Vintage Restoration

This is the introductory post to what will be an ongoing restoration project. I will be making various posts throughout the process. The series of posts will show:

-Full dovetail neck reset.
-Complete re fret
-Remove and replace pickguard
-Remove and re glue the bridge

In addition to these topics, I will be showing and exploring many other general setup procedures and restoration topics... and other things that happen along the way. With a job like this, more things easily come up along the way.



This is a gorgeous, vintage 1962 Martin D12-35. I bought the guitar for the shop with the plan of restoring it. I haven't decided whether or not to keep it after the restoration is complete. The Brazilian Rosewood is beautiful. Below you can see the three-piece back with the Indian Rosewood in the center.














Look at the way they matched up the wood figure at the heel. This is a really great looking piece of Brazilian.













Here you can see how the bridge is lifting, and the pickguard. The bridge isn't too bad, but since we're resetting the neck angle it'll be best to fix this so as to correct the overall geometry of the guitar. I'll be using hot hide glue for the two major glue joints... the bridge and neck joint













-R.E.