Ever since I started 10 years ago, I have used a pyramid bridge bought from Stewmac as a template for my own pyramid bridges. That bridge is based on a Martin one. I do something more like Levin's pyramid bridge. Incidentally, Levin had two types of fixed bridges on theirs parlor guitars before 1930, one a pyramid bridge, the other a simpler bridge with three facets, two on the ends and the third along the entire back. The simpler bridges are clumsier and do not work so well with a saddle bone, they are always replaced with a pyramid. You can make the pyramid bridge from a rectangular piece of wood using only a plane, rasp and sandpaper. But I use two jigs to make the them faster and better.

The first step is to carve out two circular trenches for the transition between the pyramids at the ends and the middle. It can be done by hand with a round rasp, but it takes a long time with a high risk of chips. Nowadays, I make a sandwich with two cauls on either side of the bridge blank with the help of two clamps. A 15 mm forstner drill bit in the pillar drill machine quickly drills out the two trenches in the bridge blank, one of the two cauls being sacrificed. The bridge is 3 mm at its thinnest in the trench, I get the width of the pyramid from an old replaced Levin bridge.

The two pyramids are cut down in height to 7 mm in my small band saw, the three facets of the pyramid are rasped and ground by hand.

One thing that I have failed at sometimes is to give the surface of the middle part the curved shape found on the Stewmac pyramid bridge and at the same time having the same thickness. I needed a better method and a jig. After some thought, I made a drastic decision and split my old reference from Stewmac in half! It had been handled and dropped on the floor many times and couldn't be used in a guitar anyway. The two halves were then glued into a simple jig where I can sand the top of my pyramid bridges to the same curved shape.

The jig consists of a plywood board where the two Martin bridge halves were glued and a maple stick with an adhesive sandpaper that can slide on top of the two halves. With the jig, I can get the surface of my pyramid bridge in the right shape and with an even thickness - the latter is what I have sometimes failed at freehand. The pictures show the finished pyramid bridge in the jig after the back of it has been rounded off - the last step in manufacturing.

In the finished pyramid bridge, the string peg holes are drilled before gluing on the top, depending on how trapezoidal the fretboard is. I tape a piece of tape to the top roughly where the saddle will end up and use a ruler to follow the edges of the fretboard and make two marks on the tape. The distance between the markings is subtracted by 1 cm, which gives the distance between the centers of the outermost stringpin holes. The strings will thus end up about 5 mm into the fretboard at the 12th fret. On a Levin parlor, it is usually 68 mm measured on the tape and 58 mm between the two outermost holes. I drill the holes in a slanted line like on the Stewmac bridge to make room for the pitch of the intoned saddle.

I have just ordered a new Martin stall from Stewmac to use as a reference 🙂

I am very happy with my segmented saddle with posts in bone and spruce in between. About 10 years ago Pyrolytic coal was a hype as material in saddles. It was also one of the inspirations that resulted in my own segmented saddle, PyC was used as small inset pieces in a secret material, but also in wood.

PyC, which is basically pure carbon like graphite or diamond in another form, comes in two varieties. A softer and cheaper variant, and a much harder and glassy variant which is more expensive than gold. Both are used as anodes in lithium batteries, the glassy variant is also used as a coating and wear surfaces on metal prostheses, eg heart valves. It was the latter that was used in small pieces in the expensive saddles that went by the name " Black diamond“. It was not a success and Patentexpired in 2022. One video was interesting, so I started researching the matter, maybe PyC could replace the bone post? The unique "selling point" of PyC is that it is "transparent" and lets all frequencies from the string through. Both variants of PyC have the same acoustic properties.

Cheap PyC could be ordered from China in slabs of any size, I ordered some slabs that were 5mm thick, the same thickness as the posts in the segmented saddle. PyC is relatively hard, has a sound and always feels cold as it conducts heat as well as vibrations. In order to be able to cut the posts, a nice little Proxxon was also bought circular saw with diamond blade. circular saw with diamond blade.

