Work continues with ongoing batch, one that has already been completed and delivered is an American American Conservatory parlor. Although I have a stamped serial number, 79982, I have not been able to work out when it was manufactured. Probably around 1900, but maybe a little later. It is rare to see similar guitars in Sweden, but those that exist have probably accompanied returning emigrants. The shape resembles a Levin parlor, not so surprising since Hermann Carlsson Levin more or less copied the shape and construction from the American parlor guitars he made in New York during the 1890s.

The woods were luxurious, the finest rosewood in the bridge, bottom and sides and light and light mahogany in the neck. The fretboard, on the other hand, was a disaster, ebonized pear wood (most likely) with about the consistency of biscuit chocolate! The fretboard had to be speared loose into a thousand pieces. During the ebonization, high heat and aggressive chemicals were probably used, which have destroyed the wood over time. The spruce top was in good condition with a few cracks. The bottom was incredibly thin, only between 1,5 and 1,7 mm. Normally it should be about 2,3 mm thick! I had to be extremely careful when I loosened the thin bottom along the edges where it was still a little thinner. Another thing about the bottom was that the inside had a very smooth and nice surface, almost polished. It was also unusually evenly thick. There is probably a reason why, perhaps they deliberately built an extremely light guitar. Even the mahogany neck was light as a feather without the fretboard. The top, on the other hand, had normal thickness. The guitar was probably sized for gut strings. The ribbing in the top was sparse with only two braces and a fir stick under the bridge in the top, the bottom had only three braces.

It was in good condition, except for some cracks in the top and bottom. The biggest problem was that one of the sides had completely detached from the end block, which was also cracked in half. Unlike a Levin parlor, it had a dovetail. The bridge was not in good condition and too narrow for an intoned saddle, so a replica in the finest rosewood was made. The fretboard was replaced with a new one in ebony. The customer wanted to keep the original tuners which were in good condition for their age, almost as good as new. No side dots on the fretboard or a guitar band knob on the neck foot should be mounted, however a K&K mic.

The braces came off without a problem, to soften the glue and loosen the fir stick under the bridge I heated it with a small travel iron. The loose rim was a bit tricky to glue back to both the end block, top and sides, you have to press from three sides at the same time to get tight joints. But with various cauls and clamps it worked out well. I always use a soft steel plate as a counter-hold on the outside and plastic foil to avoid gluing the cauls in place.

With the fretboard off, I was able to sand off the glue and fingerboard residue on my sanding board while flattening the neck. In cases where the neck has a noticeable bend, I first heat it straight. This one could be sanded straight. The neck was very light and in light colored mahogany. The neck had its carbon fiber rod milled in and glued, it's a step that I do at the same time for all guitars in the current batch.

The lid had a narrow crack in the center joint. It could be pressed together with the cover ribs removed and glued with hot skin glue. This is one of the many good features of the skin glue, you can dab on and massage the glue into the crack and then wipe off the excess with a damp cloth. The clamps on one half are tightened first, then the clamps across to compress the crack and finally the clamps on the other side. Restraints are then clamped onto the inside of the lid to keep the lid flat across the crack. When the counter-holds are in place, you can then detach the long side clamps, the stop blocks towards the outside of the edge and other clamps that are no longer needed. It's always exciting to "open the package" after a gluing like this the next day when you can't see exactly what you're doing, but so far it's always been a good result!

The crack at the end block had also spread a bit on one side of the rim, a piece of rosewood veneer was glued on. It is important to get even pressure on the entire veneer, for that I use small cauls with a 4 mm soft yoga mat that molds to the bend of the edge.

The most artistic thing I get the chance to do at all GammelGura is the new bridge. I have a stock of rosewood and ebony blanks, I chose a rosewood blank of the finest variety. To make the job a little faster and easier, I use a wood drill to drill out the channels between the middle of the bridge and the pyramids at the ends. An old maple table leg is a good platform when shaping the bridge.

The channel is widened and thinned down to approx. 2 mm at the edges. The pyramids must be lower than the middle part, the height is cut down with a Japanese saw or my small band saw.

The bridge is rounded off towards the back with grates. A nice detail is to give the edge at the back a slight, even bend. The small razor files are perfect for fine-tuning as they leave a smooth surface.

