A Levin LTS-5 twelve

One of my own projects was completed over the long weekend. An LTS-5 Levin 12-string, a guitar model that I have a bit of history with. I also made a 1953 Levin Mandolin playable for Andreas Nilsson who is currently recording in my home studio.

This one was like the second instrument I bought (the first was a nylon-stringed Levin LG-17). A twelve-string LTS-4 with a flat head. It was bought used in a shop in Stockholm around 1985. It was in poor condition and needed to be repaired before I could pick it up. I remember it cost 1000 SEK. The neck conversion that was done was not entirely successful and when I played it for a while the string height was painfully high. It was my main guitar for a few years before I got a more easy-to-play guitar, some dreadnought variant from Japan I think it was. As usual, I couldn't keep my fingers away and the plastic pickguard was replaced with teak veneer that was in the family's possession. Not very nice and not something I would do again!

At that time I didn't know that there were easy-to-play guitars that also sounded good and I didn't care much about tuning (which was basically impossible to achieve since the intonation was completely off due to the high string height). The fact that it only sounded string was no obstacle, and a bunch of songs were written with it. That guitar is still in storage and one day I might take it on.

In 2014 I renovated a 5 LTS-1962 for Pelle Henriksson's studio in Umeå.. When I opened it up I was surprised to see that it had a huge 5 mm thick plywood plate under the bridge across the top! No wonder it was in good condition but just sounded stringy.

A 5 LTS-1966 in good condition was recently purchased at auction by Greger Wickberg, a friend and musician here in Örnsköldsvik. It turned out that it needed a neck set and general repairs, so I ended up buying it for the same amount as at the auction; 3000 SEK. Since I know that there is a lot of potential hidden behind the dull sound of strings, I wanted it as a complement in my own home studio. I didn't have a 12-string that I could or wanted to play.

This model is very strange. All the wood is of the highest quality, with impressive flamed maple in the back, but the sound is completely sabotaged by the bracing in the top. Since they sound so bad as original, they are rarely expensive to buy, even though they were expensive when they were sold. For some reason, it took a long time before Levin adopted the X-bracing for larger guitars or 12-strings with high string tension. Instead, they glued in more and thicker ladder braces, or as in the one from 1962, a solid plywood plate to make it last!

The binding was stuck like a rock, it was sacrificed and milled away around the bottom to access the glue joint between the bottom and side. Cellulose varnish is brittle and cracks easily when you try to pry off bindings with a razor blade. A new “yellowed” plastic binding looks just as good as the original. The glue was so hard that I couldn’t separate the joint without cracking the cellulose varnish, so half the bottom was sawed off through the kerfing. Once open I could see that the bracing in the top was like a bad joke with no less than 9 heavy ladder braces, 4 of which replaced the plywood plate in the previous one I renovated. The braces were also stuck like a rock with the modern glue that Levin used in the mid-1960s and I had to use a pair of pliers, knives and planes to clear the top of all the braces.

The neck has no dovetail and is only held in place with two nuts and glue under the fingerboard on the top. The nuts are attached to the same iron rod that also functions as a truss rod under the fingerboard. To make the job easier, the truss rod/attachment had to remain, it works perfectly OK on a large guitar. The fingerboard could be in place for once. The tuning screws work OK but not well, I have ordered new Golden Age ones to replace them when I get them home. The knobs are a bit wide on the originals, and you almost pinch your fingers when you tune. They got better after cleaning and oiling, but still not quite good.

New braces were made and glued into the top and bottom. New kerfing was glued in around the bottom and a K&K pickup was installed. Since the bottom was to be milled all around for a new binding, I didn't have to fit the bottom particularly closely to the sides. The frame had cracks on both sides of the bottom block and maple veneer was glued in across the cracks. The bottom had shrunk and part of the bottom was sticking out at the waist, as usually happens when a shrunk bottom is glued back in without forcing it into place and building in tension.

Nowadays, I do all X-bracing as a double X. I have never liked the two slanted braces in a standard Martin X-bracing, which often causes the top to bulge up behind the bridge due to string pull. The double X has an undeservedly bad reputation since Gibson used it but made both X's far too strong. The smaller X behind the bridge should be made considerably thinner.

The bridge, in genuine BRW, was heavily modified by me in the same way as in 2014. The middle part of the classically inspired string-through bridge was milled down to about 3 mm thick from the saddle and back, and an L-shaped fitting piece was glued on top. Unfortunately, I didn't take any good pictures of the bridge being modified, the look of the original is shown in the first slide. Two strings fit in each string peg hole, and short pieces of a 3 mm thick metal rod ensure that the strings get the right separation over the saddle. It's a little more difficult than usual to string on, but if you just make sure that both string balls are pressed into the hole before mounting the string peg and tightening the strings against the bridge plate, there's no problem. The principle works well, it may take an extra day before all the strings "set", but then it holds the tuning. When I made my segmented saddle, I had to make 8 mm wide bone posts so that both strings would fit on top.

The fingerboard extension on the top needed a triangular shim under the fingerboard after the neck set to avoid too much “slope off”.

A new plastic binding around the bottom was glued in after milling.

Since the fretboard had white binding along the edges, I milled out the grooves for the frets using a small router and my Proxxon dremel. I took the opportunity when the fretboard was sanded to 0,15 mm relief in my Stewmac jig. The ugly plastic dots in the fretboard were replaced with real mother-of-pearl at the same time.

The frets, with the tangs on both ends cut off, were mounted in my simple plank jig. When I was fretting near the body with my fret press, I heard an unexpected noise. Since the neck is only attached to the nuts and has nothing substantial to withstand the pressure from the fret press, the neck foot had slid down the side a few tenths of an inch and bent the fingerboard. In any case, it was possible to force the neck back into the correct position and secure the neck with a spacer under the neck foot.

The entire guitar was dulled with fine steel wool, Trollull 000, and brushed with a thin coat of alcohol varnish. Alcohol varnish consists mostly of shellac and adheres well to everything. The alcohol varnish becomes extremely shiny, to restore the original appearance, the alcohol varnish is dulled with the same steelwool after it has dried overnight. A dull shine can then be polished up via friction with a pair of cut-up white tube socks. When the varnish is not fully hardened and still a little tough, you cannot get the shine back completely, but you can polish it again after about a month when the varnish is fully hardened to get a little more shine.

The guitar was strung with light steel strings, a 0.09 set, and measured for intonation. The latter was quite a job as there were twice as many strings! Most of the thin strings intoned about the same as the thicker ones, the exception being the thick E string where there was a difference of a couple of mm when intoning the top nut.

I am very happy with the result. It sounds very loud and good and has a uniquely good intonation for a 12-string! It has a solid and clean sound instead of the usual jumble of jingle&jangle.

At the same time I refretted, changed the tuning screws and spruced up a Levin Madolin model 53 from 1953. It also turned out well. Here are some pictures of it and the two together. Big & small 🙂