Tom mount removal and what to do with that 2nd neck

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Ya know (awful way to start a sentence, let alone a paragraph or a blog post), we work on lots of things that aren’t guitars. Case in point, Bil’s drum. Who’s Bill? What drum? Well that’s a long story, but here’s a picture of the Gretsch USA tom in question.

What’s the issue? It’s the fancy suspension mount. The sign of  a professional grade drum, this style of tom mount has become an absolute standard. Only problem is…Bill hates them. Enter Bill Avayou, senior drum man here at the shop and all around nice guy. He’s a jazz drummer and doesn’t like the fact that the suspension rims mount further out on his tom arm than he’s happy with. So he instructed us, in no uncertain terms, to remove the suspension mount, drill into that baby and put that mount where it belongs. Right against the shell.

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Here we’re lining up the center of the tom mount with a template we made to center the screw holes.

The screw holes are beveled with a counter sink bit to make sure that the tension doesn’t stress the finish.

The finished product. Bill commented that the tom sounded better and seemed to sustain more. And when he’s happy, we’re happy.

Early 1900’s Weyman lute back mandolin. Incredible condition for it’s age. The finish is clear and shiny, the chrome looks clean and it’s been in the family for generations. Why do we have it? Back separation.  The seem  right behind the tailpiece opened up real good.  The problem we had was that, even with our fancy violin clamps, we couldn’t find a way to push the side in AND clamp the back in place. The arch of the top and back were both too steep for anything to clamp without digging into the finish.  So we tried a strap around the  sides, around the neck heel and tightened enough to close the seam. Nope.  So here’s the debatable avenue we took.  First we applied the proper wood glue. Then we used super glue like a tack weld.  With a smear of olive oil to keep the glue from sticking to the surrounding finish, we carefully applied a a few drop of super glue, pushed the side and back into place with lots of good-old-fashioned elbow grease and had our assistant operations manager Brian spray some accelerator over the joint. The super glue clamped the joint tight enough to let the wood glue do its work.

Just don’t let Brian spray the glue accelerator for you. I can still taste it. He said it was an “accident”. Whatever.

Here’s the only “before” shot I could find of this beautiful Bay State harp guitar from the turn of the (last) century.  This guitar had lots of old crack repairs and some playability issues.  Above we see a piece of wood spliced in to repair a damaged back. But the grain is going the wrong way and it’s not really close to the same wood.  We removed the wood, put in some old Cuban mahogany that matched really well and bursted the back to hide this transplant as well as some other cracks. This guitar’s owner, the super cool Bob, wanted to restore this family heirloom to a playable state.  It’s a double neck harp guitar and had a high action due to poor neck angle. Since we don’t have a neck removal jig designed to remove two necks at once (and who does???), we had to adopt the approach of lowering the bridge to correct the angle instead of resetting the neck. Since the necks are joined at the headstock, removing one at a time simply was not possible.  I know the suspense is killing you, so i’ll just say it turned out well.

Here’s a shot of one of the many clamping sessions we had with this guitar. Lots of seam separation and loose bracings were fixed, a few at a time. In this case, we’re adding an additional brace to the very spare ladder-braced top. The bridge was bellied so significantly that we had to add extra support.

Here’s the after shot. The original banjo-style tuners were fully functional and the guitar sounded very cool. We used Silk & Steel Martins to keep the string tension under control so this Bay State will make it to the next generation and beyond. Thanks again Bob!

This 80’s Gibson Melody Maker (yes, Melody Maker. And it has a Kahler. Look it up…) survived a flood. There’s lots of finish lifting and cracking all over the neck. We were able to over spray and wet sand the back of the neck with good success. It looks and feels pretty much pre-flood. However, the logo was lifting very severely  and needed more than just lacquer to secure it. So we wicked some water-thin super glue, held it down with a pin, THEN oversprayed, wet sanded and buffed. Some black touch-up was required to remove some of the glazed look, but it all came out nicely.

That’s it for today. Gotta find some Cheesits. Is there anything better than fresh Cheesits? Feel free to discuss.  And when you’re done snacking, don’t hesitate to contact us about your next mod, installation or repair project. Email us at richboromusic@verizon.net

Thanks again. See you next time.