The pyramid bridge on this guitar had a flat top on the pyramid. A stick with coarse adhesive sandpaper is also a good tool.

The string pin holes are measured and drilled before the bridge is glued with freshly made fresh hot hide glue.

The ebony fretboard was given a 16″ radius and a scale that places the front of the bridge bone about 4mm into the bridge. The bottom got four ribs instead of three, the top the patented GammelGura bracing with plugs and bridgeplate in spruce.

Before the bottom is glued, the string pin holes are reamed and a groove is filed in the bridge plate, top and bridge for the strings and for solid string pins. I have tried different ways to make the groove, the fastest way is to use a needle file rasp. They are rare, but they are available for purchase. Some cut NH 0,12 strings are used to fit the string pegs so that they are tight, but can be loosened with your fingers.

The gluing of the bottom and neck went well and the guitar had to hang for a couple of days with a vibrating aquarium pump with strings at tension, the neck usually moves a little the first few days before it finds its final position. Typically, the string height at the 12th fret increases at most 0,5 mm, but sometimes not at all.

It will take a couple more days before the guitar is completely ready. The most tedious part is measuring the intonation, but it is something that must be done. With the measured values, it is easy to mill the bridge in the right place and manufacture a segmented saddle.

The sound in this GammelGuran is a bit special, an unusual amount of jingle&jangle! I think it's due to the rosewood in the bottom and sides instead of the usual maple/birch. The wood in the bottom and sides is important and shapes the sound, even if the top is the part that accounts for most of the sound. Because it was so lightly built, I strung on NH 0.11 strings, which is equivalent to regular 0,10 strings in tension.

The pictures of the finished GammelGuran were taken on a cold winter's day on the bridge outside the shop.

I try to keep a stock off Newtone Heritage 0.12 and 0.11 strings in my shop, but sometimes I only have enough for the ongoing batch. I also usually have a few NH 0.10 sets and regular Newtone Masterclass 0.11 sets in stock. Right now the stock is low, but a new load is on the way. It usually takes a couple of months from order to delivery, it seems that their website is often out of stock as well. Something happened during the pandemic and after Brexit, I hope it straightens out. With new prices for customs and shipping, they now cost SEK 140 per set if I have strings to sell. Postage is usually SEK 30 or SEK 45 within Sweden depending on the number of sets. If you want to order, send an e-mail and don't forget your name and address. I also have single strings in stock, it happens that one of the spun strings does not quite intonate as it should or that a thin E string breaks off when measuring the intonation.

I would also like to remind you that you should never cut round core strings during assembly before they are in place and tuned. The top 10 centimeters of the string is flattened during manufacture so that the string does not spin up, if you cut the string at the top first, there is a great risk that it will completely lose its intonation! I have also been told that the unspun strings in NH are no different than regular unspun strings, so they can be replaced with strings of the same thickness from other makes.

There is actually another similar low tension string to buy from Thomann in Germany, Optima Vintage flex. It seems to be more or less a copy of the NH 0.12 with the same string thicknesses and low tension. I have not tested them myself, but reviews online say they are equivalent to the NH strings.

Another low tension string with roughly the same tension as NH 0.12 is GHS Thin core Light.

Otherwise, it always works with any steel strings with normal tension if they are just a notch thinner than the NH strings. Then you get approximately the same string tension that the guitar is built for. Pretty much all GammelGura get NH 0.12 and there you can instead string up the guitar with normal 0.11 strings. If it's an unusually brittle old guitar, I use NH 0.11, and then you have to make do with a 0.10 set of normal strings. The intonation of all GammelGura are measured with NH 0.12 or 0.11 strings. The intonation will not be exactly as good with thinner normal strings than the NH strings used when doing the measurement, but the difference is small and hardly audible to a normal ear.

All tops have had their braces glued and adjusted. For the top, I use my collapsible go-bar and a baseplate with the same radius as the underside of the braces. Since I am gluing several large plates in the top, they need to be glued to a surface that is curved in two dimensions. The bottom braces, on the other hand, can be glued to a one-dimensional support with a matching radius.

