The top ten reasons:#1 The guitar fell off its stand. #2 My dog bumped the guitar as it was leaning up against our couch. #3 The guitar case just slipped out of my hands and fell to the floor. #4 I was drinking … just a couple! #5 The speaker cabinet fell on it. #6 I was being a rock star and did a Pete Townsend. #7 The guitar was in its case under my bed the whole time. #8 My kids say that they didn’t do anything. #9 Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. And the #10 reason? I backed up over it with my car!
It just takes a second of not thinking and/or a moment of bad luck before your treasured guitar is in need of an extensive repair. Throughout the years, I have come across a handful of people that have thrown out their guitar after this tragedy, thinking that a major break like this would not be repairable.
99.9% of the time it is a Gibson guitar in need of this repair. Gibson’s headstocks are pitched at either a 14 degree or 17 degree angle – at this pitch the guitar is more vulnerable to a break if it takes a blow. The value of this angle is better string support and tone, but that is subject to debate. Of course, no company says, “go right ahead and drop your guitar – or drive over it – and the repair or replacement will be covered under warranty.”
Assessing the damageThis clean snap or break is the most difficult repair. As you can see, there is no neck wood branching over, webbing the brake together, nor is there the classic brake where it is holding on by a thin flap, the headstock face plate. There is no doubt about it – this kind of headstock brake is as challenging as it gets for an invisible repair, unless it was to come to us after being run through a wood chipper.
Although, what is in our favor is that it was never previously repaired; that means we won’t have to deal with all that old glue in getting the two pieces to perfectly fit. These types of repair are what keeps the blood flowing and the mind sharp. I find that the two pieces will not go together very well, as it appears that the headstock was broken quite some time ago. I use my exacto knife and trim some of the splinters till the seam line pressure fits closed. System Three industrial epoxy will be my choice of glue. I will also be reinforcing the headstock with a couple of wooden splines that will be inlaid through the brake. It will be finished off with an aged nitrocellulose touchup.
In next month’s issue, we will be highpressure clamping the headstock together with a custom fixture and routing out the neck to inlay the wooden splines.
You can view past articles on “Restoring an Original” at premierguitar.com or brownsguitarfactory.com
John Brown, of Brown''s Guitar Factory, is the inventor of the Fretted/Less bass.He owns and operates a full guitar manufacturing and repair/restoration facility, which is staffed by a team of talented luthiers. He is also the designer of guitar making/repair tools and accessories that are used today by instrument builders throughout the world.
www.brownsguitarfactory.com
info@brownsguitarfactory.com
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Tom Bedell in the Relic Music acoustic room, holding a custom Seed to Song Parlor with a stunning ocean sinker redwood top and milagro Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
A born storyteller, Bedell doesn’t keep his passion to himself. On Friday, May 12, at New Jersey boutique guitar outpost Relic Music, Bedell shared some of the stories he’s collected during his life and travels as part of a three-city clinic trip. At Relic—and stops at Crossroads Guitar and Art in Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania, and Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center in Wheaton, Maryland—he discussed his guitars and what makes them so special, why sustainability is such an important cause, and how he’s putting it into practice.
Before his talk, we sat in Relic’s cozy, plush acoustic room, surrounded by a host of high-end instruments. We took a look at a few of the store’s house-spec’d Bedell parlors while we chatted.
“The story of this guitar is the story of the world,” Bedell explained to me, holding a Seed to Song Parlor. He painted a picture of a milagro tree growing on a hillside in northeastern Brazil some 500 years ago, deprived of water and growing in stressful conditions during its early life. That tree was eventually harvested, and in the 1950s, it was shipped to Spain by a company that specialized in church ornaments. They recognized this unique specimen and set it aside until it was imported to the U.S. and reached Oregon. Now, it makes the back and sides of this unique guitar.
A Bedell Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides.
As for the ocean sinker redwood top, “I’m gonna make up the story,” Bedell said, as he approximated the life cycle of the tree, which floated in the ocean, soaking up minerals for years and years, and washed ashore on northern Oregon’s Manzanita Beach. The two woods were paired and built into a small run of exquisitely outfitted guitars using the Bedell/Breedlove Sound Optimization process—in which the building team fine-tunes each instrument’s voice by hand-shaping individual braces to target resonant frequencies using acoustic analysis—and Bedell and his team fell in love.
Playing it while we spoke, I was smitten by this guitar’s warm, responsive tone and even articulation and attack across the fretboard; it strikes a perfect tonal balance between a tight low-end and bright top, with a wide dynamic range that made it sympathetic to anything I offered. And as I swapped guitars, whether picking up a Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides or one with an Adirondack spruce top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides, the character and the elements of each instrument changed, but that perfect balance remained. Each of these acoustics—and of any Bedell I’ve had the pleasure to play—delivers their own experiential thumbprint.
Rosette and inlay detail on an Adirondack spruce top.
Ultimately, that’s what brought Bedell out to the East Coast on this short tour. “We have a totally different philosophy about how we approach guitar-building,” Bedell effused. “There are a lot of individuals who build maybe 12 guitars a year, who do some of the things that we do, but there’s nobody on a production level.” And he wants to spread that gospel.
“We want to reach people who really want something special,” he continued, pointing out that for the Bedell line, the company specifically wants to work with shops like Relic and the other stores he’s visited, “who have a clientele that says I want the best guitar I can possibly have, and they carry enough variety that we can give them that.”
A Fireside Parlor with a Western red cedar top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
