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deathtokoalas

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  1. so, i've decided the neck is healthy enough to keep going. it's not curved upwards, but rather curved at a nice 30 degrees downwards. it may need a truss rod adjustment, but let me get the strings back on first. i think that putting four c-clamps as is standard is dangerous for the bridge, so i want to use something like this instead: https://www.wish.com/product/5e22c9b8ad036d0f44099295?hide_login_modal=true&share=web it seems normal to add a c-clamp on top of it. but, is that really necessary or is it overkill, especially if i'm concerned about the tension?
  2. i'm also going to put nylon strings on it to start, just to be safe. if i can tune it with nylon strings, and it seems solid, maybe i'll move back to steel ones. or, maybe keeping it strung with nylons is the best way to save it...
  3. when i first got that plate off, the body was just gobbed with all kinds of glue. there was a yellow glue that might have been the right type, but was applied in little dabs in the corner, there was a more liberally applied white glue and there were gobs of crazy glue applied in thin lines. i scraped as much off as i needed to scrape off the glue, but i was careful, and i don't think i scraped off more than i could have avoided. the places i circled in red are still on the bridge, and i don't know if the previous removal(s) took wood with them. but, i realized quickly that the finish was interfering with the glue, which may have been why somebody tried crazy glue. i wanted to be extra sure, so i cut it a little bit extra. at least in the places i cut, the wood is basically the same as what was already there. but, there's two reasons that's weird. first, these were handmade guitars - it's weird that they'd have that kind of factory defect, unless it was recently redone. second, it would suggest that if a spruce layer was removed then it was removed a good ways around the bridge. there's a minor bulge under the finish just above the string holes, but nothing otherwise suspicious. the person that sold it to me was an older japanese fellow who received it from "a friend". he knew the bridge was "worked on", but couldn't provide further details. his kijiji site has several high-end guitars for sale, so i think he's withholding information. but, like, i can't torture it out of him - it's not world war two, anymore. if he's not talking, he's not talking. and, i don't have 20s to feed him, x-files style. as the plate wood looks far newer than the top wood, i'm thinking it must have been reinforced and maybe rebuilt from the bottom. there must have been a reason for that. i don't want this to come off again, so if i'm going to bother doing it, i'm going to do it right ,with big clamps.
  4. that obvious suggestion actually helped quite a lot. thanks. i should point out it has action holes, first. this is a 1976 version (i know mine is 1971 from the serial number, 01022) here and you can see the old 60s style action screws: so, when i look through the action holes, it looks like solid wood - despite the ply-looking exterior. but, when i look through the string holes, i can see the bridge plate, what seems to be a second bridge plate as reinforcement and a third layer, in addition to the top ply. so, there's two layers of bridge plate and two layers of top....on the string holes. further, you can tell by looking at the wood that the string holes are way newer than the action holes. so, i'm left to conclude that this guitar has already had a lot of work done...and i could probably find the cut if i scraped enough... ...but i'm not going to tear that wood off, then; i still have the fibers on the bridge, and i'll be careful to sand around it before i reglue it. that means action might be a problem. what i'm going to do tonight is try to figure out what kind of shape the neck is in, before i invest in those clamps and that glue.
  5. i think you're half right. i mean, i'm not looking to sell this guitar - i want to play it. i don't really care what it's worth (and i overcarved the finish to make sure i'd get enough wood, so i don't care what it looks like, either). but, if i had somewhere to take it with people i could trust, i'd take it there. the only option i have is a long and mcquades, and i think i trust my own analysis better than theirs. on top of that, i'm expecting kind of the same reaction, which is how i ended up with it. japanese name. not recognized. therefore, budget. but, that's not actually true, and the likelihood i'll find somebody that realizes it is fairly low. so, let's ignore the price of the guitar and get back to the physics of it, which is why i came here. if the back plate is solid, and i glue it properly with good clamps, is the idea of gluing it to a lower piece of wood to keep the action down without messing with the neck a catastrophic error or merely an inadvisable risk?
  6. let me ask this: has anybody ever heard of somebody putting a plywood layer over a solid top to "protect it"?
  7. this is not a budget or factory built guitar, it's a custom built guitar from 1971. these guitars were made of solid wood, and i've seen listings for them on reverb for over $5000, although the average price is $500-$1000. there were roughly 10,000 of them made between 1970-1980. you might not have heard of takeharu, but he's as well known in japan as jimmy page would be in western europe and the united states. that said, i agree that it looks like plywood, which is what's confusing me about it. and, if the consensus is that it is plywood, then i'm left to conclude that somebody must have swapped out the top, which is making the value of trying to fix it seem dubious.. i don't think what's under the ply is more ply, though - it seems to have a single piece of wood underneath it. i tried to tune it up normally before i took the bridge off and the action was unplayable. i don't want to reset the neck, and it doesn't look warped. so, what's the worst thing that can happen if i just carve the plywood out and glue it to the piece underneath it, to try to keep the action low without messing with the neck?
  8. so, a few days ago i replied to an add for a "beginner japanese guitar" because i was looking for a deal on a hard case for another guitar of mine. $30 for a case is a good deal, right? free "beginner japanese guitar", too. score. i didn't even look at it when i was at the guy's place. i haggled him for some free picks (he didn't have anything thicker than 1 mm.) but, when i got the guitar home, i realized it's a solid body takeharu guitar built in 1971. yeah.. i know it's solid body due to the grains, and also due to the soundboard. unfortunately, the bridge was falling off and it looks like there was some repair to the cross-section underneath. but, whomever tried to glue the bridge on seems to have done so very poorly - and repeatedly. it was clear from the start that he used some kind of crazy glue, but when i got the bridge off i actually found three different types of glue on it, none of them applied very well. i'm guessing that the crazy glue was try number three, and it doesn't look like it was ever clamped. yeah. so, i'm hoping that if i just glue it back on right with the right kind of glue and a good clamp it should sit tight. the operative word is hope - this is a 50 year old guitar, and i don't know exactly what's been done to it or what's wrong with it. the guitar appears to be a martin copy with a solid spruce top with lines running parallel to the strings. but, when i took the bridge off, i took some wood with it (damned crazy glue.) and it seems to have uncovered some kind of secondary piece of wood underneath the bridge. now, i'm imagining that this was put there as reinforcement, but i don't exactly understand why. if i look carefully underneath this wood, i can see some grains running in the right direction, so i'm tempted to just rip the layer off and glue directly, even without knowing why it's there. but, i'm concerned that it might be the plate rather than the wood. if i pull my hand underneath and feel around, i'd guess that the width of the plate is too thin, and it must be the body. but, that's just intuition... i've been playing guitar for a long time, but i only do repairs when i have to, and i'd appreciate running it by somebody. what do you think - did i hit the body underneath some kind of added plate, or the plate underneath the body, as i was scraping? 1) wood peeking out: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17KKkfjqcd2tY8oXL91FO82ZykmT-XC1D/view?usp=sharing 2) soundboard: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mzLm5eLqCuJbCOB0fUw3_q9QXVhhAStU/view?usp=sharing now, if i've hit the body, i'm going to scrape the wood off and glue it flush. but, if i've hit the plate, what's the better idea here? if the logic is that this is worth saving because it's solid body, is pasting some kind of plate in going to defeat the purpose? further, if i'm concerned about action on an old guitar like this, wouldn't it be better to keep it lower and just glue it to the plate, anyways? is that structurally terrible, or just merely inadvisable?
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