Several different segmented saddles were made for my own GammelGura to test different configurations, solid post, PyC on top of a bone post, and PyC as a shim under the entire saddle with bone posts. A big problem with the cheap variant is that it is as black as graphite when it is sanded, it was not possible to keep the spruce clean in a segmented saddle.

The material made a difference, the sound became very detailed and clean, but also artificially clinical with less bass (alternatively more treble). In comparison, the bone posts gave a "fuzzier" tone. But the less PyC I had in the segmented saddle, the better I thought the guitar sounded.

So, my conclusion is that PyC was interesting, but no improvement. On the plus side, I got better at making segmented saddles and now I have a cool little circular saw. It's also nice not to dirty the saddle with black carbon!

I ordereId a very small piece of vitreous PyC, 15 x 15 x 2 mm out of pure curiosity for a lot of money. It came in a large and nice box where you had to search before you found the little chip. It was black and hard as glass 🙂

A Swedish research report is available if you want to know a little more about PyC.

It's been a while since the last blog post, sometimes you choose to do other things. Work has continued in the premises as before and both finished GammelGura and repairs have passed by in silence. Repairs have been made. Some of my jigs, which were working prototypes, have been rebuilt and refined. Better tools have been purchased and some methods refined. New ideas have been tested, not all with good results.

Two years ago, I received many GammelGura orders that I accepted without thinking. Saying no is also an option... It's taken longer than I thought to shorten the queue, especially as I also had a lot of regular (and some time-consuming) repair work from back in the day that also needs to be done. Right now, the goal is to reduce the length of the queue and get down to an acceptable waiting time of about 1 year for new orders. I have an order freeze for GammelGura at the moment if you are not willing to accept a long waiting time.

Now I intend to pick up the thread again on the blog and be more diligent, now that the brain fog from the pollen season has started to lift. I start with the latest GammelGuran, a worn and handled European parlor.

Andreas Rydman, who is one of the people who runs "Guitar Geeks Podcast“, sent me three old Parlor guitars two years ago. All three are part of an ongoing batch of 5 guitars, this is the first of the three to be completed. By the way, all were more or less unplayable and also subject to dubious repairs with carpenter's glue. When I took them apart, I also saw that some were unusually carelessly and quickly manufactured. All had non-matching tuners, the positive was that they were complete with no missing parts.

To make the work more efficient, I usually work in parallel with about 5 guitars in a batch until they are all half finished. The guitars are taken apart, cracks are glued and damage is repaired, tops and bottoms are thinned, a carbon fiber rod in the neck is installed, materials for the fingerboard and bridge are shaped, bracing's are made and glued, new tuners are installed. When everyone is ready for a final fix; bottom gluing, neck gluing, bridge gluing, fretting, measuring intonation, making the saddle and nut and varnishing, I complete the guitars one by one. The last job usually takes a week or two, or at least always longer than I think. Before the final adjustment and crowning of the frets, I have realized that the guitar needs to rest over a weekend with tensioned strings under vibration to settle.

A few extra mishsped bottoms in the batch were soaked with water and allowed to dry under pressure. All necks have received the parts needed for the installation of a carbon fiber rod.

The necks are covered with plastic wrap as the sticky epoxy glue ends up everywhere. In addition to the carbon fiber rod; a round rod in birch to fill the hole in the carbon fiber rod with, a piece of birch rod to reinforce the narrow neck foot and provide better attachment for a wood screw through the neck block from the inside and a cover strip in birch on top of the carbon fiber rod to be able to glue the fingerboard with hot skin glue.

Both the bottom and top are thinned down to just under 3 mm. The bottom is thinned in my drum sander, the top is more difficult but thinned down with planes, knifes and a small electric sander. I have a gauge that can measure the thickness of the top using a magnetic ball on the outside, without them it would have been a lottery to thin the top.

Here I am almost halfway through with all the guitars in the batch. All tops and bottoms got their braces and the necks their carbon fiber rod. The only things left is to select and fabricate fretboard and bridge blanks for all guitars before I start finishing the guitars one at a time.