The gluing takes place in two passes. The top brace under the fretboards is not glued, so I later can lift the top under the fretboard with a stronger radius on that brace if the fretboard gets a slope-off instead of having to make a wedge under the fretboard. The two large braces below the sound hole are planed down to 12-13 mm height and the ends are thinned down to almost nothing starting 7 cm from the sides.

All guitars in progress have had their cracks glued (there were quite a few!). The bottoms have new bracings, the necks carbon fiber rods. All braces and bridge plates have been selected and cut, the braces have been given the correct radius and triangulated. Unusually, I didn't have to thin down either the tops or bottoms, as all thickness measurements were as they should be. Söderman's plywood bottom was indeed a bit thick, but that will not make any difference to the sound.

I also kept the replaced bottom for the European Parlor guitar with its mahogany frets, the bottom and frets were in good condition and also had a pencil note that I didn't want to sand off unnecessarily. Even Söderman has a pencil note in the lid, I think I can glue the ribs around it.

The next big step is to glue all the top braces, this will take a few days in my collapsible go-bar jig.

I noticed an interesting detail on the 1926 Gottfrid Söderman lute that I'm currently working on. I think I've seen the same thing on other Söderman lutes, but didn't think too much about it. After some pondering, I think I found a reason why he cut two notches in the top just inside the edge of the fretboard. There must be a way to try and steer the almost inevitable crack in the top at the side of the fretboard to the underside of the fretboard where it is not visible. A bit like sweeping it under the rug. Gottfrid was an inventive autodidact, such a solution would be completely in his style. If that's not the reason, I have no idea why he did that!

You can see it did work on the normal straight edge of the fretboard, the crack came in the cut-out trench. However, it did not work at all on the side of the fretboard that is beveled.

I got curious about exactly when the modern T-frets were invented after working on refretting a neck with bar frets. After a bit of Googling, I found the first patent of T-shaped frets of John F. Stratton, US Pat. no. 501,743, from July 18, 1893. Patents are not always taken by the original inventors or those who first used what was patented, so it is not incredible that similar T-frets were used a number of years before.

The Bay State guitar in current batch dated to circa 1888, which has T-frets that appear to be original - in any case, the fret slots are not as wide as they would have been with bar frets, may have had some of the first T-frets that were manufactured.

The modern frets with crown and barbs were patented by C.F Smith, Pat. no. 1,727,620, as late as 1927. I also found one new cool patent from 2010 with more flexible frets that should be manufactured and sold!

I took some pictures and measured the frets on the Bay State guitar from circa 1888.

They are similar to the band in the patent, except for the longitudinal "barb" of the patent. I think the last one was what was needed to get the patent approved and not very practical in practice. The Bay State nickel bands have instead been scored on the underside with a knife or sharpening iron so that sharp bristles stick out and help hold the band in place. The bands have roughly the same shape and the same flat crown as in the patent.

The measurements of the low and narrow bands are:

Total height: 2 mm
Width of crown: 1,4 mm
Height of crown: 0,5 mm
Tang thickness: 0,65-0,7 mm

It's not often I get a repair or GammelGura back. But I got this renovation back when it turned out that the guitar played false above the 12th fret. In a GammelGura I always double-check the fret placement if an original fretboard is to be reused, this was a renovation.

All frets below 12th were placed by eye, no less than 4 mm error in the placement on the worst frets! It's a phenomenon I've come across several times on 1800th century guitars, that the frets up to the 12th are OK, while the ones below are completely misplaced. What this is due to can be speculated on, perhaps there was a table that many people used that ended at the 12th fret. Whatever the reason, it doesn't cost more to place the frets correctly instead of incorrectly. You might think it's a bit charming and that the correct placement looks more boring and less organic, but if you're playing the guitar, it's probably best that they're in the right place.

To move the frets, the old fret slots must be filled again with sticks in the same type of wood as the fingerboard. The frets were of the type "bar frets", they are completely flat and as thick as the top of the T in modern T-bands. They also have the function of giving the neck a backward bend by pressing down thicker frets than the frett slot is wide. With different thick bar frets, you can adjust the back bend and keep the neck straight with taut strings. It is an art that few have mastered these days. Only Martin kept bar frets right up until the 1930s, if you see bar frets on an old guitar it is most likely a guitar from the 1800th century. In parentheses, the modern T-fret on the Bay State guitar dated to about 1888 was in the current batch, and they appear to be original, they probably came earlier than I thought.

