Some Of The Crazy Repairs! Click the pix to scroll through!
Gibson SG
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.
Black LP
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, so it's just a quicky with a little black thrown on..
Hagstrom
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!
Cream LP
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!
Beater Tele
Here's a real sleeper tele that I hopped up for my buddy Ted. 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 and body, so I could fit a Duncan strat hot rail in there, which was pretty tough. I also 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! By the way, this is the beat up tele that I always played in SB49 for years.
John's Cort
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 better than I ever thought it would.
Student V
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!
GTX
Here's one that had a pretty clever repair before, with three screws through the side of the head that halfway worked, but not as good as a good glue and clamp. Kind of crazy to go through all this trouble on a GTX, but it was a sentimental guitar.
Roscoe
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 wasn'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 are not cheap! Hopefully the third time is a charm!
Student Wild Strat
Here's another school project that started out as a generic black Squier. Some wild cuts, routing, and a different neck, and it ended up being awesome with a perfect grade of 100! Have you noticed these things keep getting more complicated?
Student VH Strat
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)
Student LP
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, andnothing fit, I mean nothing! Never buy one of these kits! 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.
Wine LP
My before pictures suck on this one, but you can tell it is another les paul with a really dirty break. This probably wouldn't have been that big of a deal, but whoever broke it tried to glue it back with gorilla glue or something, and didn't clamp it straight, so it had to be rebroken. I ended up heating it with a light bulb and scraping what glue I could get out. Then I really threw the heat to it and remelted the break back together and clamped the piss out of it. The crack was so ugly and so far down the neck that I had to fade it in with black.
Wine LP
My before pictures suck on this one, but you can tell it is another les paul with a really dirty break. This probably wouldn't have been that big of a deal, but whoever broke it tried to glue it back with gorilla glue or something, and didn't clamp it straight, so it had to be rebroken. I ended up heating it with a light bulb and scraping what glue I could get out. Then I really threw the heat to it and remelted the break back together and clamped the piss out of it. The crack was so ugly and so far down the neck that I had to fade it in with black.
Bill
Here's my buddy Bill's guitar that mysteriously had a broken neck, haha. Just a quickie with a little clear to seal it off.
Dot
Here's a broken Epiphone Dot, a nasty one, only the screw from truss rod cover was holding the head on!
Dot
Here's a broken Epiphone Dot, a nasty one, only the screw from truss rod cover was holding the head on!
Epi
Another miracle save on an Epiphone Les Paul
PRS
This PRS was rough. Somebody put a Floyd Rose on it, and put it in the wrong place, so it wouldn't play in tune. Most people wouldn't notice it, but I shaved some off of the end of the neck to fix the scale. That was the only way to fix it, haha!
SG
Here's an SG with the front busted out. There wasn't really any way to fix it and make the paint match, so I just put a plate on it, not the prettiest, but at least it's playable now.
Polka Dot RG
This was a cool guitar! This guy's daughter races KTM motorcycles, and his favorite player is Randy Rhoads, so it kind of got mashed up into a color theme on this Ibanez. Pretty cool! I just wish I had gotten a good picture of it finished. A lot of time and $$$ spent on this one! Those dots are painted.
Caparison
Caparison clock inlay
Jackson Phil Collen
Caparison
Eric
This is my buddy Eric's block of cool stuff that I've worked on for him. I had to show off his Caparison, since I've never seen another one in person, good stuff! Also a badass Jackson Anthrax Among The Living model. And last, another Jackson that I had painted Raven's purple. He finally got his Phil Collen.
Floyd Kramer :)
Here's a Kramer that I put a Floyd Rose on, first one I've ever done after all these years! If somebody is wanting a Floyd on their guitar, I usually just talk them into getting a real guitar that starts with an I, with an edge tremelo on it, haha!
Lefty LP
I got a call from up north one day to see if I could setup up this 70's beauty that had been stored for years. It was perfect! They sent it down, and picked it up on the way to SC to get some fireworks, haha!
Old Epi
This is a nice old Epiphone that I work on sometimes for a lady that lives down towards Badin Lake. This is not restored, it is that nice!
Green Jem
This is a really cool restoration that I did for my buddy Willie. He's got a lot of the original Ibanez Jem guitars, but he hates to play them and mess them up, so we took one of his old 550's and painted it up in the loch ness green color and put all the fancy Dimarzios in it and all. Came out really good, in fact too good, because now he doesn't play this one either, haha!
Green Jem
This is a really cool restoration that I did for my buddy Willie. He's got a lot of the original Ibanez Jem guitars, but he hates to play them and mess them up, so we took one of his old 550's and painted it up in the loch ness green color and put all the fancy Dimarzios in it and all. Came out really good, in fact too good, because now he doesn't play this one either, haha!
Steve Jag
My buddy Steve talked me into putting EMG's into a Jaguar, which is probably a crime against humanity! It doesn't seem like it would be that big of a deal, but it took forever to get all the stuff inside wired up.
Ibz AE
This was a nice one! Somehow this thing just laid back together perfectly! Just had to put a little black fade over the boo boo!
Zach LP
This is my buddy Zach's fave guitar. Let someone play it out and it got knocked off the stand. Cool 90's studio, went right back together, barely any paint work.
Busted
Another destroyed Epiphone LP, this one almost put itself back together! Put the satin finish on the neck for extra camo.
Whitey
I bought this one for parts, but I thought I would try to learn on it and add splines. It broke at a really bad angle. Lost a big hunk of wood when it broke, so had to glue a chunk to fill it up, crude as ever. My buddy Tyler cut the biscuits down with a razor knife. Back in action, strong as ever! Had to get my cousin Tim Freeman to clean up my mess and repaint it, he's good! After the white fades a little, you won't even notice it.
Shirley
Here's one I put together a while back. My buddy Adam Shirley bought it. It's an old Ibanez Pro Line neck on a newer RG style body. It turned out awesome, I kinda wish I had kept it.
Busted Jackson
Busted Jackson
George
My buddy George sure has a lot of busted stuff on this page! Here's another one!
Red Hollowbody
This old guitar is an old Japanese 335 copy that had issues. It had some paint cracking around the headstock. The pickups were dead and I got lucky and saved them. I made up a neck for it and put a Bigsby and a bridge on it, now it's sort of "Gretsch" like ; )