For once, I remembered to take some pictures before I started disassembling, I had already cut the strings. Each guitar gets its own marked plastic lunch box for all the goodies that are picked loose.

Taking it apart went well, except chips of the kerfing that came off with the bottom in several places. I mark the different parts with a piece of tape so as not to mix up the guitars in the batch (some of which are very similar).

The bridge and fingerboard were not in good condition and needed replacing, the odd tuners were later replaced with Stewmac Golden Age söotted head tuners. Some cracks had already been repaired with carpenter's glue, but good enough to not need to be broken up, just spruced up. The brace behind the bridgeplate is an old and less good solution. I wrote 1910 on the label, but now that I write this I think it is a little older than that, from about 1900. The bottom was shrunk and dented.

A replica of the bridge and a new fingerboard were made in rosewood. The new braces that were glued in the bottom and top got their final shape, the height and ends of the braces were carved down so that the tapping tone and sustain I get by tapping hard with a finger on the bridge felt "right". Cleats patches and cleat strips were glued over the cracks in the top and bottom. A K&K mic was also fitted before the bottom was glued using hot hide glue, with a small addition of urea (for longer open time), in my special jig for bottom gluing.

I spent a whole day aligning the neck to the body, the neck also got a wood screw mounted through the neck block as it had the same simple attachment as a Levin without a true dovetail. This is one of the most difficult parts and always takes much longer than you think. Even the best effort can sometimes fail, as things happen when gluing or after a few days of tensioned strings. This neck I had to re-glue one more time after the reset, but before the final adjustment, when I ended up with a 5mm high saddle instead of 4mm. However, it was pretty easy to loosen the neck when for the first time I heated the neck from the outside with my heat lamp. With patience and just enough heat that doesn't melt the varnish, the heat reaches the glue and the neck can be loosened without major problems. Before loosening the neck, I measured exactly how much I needed to straighten the neck for an approx. 4 mm high saddle.

Here are pictures of the first neck gluing with hot hide glue, two feller gauges of 1 mm simulate the frets. A feeler gauge of 0.5 mm is usually needed on top of the bridge to avoid getting a too low saddle when everything is finished. This time it would have been perfect without the feeler gauge on top of the bridge! The neck gluing jig is good as you can easily adjust the neck a bit side-to-side with wedges, it is also easier to clamp down the fingerboard onto the top.

The neck was fretted and strung up and vibrated over the weekend. When the saddle became too high, the neck was reglued. The crowning of the frets takes place in my Stewmac jig using an aluminum beam with a ground-in negative relief of 0.15 mm. By sanding along the frets with a fine sandpaper, the frets get the same fine relief as the aluminum beam. You can see that all the frets have been touched by the sandpaper from the dust on the sandpaper. The frets over the top should have a minimal "slope off" so as not to rattle with low string height.

As usual, the intonation was measured for each string. This one had an unusual configuration of the nut intonation points, with more than 3mm difference between the A string and D string intonation points. When the intonation is extreme, I always test with a couple of extra strings, but with the same result.

With a re-glued neck, new strings and an adjusted nut and saddle, I can say that it turned out very well, I am very happy with it. I like the worn look too 🙂

When Andreas picked it up, microphones were set up for an interview about GammelGura and this guitar. I talked on, far too much I think! In any case, here is the blog to listen to for those who can bear to hear; #399 – Old Gura

I have to go through the Swedish text and correct the translation manually. This is now done with all the recent and new blog posts. The auto translate don't understand guitar lingo!

Sometimes you get different objects for a GammelGura, this time a modern and full-size Hagström from 1964, made by Bjärton and exported to Canada, then imported back to Sweden. Unlike similar Bjärtons with screwed necks, tail piece and a floating adjustable bridge (what monsters they are!), this one had a very nice fixed bridge and a standard dovetail neck attachment. So much better. It was worn, but largely complete.

