Gibson Vintage Guitar Restoration and Repair

mcconvilleguitars@gmail.com

Les Paul Standard

Honey Burst

Compensated nut, Light  Fret dress / Re-crown and polish , setup for .010"-.046" at concert pitch.

I really make an effort to be as visually subtle as possible with the compensated nut so that at a glance .... it looks like a stock nut.

The customer bought a new Gibson bridge and had me notch the saddles and setup the bridge a tailpiece for these regular light gauge strings.

I installed some tailpiece inserts and wrapped the post threads in Teflon to tighten up the machining tolerances.

1936 Nick Lucas

This "Nick Lucas" ended up going over to Oxford ( England ) to a very nice gentleman to whom I brokered the sale of the guitar on behalf of my customer from Woodstock Ontario.

This style of bridge has the pins holes very close to the saddle. In order to ensure that the return wind of the string does not "clump" up onto the focal point of the saddle and throw the intonation out; I add some extra ball ends onto the string to pull the string back and allow the natural diameter of the string to rest firmly on the focal point ( highest point ) of the "saddle tip" to ensure accurate intonation and maximum deliverance of resonance. 

I had some ( old ) Ivory kicking around that I used to fabricate a new nut after the new frets were installed.

This picture was taken outside my shop door in the natural sunlight. You can see in the picture below, that the fluorescent shop lights cast an artificial green tinge.

Thank you all, for the positive feedback so far  .... I'll do my best to keep these pages informative and ( hopefully ) enlightening. 

Gratefully in your service,

Michael

1946 " Banner " J-45

 The lightness of construction, the knife-edge braces, hide glue joinery and beautiful spherical arching on the soundboard and back give this guitar a fast attack and  a fast decay. Not a lot of sustain .... but the sheer volume on the initial attack is staggering !

Preparing for New Bone ( compensated ) Nut

+ complete refret.

Frets came out ultra-clean !

Fo Info on the StringTech / TechDeck Workstation: 

http://mcconvilleguitars.blogspot.ca/p/stringtechs-techdeck-workstation.html

Refret with EVO 6105 profile

This is a tall ( .055" ) medium ( .090" width ) fret

This guitar now has Major Left-hand Traction and a substantial increase in volume with the higher saddle / frets.

.012" -.056" at concert pitch ..... She's a canon !

1966 Gibson Hummingbird

This came in for a complete fret job,compensated nut, bridge reglue and a rosewood and bone "press fit bridge insert".

There is a detailed posting of this particular repair  / restoration / retro-fit procedure in the blog archives ( Nov 25 ) of a Gibson Hummingbird that Bruce Kirkaldy shipped up from San Diego ( Chimo ) California.

Carman's 67' Hummingbird

               This is another Gibson Hummingbird in for a bridge conversion,
                                                refret and comp-nut. 

1949 Gibson L-50

If you are interested; there is a more detailed posting of the complete job on the blog archives ( Dec 1 2008 ) of the side repair, top crack repair, aftermarket retro-fit bridge,complete refret, new fingerboard binding, ivory nut, and pickup install.