There was a risk that the neck would be bent more by the string pull when changing to regular T-frets. But since the fingerboard was very thin and in rosewood, which is not the hardest wood, I didn't think it would be a problem. It was later found that the relief became larger with the T-frets.

It was relatively easy to pull up the bare frets with pliers. If they had been completely smooth there would have been no problem at all, but many notches had been made with a knife on the underside of the brass bands with small sharp protruding bristles as a result to make them fit better. The small chips in the fretboard that were pulled up with the frets were quickly glued back with thin superglue before they could come off. Modern T-strings have "nibs" to make them sit better, there you always have problems with the fretboard wanting to split open when the strings are pulled up.

Sticks in rosewood with the same thickness as the fret slots were wide were made and cut to the right length and height.

The extreme radius of the fretboard was bigger than the 6″, which is the most curved insert you can buy for my fret press. I had to custom make an insert with a larger bend and also a stop to hold down the most recently installed fret while the glue dried. Even the tool for bending the new frets had to be converted with an extra screwdriver to be able to make the big bend!

The straight sticks were glued with superglue and pressed into place. When the glue dried, the excess was planed down and the sticks were sanded against the board.

By measuring the distance to the 12th fret, which I used to intonate the bridge, and multiplying by two, I got the open string length (scale) 607mm. About 10 years ago I used Stewmac's fret calculator and printed out a stack of A4 sheets with the distances for all the frets for most guitar and mandolin gauges at 1mm intervals on open string length. The sheets are collected in a folder, and it is quick and easy to find the right measurements. The fret locations were measured on the fretboard with my 50 cm long caliper with 0.1 mm precision and marked with a sharp awl. All the frets up to the 12th were placed about 1 mm too far up the fretboard, the ones below 3-4 mm wrong except for the very last fret which was actually in the right place.

Usually the fretboard is loose, and I can use my Stewmac saw box jig to cut the frets parallel and to the correct depth. When the board is attached to a guitar, I instead make a temporary jig from a straight wooden beam, some wooden clamps, pliers and an angle. Using my cool center finder, it's easy to draw a center line along the tapered fretboard. The neck is clamped so that the distance between the wooden beam and the center line is the same at both ends. The angle is placed so that the saw cut ends up in the middle of the mark. The saw is guided by the edge to the angle, and I saw a fret notch no deeper than the fret tang.

Once all the slots are cut, I use a fret saw with a stop to cut the fret slots to the same depth, just a little deeper than the fret tang. To protect the surface of the fingerboard from abrasion from the saw stop, I use a thin aluminum plate between the saw stop and the fingerboard. Finally, the edge to the notch is chamfered off with a square needle file. I have bought a set of needle files with a coarser cut than the fine one you usually see in hardware stores. I also have a set of needle files in the form of rasps, the round rasp is perfect for filing up the notches for the strings in the bridge for unslotted string pegs.

The fretting was tricky as the fingerboard had such a large radius, but with the specially made insert for the fret press it worked fine. The frets were glued with superglue. Nowadays, I mount every other fret (all odd and then all even frets) to reduce the backward bend from the tang in the fret slots, but in this case I should have fretted as usual! It turned out that the relief was a full 0,7 mm in the middle with tensioned strings, my ideal is about 0,15 mm.

I don't really know why, but the compression and back bend from the bar frets is certainly greater than the one you get from the T-fret tangs. The neck also had a little too much relief even before I refretted. Next time I do something similar, I'll brace the neck to a slight back bend and open up the fret slots a bit more before fitting and gluing the wooden sticks.

So, what do you do? You don't want to play a banana neck. My patented solution, which is the very best, is to mill in a carbon fiber rod under the fretboard. But in this case it would have been a lot of extra work and besides, the fingerboard was so thin and bent that it probably couldn't have been saved. In addition, the frets would have to be reattached once more. There are two solutions, to heat-bend the neck straight or replace the frets with frets with a thicker tang. I chose to start with heating and only change frets in case of emergency.