The tuners were in good condition, the fingerboard well played and worn, the neck needed resetting and the pick guard needed regluing. The frets were low and worn, and the celluloid inlays in the fingerboard had shrunk and were about to come off. The cover washer for the truss rod was missing, I later discovered that the truss rod was broken, or at least not working. The top of these is in solid spruce, while the sides and bottom are in three layers of plywood with mahogany in the outermost layers. There were no cracks in either the top, bottom or sides.

The neck and fingerboard were easy to get loose as they were glued with hot hide glue. The fretboard was heated with small Braun travel irons and the saddle with my heat lamp. The neck was steamed loose. The truss rod was very special, and it looked like it would be difficult to pull loose. But it was easy to knock out as it was not glued. The wings of the special profile in the neck first had to be filled in with a thin strip of rosewood. Next, I milled the channel as usual for a hollow carbon rod to replace the truss rod. This time the hole in the carbon rod was filled with a solid round 8mm carbon rod for some extra stiffness.

The celluloid bottom binding could not be saved when the bottom came off, also, the thin binding on the edge of the fingerboard was broken. A problem with plywood when the bottom is to be removed is that you cannot avoid following a wrong glue joint. Although I was careful with the knife, there was some loss of the inner mahogany layer around the edge of the bottom and the white center layer came through. Before gluing the bottom back on, I spliced ​​in small pieces of mahogany veneer where it was missing.

With the bottom off, I could see that the bracing in the top followed a standard Martin. The detail work in the top's braces wasn't the best, but the cross itself was done right. The braces were quickly made in the factory with the same shape and a very abrupt tapering of the ends. Interestingly enough, the bridge plate was made of spruce, which I like, however reinforcements had not been put in around the stringpin holes where the balls ends had worn the bridge plate. The neck block was solid, while the end block was far too flimsy, as if made to break if you drop the guitar on the end knob.

The braces in the top were glued with modern glue, to get them loose without damaging the top, I used chisels, knives and a sharp plane. The endblock was reinforced with a thicker spruce block. The bracing pattern became a double X, which I think is a very good solution that got an undeserved bad reputation after Gibson made those with far too thick braces and a huge rosewood saddle plate...

Plugs through the bridge plate and top as well as reinforcements around the stringpin holes were installed. The slot for the saddle in the bridge was filled in, and the bridge was glued in place. Before gluing the bottom, a groove was ground for the string in each stringpin hole, I use some cut up old strings and a needle file rasp to make the groove tight but deep enough for each string. The old frets and celluloid inlays were loosened. The fretboard was sanded to a 16″ radius and genuine mother-of-pearl replaced the shrunken plastic inlays. Fingerboard and bridge were made of the finest rosewood, which smelled very good when sanding.

With a specially made caul, the scrathpad could be glued using a water-based plastic glue, Casco Universal Aqua.

The top mother-of-pearl inlay in the fretboard was very beautiful!

When I was going to mill for a new bottom binding in ABS plastic around the bottom, I failed to tighten the mill properly and the trench became 2 mm too deep... luckily it was the same depth all around. To save the whole thing, I glued in a 2 mm high rosewood strip at the bottom of the trench. It actually turned out really nice!

A work step that is both important and time-consuming is to file the wings on the base of the neck so that the neck gets the right angle to the saddle. This one needed a lot of work, and then you have to glue shims into the sides of the neck pocket to tighten the dovetail. I use superglue for the shims and use the neck as a caul. In order not to glue the neck to the shims and the superglue, it is easy to put a piece of household plastic in between. It works every time, as long as you are careful when you press down on the neck so that the plastic does not break.

The neck was glued in my neck jig and the guitar was vibrated over a weekend.

The pit where the old truss rod was adjusted was filled back with mahogany, and a nice cover plate (with the same shape as the top of the headstock) was made from ebony. Standard nickel frets were mounted and crowned. The guitar was measured up for a nut&saddle intonation, a new nut was made, a segmented saddle made, and the bridge saddle ditch milled in the right spot. The entire guitar was given a coat of spirit varnish on top of the old worn varnish, the varnish was dulled down with 000 steel wool and hand polished to shine with a dry cloth. On this one, it felt just right with white Gallalith solid string pins. The guitar strap knob was moved from the tip of the neck foot to the side of the neck foot.

