Par Baking Guitars in Arizona

[Glen DeRusha]

Here is our project from last week.

If you put medium gauge strings on your guitar, and leave it in your car in AZ, ya' might be a redneck.

If you do it 500 times, you might be Cade, some of his aunts and uncles, my brother, etc.

It is true. If you do that, things will start to move around.

This is one of our 2002 models.

Here are some glamour shots.








The top is pretty rippled like an old classical.







The back is getting a nice vintage look to it.





The neck has a wear spot in one spot where someone was leaning it up against a table or a chair repeatedly. Obviously it has not spent very much time in a case. At least someone has been playing it.









Look! Someone put a folded paper shim under one end of the saddle. That should be a tone killer. Who did that? Cade! Was that you?





This is a great guitar to work on because, you don't have to worry about scratching anything. No one would notice.





We peeled off the bridge. Cleaned everything up a little bit. Filled the saddle slot with a piece of ebony with epoxy, and rerouted a nine degree tilt back saddle slot. Maybe that will give this thing a fighting chance to keep the saddle looking like it is straight up and down. Glued the whole mess back on and we will see how it turns out later.





Glen

[Glen DeRusha]

This one is kind of an oucher. But one good thing about it is that someone has been playing it. A lot! No sense just leaving them in a glass case and looking at them.

Another good thing is that I get to see first hand what parts of my building style held up to this kind of abuse, and which parts did not do as well. It is always nice to have someone else pay for your education.

Excessive fret wear. At least someone was smart enough to use jumbo frets so that when these get leveled down, they will still be as tall as normal frets. Oh! That would have been me.















This one was made when I used to make the top of the body flat on top along the 14th fret. As you can see, it ain't like that no more.





I had to make a new saddle because, I make my saddles much wider now. And converting from the straight up and down saddle to the tilt back saddle changed the slot from 1/8" to .150".





I have this cloth wheel for my bench grinder for buffing small parts like nuts and saddles. It seems to work really well..





I did polish the frets a little bit.





I swapped out the plastic slotted bridge pins for ebony unslotted pins.





Even with the saddle tipped back nine degrees, it still looks like it is standing straight up and down.





I didn't like the look of the old nut. It looked like it took a hard hit on the low E string with a bowling ball or something. So I made a new one.





Now this guitar is sounding pretty good. It has some serious "balls" to it. It actually dwarfs the DeExplora. This is the best that this guitar has ever sounded. I guess baking your wood is a good idea.





Glen

[folkstrum]

SUPERB PIX, Glen!! So nice...and I MEAN it NICE...to see some "tech/luthier" shots from you. I hope lotsa folks here will tune in. Man, that bridge REALLY lifted, eh?

[Glen DeRusha]

Hi Norm!

Yeah! Mr Sunshine made that bridge take a turn for the worst. ;D

Glen