Renovation of a Levin 1916 parlor

In addition to GammelGura, I also do renovations. This one became unusually extensive, half an GammelGura. The customer wanted as much as possible original, but also a carbon fiber rod in the neck and a K&K mic. The guitar came in parts with the bottom and the bridge off. The sound-destroying plate under the bridge across the top was also removed. My friend Björn Sohlin had started a renovation together with the customer, but it had stopped a few years ago.

It also had a real hole in the side and a large piece was missing, probably something had fallen on it in the storeroom where it was stored.

With the guitar came a bunch of cleats and some other wood as well as a label that was steamed off. The bottom looked like a potato chip, the top bottom brace was missing and the bottom had bent up at least 5 cm in the wrong direction on both edges! The bridge in black lacquered birch / maple was of the simpler triangular model, but also unusually low. On these, the bridge can be ridiculously thick and high, but this one actually had the right height for a fret saddle and about 13 mm high string height above the top.

To flatten the potato chip bottom, I moistened a lot and put the bottom in a press for a few days. An old original brace was glued in the hope that it would keep the bottom flat, but it ended up with both ends of that brace cracking as the bottom wants to regain its shape. There are great forces in wood! I had to take off the old brace and mount a stronger one in fresh wood. But first I moistened the bottom again and put the bottom in pressure with an aluminum caul on the inside and heated it to about 80 degrees with an iron. This time it went better, the heating stabilized the wood and the stronger brace withstood without cracking at the ends. The paint melted a little bit from the heat (I would have preferred to gas up to at least 100 degrees), but thanks to plastic foil as a release agent against the paint no worse than it was not visible after the final spirit painting. The bottom also got a center stick and the old label was glued back.

The top was repaired with the cleats that came with the guitar. It also got my patented bridge plate in spruce and reinforcements around the stringpin holes, but no plugs. I also added a few reinforcements to make it hold 0.11 steel strings.

An old half done repair of the rim was removed as the cracks in the side were not glued edge-to-edge. A piece of wood from a scrapped guitar was sawn out and fitted in somewhat. It could of course have been made nicer, but the function was the most important thing. The piece was glued in by means of abutment in sheet metal, then a 0,6 mm maple veneer was glued with the grain across the cracks on the inside. The color of the new piece did not match the guitar, but I had to solve it later with stain when painting.

Got loose the neck that was glued with carpentry glue, but not without problems. It turned out that someone had lifted the rosewood cover plate at the end of the neck and pulled in a screw under it. It was not visible from the outside. The first time I came across that solution. Picked off the fretboard without problems and milled in a carbon fiber rod in the usual way. Then glued back the fingerboard on the neck.

The bottom went well to glue back.

The big challenge was to glue the neck. On the one hand, it was mounted obliquely from the beginning, the bridge was not centered on the top and in addition it was turned to the wrong way with a shorter string on the thick E side instead of the other way around for the intonation. The bridge was glued back centered and straight, and I had to adjust the neck attachment accordingly.

Only when I started to do the neck reset did I notice that the original fretboard was bent like a banana on the bass side. I have never seen anything like it. The edge protruded 3 mm more in the middle! The other edge was almost straight, when I fitted the neck it was just possible to get both E/e strings to lie over all the frets. It also turned out that the fretboard was about 1 mm higher in the middle and not flat, so I had to grind down the middle of the fretboard on the top. The board also had a radius of 14. On an GammelGura I had sanded the neck straight on the bass-side and mounted a new fretboard :-)

After all the measuring and testing, I actually managed to get the string height at the 12th fret right against the saddle fret, which cannot be adjusted in height like a normal saddle. The intonation was also good on all strings with a straight saddle fret except the thick E string which would have needed about XNUMX-XNUMX mm adjustment backwards on the bridge. Four missing string pins were replaced by old originals. A wood screw was tightened through the neck block into the neck foot as usual.

Without composite saddle, plugs and without thinning the top and bottom, it lacked a bit of force and volume, but it still sounds good if you do not compare with a complete GammelGura. In addition to the K&K mic, it also got a guitar strap knob on the neck foot, but the bridge, fretboard, frets, tuning screws, nut and most of the braces was original.

3 Comments

  1. Hello!
    Fun to read your comments and to see the pictures.
    I had hoped to see how a renovation goes, with Björn, but this was at least as interesting!
    It's fun that you could use the team notes I made, then I got to be part of a small corner of the renovation of Grandma's guitar!

    Thank you Roger for bringing the guitar back to life!

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