It was a very nice player. A little big, of course, but it certainly sounds like a GammelGura despite the plywood in the sides and bottom 🙂

I have in a short time made GammelGura from two Levin guitars from 1938. I have difficulty distinguishing which pictures I took, they were basically the same guitar. The one I bought myself at an auction, which was the first to be completed, I have already written about here. Common to both was that they had fretboards made of the finest rosewood with incorrectly placed frets. The first got the usual ladder bracing, the second got an X-ribbing at the customer's request.

This guitar was found in a junk room, and it was in really bad shape with a huge crack in the top.

Once the fretboard was loose, the top was soaked in water overnight before the large crack could be filled back up with a stick and hot hide glue.

The neck block was badly cracked and reinforcements were glued to the top and back edge. A larger crack in the sides was also glued. This simplified X bracing is my first one with scalloped braces in the X.

The third brace in the bottom were made flat, both the top and the bottom were too thick and were thinned to just under 3 mm.

The bottom was glued on as usual in my jig. It is always difficult to loosen the label intact, but it is possible with patience, heat, water and a sharp razor blade.

I never took pictures of the finished guitar, but it looked like the first one. Both turned out very well! For my personal taste, I liked the one with ladder bracing slightly better.

An old bad conscience from 2019 was completed and delivered to its owner in the USA in 2023. Among other things, Covid got in the way. This is a very nice Carlstedt made in the USA by the Swedish immigrant. I've had some Carlstedts in the shop before, but in better condition. I have written about the other two here and here.

One thing that stands out about this one is that it had "CF Martin" engraved on the back of the head! An obvious and clumsy attempt at forgery. This is how it looked like when it arrived.

The top was in poor condition with discoloration and cracks. The bridge was missing. The bottom, side and neck were made of red-stained mahogany.

The fretboard was in ebonized wood with the same texture as dry hard bread. The only thing you can do with those is to split it into a thousand pieces with sharp chisels and knives! A new ebony fingerboard was made and the inlays from the original board were moved over. A new bridge was made in the finest rosewood using old photos of other Carlstedt's. The binding around the bottom was also missing and had to be replaced with plastic ABS binding. The tuners were not original and was replaced with Stewmac's Golden Age tuniners. The top had to be cleaned from varnish and colored with a weak yellow-orange stain, the one I make by allowing the color in teak shavings to be drawn out in alcohol. The whole guitar got a coat of spirit varnish, the top a few coats extra.

I had done half of the work before Covid, so it was quite quick to finish it. The finished guitar was really nice to play, a little "bigger" sound than on a regular small parlor. The customer in the USA came to visit Sweden and was able to collect it here and also GG151, a Supertone guitar, which it had also not been able to deliver. Back home in the US, he wrote in an email

“FWIW, the Carlstedt and larger-size airplane Lindbergh remain an absolute REVELATION to me, and I haven't touched any of my other beloved guitars since. You have ruined me as a collector!! They are my holy grail!!”

You can probably say that he is more than happy with the two of them!

As soon as a problem appears, I come up with a solution or improvement. Here are some new ones in 2023.

New methods
Since I've started doing some X-bracing, I needed a method to fit the X into a top with the sides already glued. It is a jig in the shape of an adjustable X with aluminum profiles at the ends that can adjust the length of the four ends. In addition, a flexible metal plate on the two top ends to be able to easily cut the X-braces to the right angle to the sides/kerfing. The profiles have a snap fit against the bracing in the adjustable X. With the jig in the correct position in the guitar, I can then carefully lift the jig without disturbing it and use it as a template to cut the braces and cut the knot in the X.

My suction table for thin bottoms in the drum sander was extended at both short ends to reduce snipe from the rollers in the drum sander pressing down on the bottom and suction table. I also fitted an air valve to reduce suction and load on the vacuum cleaner.

The steam cleaner from Jula to loosen the neck got a new longer hose and nipple from Stewmac, also a smaller plastic petrol tank to collect condensation water.

