Repair / Restoration

High quality classical and flamenco guitars should be built with repairability in mind. This means using reversible glues (like hide glue) and using designs and construction methods which lend themselves to future repairs. Because I started my lutherie career working in a high end repair shop, I learned first hand why this is important. Like violins, all guitars will eventually need some maintenance work, and occasionally repair work. Some can be fixed while others cannot. If the guitar was built with epoxy glue, and finished with an industrial U.V. cure finish, the luthier is limited with how he can approach a repair. On the other hand if the guitar is made with hide glue and french polished there's a good chance the luthier can do an excellent and non-invasive repair job.

I do a lot of french polish repair work for musicians. It seems as though over the years this is one of those things I've developed a reputation for being quite good at. Re-frets, set-ups, and structural repairs come my way too. I really enjoy seeing, playing, and working on old instruments, as well as luthier made new work. Factory made guitars do not interest me as much as luthier made work, but everything eventually needs attention.

Over 90% of my days are spent building new classical guitars, but I'm happy to provide a repair/ restore service too. It keeps life interesting, and I meet more musicians in the process. Here are pictures from some recent and not so recent repair jobs:

Ramirez 1A

The guitar shown is a badly damaged Ramirez 1A. It was actually vandalized, but the owner spared me the details on how it happened. The sides were split right to the waist of the guitar. The fingerboard was bent and peeling off the top. The upper transverse brace was knocked right out. And there were at least 10 major cracks that needed to be re-glued and reinforced.




At first I turned down this repair job. I knew that I could handle the structural aspects of the repair. I was more concerned about the finish. Ramirez guitars are coated with a polyester conversion varnish, which is very difficult to repair. I usually stay away from trying to repair this kind of finish, but I felt like I could not let the owner down, and took on the job.In this photo I'm progressively building up the finish, and sanding it back.






Here's a photo of the neck block and side after completion. It turned out very well! The total time logged on this repair was about 50 hours. I've excluded other pictures of the repair but you can contact me if you want to see more of them.
















Here is a photo of a guitar built by Miguel Rodriguez. It was brought to my shop for some French polish touch up. The top is redwood, back and sides are Brazilian rosewood.














This photo is of a guitar made by the legendary Manuel Velasquez.

The guitar was brought to me for a bunch of relatively minor repairs. Here, a top crack gets glued together with hide glue. The crack will later be cleated on the inside, and touched up on the outside. Oil varnish was Manuel's finish of choice.









This is a picture of a 1972 flamenco guitar made by Eladio Fernandez of Almeria, Spain. Eladio never became too well known outside of Spain, but his brother Gerundino became legendary for his flamenco guitars, and made many guitars for Paco Pena. My friend found this guitar at a garage sale in Victoria for $15 !

Its neck was badly warped, possibly because it was built with white glue and suffered "joint creep" over time. I removed the fingerboard, routed a channel in the neck, inserted a graphite rod in the neck, and replaced the fingerboard. This fixed the neck warpage.