Bending back the neck with heat is a double-edged sword, you can succeed, but it's always a gamble. A disadvantage is that the heat always dries out the fingerboard so that it shrinks and that the lacquer under the neck at the stop can melt from the heat and be damaged. To reduce the shrinkage of the fingerboard, one should first saturate the fingerboard with oil. What you are looking for is to heat the fretboard and the neck wood hotter than the melting point of the lignin and at the same time bend the neck back to a curve roughly the same size as the banana bend/relief, but in the other direction. Wood consists of equal parts cellulose fibers, lignin and hemicellulose, lignin is a bit like a putty that binds the cellulose fibers together. It is hoped that the lignin will solidify into its new form as it cools and that the neck will become more or less straight with the strings at tension.

My jig consists of an aluminum plate that is thick enough to give the back bend an even curvature and at the same time distribute the heat evenly. In this case, the fingerboard was longer than both of my two plates, so I had to use both and a shim to cover the entire fingerboard. The neck gets a rest just at the spot where the relief bend of the fingerboard is deepest. It is important that the surface of the stop is smooth and even, otherwise you can get a pattern pressed into the soft lacquer if the lacquer becomes sticky from the heat. A little household plastic between the stop and the neck means that the lacquer cannot stick to the stop. The clamps are tightened so tightly at both ends that the fretboard/neck gets a backward bend that is as big, or a little bigger, than the relief was before. You aim along the edge of the fretboard and hope for the best. A practical digital temperature gauge allows you to easily adjust the temperature of the irons, which are regulated with a thermostat.

The large radius of the fingerboard was a problem as I couldn't get good contact between the fretboard and the frets to transfer the heat, but I solved that by sandwiching thin strips of metal on the sides between the frets and the fretboard.

After thinking about this in retrospect, perhaps I happened to do things more right than I thought. The greatest bending of the neck always occurs near the nut, where the breaking of the strings over the nut gives an extra bending force. With two overlapping aluminum plates at the bottom end of the fretboard, the bending from the clamps was greatest on the upper part of the neck in my jig, where I only had one aluminum plate. The lower part with double aluminum plates was stiffer and bent less. It also occurred to me that you can use a layer of folded aluminum foil shaped according to the fingerboard radius to fill in between the aluminum plate and the fingerboard to more effectively conduct the heat down into the neck. I also have to mention that it takes a lot of force on the clamps to bend back a guitar neck, perhaps in the region of 20-50 kg of pressure on the middle caul under the neck. I use a caul that is shaped to the neck and lined with soft rubber.

The melting point of lignin should be about 65 degrees C. I made a first attempt with about 70 degrees C measured on the iron. Absolutely nothing happened, the same banana bend as before. I repeated the process with 5 hours of heating and a few hours of cooling before loosening the clamps with 100 degrees C on the irons. With 100 degrees C in the irons and aluminum plates, the temperature on the back of the neck was 42 degrees C. This means that the lignin in the fretboard and the neck closest to the fretboard will be reshaped, but not in the entire neck. I think you should reach at least 80 degrees C to successfully soften the lignin.

The result was successful, an essentially completely straight neck and a minimal shrinkage of the fingerboard. I just had to trim down the frets ends that stuck out a little. The lacquer had also done well under the counter-hold. Time to send the guitar back again, hopefully it doesn't play out-of-tune anymore!

In my shop, I need a dehumidifier in the summer and a humidifier in the winter. Around 40% is the target. After two humidifiers with a built-in sensor to turn on and off broke at a certain humidity (the electronics shut down), I have bought a simpler humidifier without electronic controls and a separate and better unit for the control. The control can be calibrated against my hygrometer and should be significantly more robust. It works very well, I must say. The humidifier has room for 4 l of water, and it lasts overnight without any problems, even if it is very dry. Over the weekends, however, it may happen that the water runs out.

The humidifier is of the ultrasonic type that breaks the water into a mist, a disadvantage with that principle is that all the minerals in the drops are deposited where they end up and can give a white coating on everything. No problem in the shop, but at home I have humidifiers of the water boiling type. With such, all the minerals stay in the humidifier itself, the disadvantage with them is that they are pretty loud where the ultrasonic humidifier is completely silent.