In order not to wear the sanding belt in my drum sander unevenly (and mostly in the middle), I make sure to spread the sanding with the help of a marker in the form of a small super magnet on a strip of sheet metal.

My "roller tool" for sanding down the height of the saddle dulled the sandpaper with its hard metal wheels. I put on "rubber tires" with the help of sufficiently wide shrink tubing. Now the sandpapers are sharp even after a sanding.

Changing tires with the heat gun and sanding the underside of the saddle

It's been a long time since I posted on the blog. The interest in writing about the job has had a dip, however, the work has continued in my premises and several GammelGura have passed and many normal repairs and fixes have been done. In the meantime, I've taken quite a few pictures, here are some pictures of some but not all the repairs in 2023. I can't remember exactly what I did on all of these, probably more than I'm writing.

Repairs & adjustments
A Gibson Hummingbird had its neck reset, cracks glued, a loose brace glued and a coat of spirit varnish matted down. The saddle ditch was remilled for better intonation, the pickguard was reglued. A wedge under the fretboard was fitted. Finally, a standard intonation filing the saddle for each string was done.

A badly abused nylon strung Hirade with K&K mic had the bottom cut off, and a broken top glued with some new braces. The bridge was also reglued. A built-in fault that was likely one of the causes of the crashed top was a chamfer on the top of the end block. A wedge was glued in.

An electric guitar had its pickups replaced.

A nylon strung Granström had its neck replaced and a planed bridge fixed with new wood and saddle. New frets were mounted. A fitting piece for a slot made in the bridge was milled for best durability.

A Levin DeLux with a cracked neck had its neck reset. The foot of the neck was splinted with two long screws and a round birch rod. New Waverly tuners and new frets were mounted. The head received a coat of spirit varnish. The celluloid inlays in the neck were reglued after painting with white on the back.

Two newer and nice Levins from the 35s got neck reset and new frets. The bridge on the W35, which was planed down, was in rosewood painted in black, got a new piece of wood fitted on top. Nowadays, I mount on the odd frets first, then the even ones. Both had a genuine dovetail. The the tenor guitar got a nut intonation. Almost all repairs end with some vibration.

A cheap, but first guitar, had the neck and bridge reglued. The deformed bridge was heated and forced flat.

A cool drop-shaped Levin in terz size from about 1929, that was to be repaired to playable, became a complete GammelGura in the end. Among other things, the completely wrong-angled neck was almost sawed off to give the neck the right angle for a fixed bridge!

A cool Bjärton was spruced up and adjusted.

A nylon stringer had a cracked brace that I glued using my inflatable door adjuster and backstop.

A Levin W18 received a neck reset, re-fretting and adjustment. A cracked neck foot was glued and split with a round birch rod.

An old seven-string Russian guitar with an adjustable neck had the bottom cut off, all cracks repaired, the bridge re-glued, a new fretboard and bridge, carbon fiber in the neck and new frets. A somewhat faithful renovation, but I added a spruce bridgeplate. The frets above the 12th fret were attached with a poor eye gauge!

A nice Levin Archtop got new frets and was adjusted.

A flashy Furch got new frets.

A cool Höfner got a neck reset, new frets and a new bridge instead of the old plastic one.

Lately, I've been busy with a new project, recording demos of most of my approx 400 (!) songs over the years. My home studio is now almost complete, but I also have to assemble a new computer as the old one is not compatible with the new sound card. I've been working as usual in the shop, but haven't taken the time to write about the finished GammelGura's. I have done four that I have not reported yet. There has also been a lot of repair and tuning work done on all sorts of newer and older guitars.

