken years ago. The first time it was repaired, they used some dowels in it, which were useless and pulled right apart when it broke the second time. It waan't that bad of a break, so I glued it up again and it went home, only to be knocked off of its stand a week later. This time as you can see, it was pretty nasty, breaking the fingerboard off with it. Notice the double truss rod, pretty cool. Most of the time something this bad is firewood, but Roscoe's were a high dollar guitar back in the day. Hopefully the third time is a charm!

Here's another school project that started out as a generic black Squier. It ended up being awesome with a perfect grade of 100! Have you noticed these things keep getting more complicated?

This is another mentor student guitar built from a kit. It's five million coats of black, red, and white paint, and I cut the paddle head into a sort of Ibanez RG shape. Routed it for a floyd also. Pretty hairy junk for a school project guitar, which is why I've quit doing this stuff. (see below)

Here's the last one of my mentor deals! This one was a nightmare! This kid bought a les paul kit off of byoguitar.com, and nothing fit, I mean nothing! This was pretty much like building one from scratch because the kit sucked so bad! Stay away from byoguitar.com, their kits are useless! This one came unsealed with a flamey kind of top, so I told him we could stain it blue. Man it was a job, I probably had to do do it over 3 or 4 times. This is definitely my last student project! It came out cool in the end though.

More to come!