The stuff I bought are these: Beurer LB88 Humidifier and Inkbird IHC-200 Humidity Controller. They are complemented by a better hygrometer Text 608-H2 and one Qlima DD-208 dehumidifier bought from Jula a few years ago (also have a Woods dehumidifier).

I can also plug the dehumidifier into the empty outlet, should the humidity exceed 40,5% it turns on and turns off at 40%, if the humidity drops to 39,5% the humidifier turns on instead. Braces and sling!

I will willingly admit that my work discipline in the shop has faltered a bit lately. My interest in playing music has had a revival and has taken its time. Also, the most boring of all; the accounting that has finally been completed. But at least a lot of general repairs have been done in the meantime, I'm now back in my old ways. A new batch has been started with several interesting old guitars. It feels good.

The first step in the renovation is to loosen the old strings, the tuners, any tailpiece, the end plug, the bridge, the fingerboard, the neck and the bottom in that order. The braces in the top and bottom must also be removed before the next step, which is to repair all cracks and any other damage. The tuners, screws and other loose metal parts are cleaned in my small ultrasonic cleaner. Bent posts on the tuners are bent straight and the tuners are lubricated. All loose parts, that fit, are collected in a lunchbox with a lid and marked with a descriptive text. The fretboards are also labeled and stored in a larger box (most will be replaced, but they are good to use as a template).

Since there was a lot of snow outside, I had to take the pictures before I took the guitars apart in a snowdrift! I also took some pictures during the actual process of dismantling.

GG199 American Conservatory, circa 1900

This is an exciting parlor from the USA with the finest rosewood in the bottom and sides and neck in mahogany. It was guitars like this that Herman Carlsson Levin basically copied, but made with local woods, when he came back to Sweden from the USA in 1900. The body shape is familiar, so is the simple attachment of the neck and the wooden stick across the top under the bridge.

It was in good condition, almost completely without cracks. However, the ebonized fingerboard had about the consistency of biscuit chocolate! It was very easy to shatter it into a thousand pieces. This is an extremely lightweight build, definitely made for gut strings. Removing the bottom without damaging it was not the easiest, as it was only about 1,9 mm thick, 1,7 at the thinnest place. The precious wood was not wasted when making the guitar. The bottom had three braces and the top only two. The stick under the bridge was made of spruce, which I love, but there was no reinforcement around the stringpin holes, which meant that the stick was worn out by the ball ends. The bridge, which came with it, had come off and the top under the bridge was in good condition. The tuners were substantial, but perhaps a little loose. I think they can be kept as they are extra nice.

GG200 Bay State, circa 1888

I'm saving the even number 200 for the guitar I was sent free from the US after my first long article in American Lutherie. The fact that I got it for free is because no one in the US wanted to take it on as it was in bad shape and the owner wanted to save it. I'm going to write an article about the whole restoration process with this guitar for the magazine, so I'm taking extra pictures of it.

This is also a typical USA parlor guitar from the end of the 1800th century with the finest rosewood in the bottom and sides, and a neck of mahogany. This one is not as light a build and the neck has a sharper V shape. It had been given a tailpiece, the head had been hit and repaired with three wooden screws. One of the tuners had been replaced and the edge of the head where the tuning screw is attached to was completely broken off, it showed when I loosened the tuners. It will be a special repair. The rosewood fingerboard was very thin. It was easy to loosen the neck with a little water and a thin knife in the joint.

It had five braces in the bottom, the other American Parlor only had three, but also more braces in the top. It had a similar spruce stick under the bridge, this one was also torn apart by the string's ball ends.

GG201 Levin, 1943
No batch with at least one Swedish made Levin, this one had been saved from a junk room. It has a burst (yellow color, not red as in the first pictures) and is a fairly simple Levin, looking a bit like a Gibson from the same time period..

It was in relatively good condition, the tióp had a crack along the center joint. The bridge had already come loose, which made the work easier. The fretboard, neck and bottom came off without a problem. The braces in the top and bottom were more or less loose and easy to pop loose.

GG202 European parlor, circa 1920
A European curvy parlor also had to be in a new batch, this one had extra good quality mother of pearl inlays.