The very latest to be finished was a nice Levin 1915 from my waiting room; number 22. It was in decent condition, the biggest problem was that the flaming birch at the bottom had shrunk and left a big crack along the middle joint. It had a floating bridge with the charming "Mickey Mouse" tailpiece and tuner in good condition. A nice detail was that some of the original paint on the brass plaque on the back of the head remained. The neck was in soft slightly green colored poplar, not birch as in examples after about 1920. For me the poplar neck is better, poplar is too soft for steel strings and most have a bend in the middle, but with a carbon fiber rod, you get a neck that is both stiff and light which usually sounds better than a birch neck. Levin parlor guitars are available with three different deep sides, this one was the thinnest; about 8 cm. Immediately when I felt it, I noticed that it felt promising with long sustain. It turned out that it was also very good when it was finished.

Opening it was not a problem. Inside it looked as they usually do, one of the bottom braces had disappeared on the way. The classic birch stick under the bridge does not enhance the sound, if you remove it the guitar sounds at least twice as good. After several attempts at the beginning of my career, I have concluded that it is not possible to make a floating bridge sound as good as a fixed bridge. Nowadays, it is obvious to convert to a fixed bridge, not least to be able to use plugs and a segmented saddle. It is also much easier to mount a K&K mic with a fixed bridge.

The braces in the top and bottom were removed, the ones at the bottom almost came off by themselves; the ones at the top sat better. The bottom block was split in half and a piece of thin plywood was glued ​​on as reinforcement. The kerfing around the bottom needed to be re-glued in a few places with hot hide glue, a few cracks in the top were also glued. The poplar neck had a carbon fiber rod glued in.

The customer wanted to keep the original tuners if they were good enough. Because the cog with the post is placed above the screw on old tuning screws (up to the early 1920s), even old and slightly loose tuning screws can become tight once the strings are tensioned and the cog is pushed against the screw. These worked almost as well as new after straightening the posts and a round of lubrication. Some of the knobs were a bit loose, which can rattle when playing. A drop of thin superglue in the gap between the knob and the post solved that problem.

The top was slightly deformed in the middle, to make it flatter before gluing the braces, the top was wetted up and pressed overnight. The bottom had shrunk considerably, the crack was too wide to close only with clamps and glue. New wood was needed, either in the form of a center stick or a binding around the bottom. Nowadays, I have concluded that the binding is preferable to a center stick, it is very difficult to smooth a center stick without scratching the paint. The crack in the middle was glued together and when the bottom was then to be glued, I tried not to squeeze the sides together more than a 2 mm thick strip of rosewood could fill the gap all around the rim. In principle, the bottom was widened by 4 mm. A channel for the rosewood binding was milled out when the bottom was glued in place, and the binding was glued with hot hide glue. It also looks much better with a binding than a center stitch in a figured bottom.

The top and bottom were about 0,5 mm too thick, as usual. The inside of the bottom was thinned out in my drum sander using my vacuum jig, while the top had to be planed and sanded on the inside to just under 3 mm. The burn stamp at the bottom had to be sacrificed in that process, on this one there was still a bit of the stamp left as the bottom was thinnest in the middle. The bottom also received a center stick to hold the two halves together.

The walnut fingerboard was changed to a light-colored Madagascar rosewood that gotwas sanded to a 16″ radius; a new pyramid bridge was made in the same wood. The customer wanted to keep the pearl dots on 5, 7, 9. I prefer a clean wood fingerboard myself, but it didn't take long to drill and glue the dots into the new fretboard.

The flamed wood in the bottom and side was a beautiful yellow-green, the picture taken on my work bench when the bottom was glued is most true to reality. In the middle of the darkest winter, it is difficult to take fair pictures of guitars outdoors. The G-string at the nut intonation needed the most correction, and the A-string the least. About 1 mm of the fingerboard was cut off at the nut. The intonation points in the saddle also varied a lot, the saddle had to be about 4,5 mm thick to reach all the intonation points.

It was strung with Newtone Heritage 0.12 strings and allowed to vibrate for three days. It turned out very well with high volume and long sustain; the typical GammelGura sound 🙂 I rarely have problems with wolf tones in my GammelGura nowadays, it's always there of course, but not so dominant that you react to it. I think the segmented saddle spreads the frequencies from the strings so that they don't all end up in the same place as the body's resonant tone for a particular note on the fretboard, which either enhances or kills the tone. It turned out very well!