Can of worms?

So, work on the Guyatone’s restoration begins in earnest, and I think that I’ve opened a can of worms!

Guyatone LG50 Project

 

For quite a while I’ve fancied doing a restoration project and kept looking on eBay for something suitable. Well, the other week I saw, bid and won this Guyatone LG50 guitar. To save me repeating what’s written elsewhere, here’s a link to some information about the Guyatone company.

So, as far as I can tell this wonderful old guitar was made in Japan around about the late 1950s-early 60s and here’s a video to introduce the project.

The brass badge on the tailpiece sold it to me! 

Next One

As the last Standard mandolin was so well received, I thought that I’d follow it up with another one! Here’s the progress so far……

The neck blank has been made. Here’s a photo of the head with a lovely Macassar ebony head overlay and the same black, Gotoh mini tuners which I thought were a great success. There will be some more Macassar introduced later! Also, the neck itself is made from sapele.

For the back and sides, I’m using some beautiful figured maple.

The rim is complete.

Here’s a close up of the solid linings. I glue two layers of 2.5mm maple to the sides to form the linings and this make the side super rigid.

The soundboard is again Adirondack (red) spruce and you can see the bound sound hole below.

Adirondack isn’t the prettiest of tonewoods; often wide grain with streaks of colour. My theory is that’s why so many early American instruments had sunbursts or dark stained tops. However, it’s so stiff, has a wonderful tap tone and does produce a very fine sounding instrument. Personally, I like the character that the visual “imperfections” give; very much in keeping with my shibui aesthetic.

So, it’s no surprise that I’ve just imported 10 sets of “master grade” Adirondack tops from USA!