It had received a major renovation in 1975, there was a hard-to-read pencil note on the inside of the bottom. The bottom had been replaced, and it had been given a new one in mahogany. Oddly enough, a replica of the bridge was also made in the same type of wood, which is actually a bit too soft for a bridge. Decorative moldings around the edge of the bottom and the soft mahogany in the bottom made it difficult to pop, but I managed to get it apart in one piece.

GG203, Söderman 1926

A Gottfrid Söderman from "Väntrummet" is the last so far in the batch. Waiting for word on another guitar. It's always fun to be able to save a locally made guitar, Västerhus is only a few miles from Örnsköldsvik.

It was in good condition except for a few cracks in the lid and the glue coming off the hem at the neck block. Some methods were questionable in his production, the stable leg in this one was e.g. in celluloid attached with three nails. The extra thick oak stable block was also not optimal, but probably a later repair of the fir stick under the stable. A fun detail is the slightly bumpy mother-of-pearl shirt buttons that he used as decoration in the fingerboard! Sometimes the good Gottfrid wrote under the lid in pencil, this one had both a little comment and a year, which is always nice to find. It said "On a sunny day, this top was glued on. G. Söderman 1926".

A lot of modern guitars pass the premises without me writing about them on the blog. When they leave the premises after repair/adjustment, I am as happy to get rid of them as the owner is over having it repaired! But sometimes I am surprised, like this time by a circa 1988 Kramer Ferrington semi-acoustic parlor guitar of the "hard rock power ballad" type. Everything in the design was black and sharp. You can read more about it here. Or here.

After a chat with the owner, it was decided that it would get a major overhaul with a reglued and replaced saddle, a re-fret and above all a nut intonation. A lot of work on a plywood guitar from the 1980s, but when I looked it up, they go for around SEK 10 000. More money than I thought.

Upon closer inspection, I could tell that the neck was in good condition and that, amazingly, it actually sounded really good. The tone was there, but not the volume, which was about half of the volume on a regular GammelGura. The intonation was lousy, I was later able to ascertain that the saddle was placed about 3-4 mm too high up on the bridge!

A new bridge was made. I also took the opportunity to wet the inside of the top around the bridge and put the top under pressure for a few days to flatten out the top which had a rotational deformation around the bridge. The new bridge was glued in place, as it was a plywood top, I glued with slow curing epoxy glue. It turned out that the top had an unusually nice and delicate X-bracing and was otherwise a light build. That is the explanation why it sounded unexpectedly good. The sound hole was extra large, so it was easy to access the inside.

There was no room above the string pins on the bridge plate for a K&K mic. It had an under saddle pickup and a lump with a battery attached to the side that didn't work. The mic did not work as the pickup under the saddle was in bad condition. I ordered a bunch of simple under saddle pickups for this and similar repairs in the future. They are easy to change as there is a small miniature plug at the end which connects to the lump of most similar mics.

The guitar was measured for intonation and about 2 mm was shortened on the top of the fingerboard. On the new bridge, a saddle ditch for the sdadle was milled 3-4 mm further down than the original. One thing I didn't think about was that the hole for the pickup at one end of the saddle ditch ended up right on top of one of the X-braces with the new placement! By drilling the hole diagonally through the top I was able to mount the pickup without drilling holes in the X-brace. When it was done the mic sounded lousy, but with the bass on max and the treble on minimum on my simple acoustic Laney guitar amp in the room it actually sounded OK :)

It made it vibrate all weekend in the shop, probably at least 7 days, while I worked at home with the bookkeeping that I neglected all year. To my surprise, the vibration worked on this one, even though it was all plywood. My usual three days is enough for solid wood guitars, but all the glue in the plywood seems to require at least double that for effect.

The black color was horrible, the slightest scratch or thumbprint was visible. I put some Fulgentin on the top which worked well.

The result was a guitar that intoned and played perfectly and had a great tone with sustain and a balanced, creamy and open tone. I could actually play it for half an hour without getting tired, which rarely happens with modern guitars. I would have liked to keep it to be able to play quietly without disturbing the neighbors late at night. With its small format and lightness, it reminded me of a small parlor. A cutaway, 16 strings to the body and 65 cm scale made it feel a bit like an electric guitar too. Cool guitar!