A USA Levin passed the premises, a Goya N-26 in 1967. The big problem was that the neck had twisted at the upper saddle, the most twisted neck I had come across! Maybe not 30 degrees at the top, but not far away. The stable was planed down and ugly glued, the binding in the sound hole had delaminated and the pickguard was only stuck in patches. Some bindings had been released in some places as well. The tuning screws were sluggish. A little worn band. The drawbar is tightened to the max to reduce the string height (perhaps the reason why the neck has turned). Missing cover for the drawbar. Otherwise in good condition.
Warmed and turned the neck back towards the base. It became almost flat, but the base side got a valley in the middle and the fretboard at the top and bottom of the treble side was a little higher. Cleaned the tuning screws in the ultrasonic washer and oiled. Crowned the bands and the result was decent, was able to loosen the drawbar a bit and it became fully playable with top strings on the 12th. The customer got to try it and thought it sounded so good that he wanted to move on with K&K mic, bandaging, change of stall and general fix.
Picked loose the interesting neck for a neck turnover. There are two "nuts" attached to the tie rod with a square hole in them that could easily be loosened from the inside with a standard Phillips screwdriver. Only the fingerboard was glued and it was easy to get loose in the usual way. With the neck loose I was able to remove some wood at the base of the neck and straighten the neck. Made a slightly oversized replica stable to hide the worst damage from before around the stable.
The cross inside was long down on the lid and there was very little room for the K&K sensors in front of the string pegs. In order to be able to mount them at all, I moved the holes half a cm further down the stable and glued a small maple sky in front of the stable plate to have something to glue the sensors to (the string pin holes were right in front of the stable plate). Got another surprise when the mic was to be mounted, the end block was 1 cm too thick for the jacket! Took a while before I came up with a way to drill a 1 cm deep 22 mm hole from the inside around the hole so that the jacket could be mounted.
Planed the fretboard which had a small radius so it became completely flat and re-banded.
Is NOT impressed with the detail work inside, not much care when the ribs were glued! The outside, on the other hand, is nice with fine wood. A three-piece spruce cap, admittedly. Strung up with Newtone Masterclass 0.11. Sounded dry and balanced, as maple guitars often do. After a little vibration, it opened up nicely and better it will sound when played on 🙂
Took some pictures of the neck attachment.
