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| This guitar
created a bit of a buzz among those who watch ebay for vintage
guitars when it was sold on the auction site in the spring of 2003.
A 1939 Martin D-18 is, of itself, enough to cause some chatter when
one shows up for sale. This one caused more of it's share of
groans and gasps due to what could be seen in the pictures.
Poor repairs and ill-advised "modifications' made this guitar seem a
little less attractive than it might otherwise be, especially in an
internet or long distance deal where the guitar cannot be viewed in
person by the purchaser. I watched the guitar with some
interest until the price went beyond what I was willing to risk.
Several days after the close of the auction, one of my customers
called to tell me he was bringing by the 1939 D-18 he'd just bought.
The same guitar. What was clear in
the auction pictures was that the guitar had some serious structural
problems around the vicinity of the neck/body joint. It could
be seen that the top had cracked on both sides of the fretboard all
the way from the joint to the soundhole, and that the top had sunken
in that area as well. The owner had attempted to
stabilize the area by installing several pieces of plywood in the
guitar under the fretboard extension. The stress of string
tension had badly distorted the rosette lines and had broken away
bits of the spruce between the rosette lines. It was also
evident that there were 2 non-original pickguards on the guitar, one
oversized guard in the proper location and one smaller guard (upside
down) on the bass side of the soundhole. What could not be
seen in the auction photos (but was discovered on delivery) was that
the fretboard had been replaced (poorly, and the replacement was
purpleheart) and the bridge saddle slot was badly boogered up.
It was all repairable though, as you'll see. |
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The guitar as it arrived, fresh from ebay. |
Here, the plywood that was added to the inside
in an attempt to stop the top from sinking further can be seen. |
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The full damage to the soundhole area
can be seen with the pickguards removed. You can also see what was
covered up by the pickguards, lots of top damage in the form of
grain tear out and finish loss. It is my guess that the guitar had
several pickguards removed during it's lifetime, and the top shows
the ill effects. |
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With the neck removed, the section of top
beneath the fretboard simply lifted out, it having been cracked all
the way from the block down to the soundhole. As with the top
beneath the pickguards, the top underneath the fretboard bears
evidence of past work. There was spruce loss under the fret
board from past times when the neck, fretboard or both were removed.
As a result, this piece of the top came out in several pieces. |
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After the top section was lifted out, I had to
restore the neck block to it's proper location. The top
breakage likely occurred due to failure of the joint between the top
and the dovetail block. Perhaps during a past neck reset, the
individual doing the work loosened the neck block while steaming the
neck off . When string tension was put on the guitar, the
block was able to tilt, taking the sides and top with it. Over
time, the mahogany sides assumed the new "shape" in the block area
that was due to the shift, requiring that the block and sides be
pushed back into their proper orientation before regluing. I
accomplished this by making a simple 'spreader' device from 2 pieces
of wood, some threaded rod and 2 nuts. The ides is that the
wood on either end of the rod contacts the end block and dovetail
block once inside the guitar. A simple turn of the nut nearest
the soundhole will provide outward pressure that is needed to return
the block to it's proper location. The original Martin factory
dreadnought form provides a stop for the block on the outside.
Once the neck block was pushed firmly against the inside of the
form, it was ready to reglue. There was enough top left at the
outer edgs of the block to provide adequate gluing surface in the
absence of the missing top piece. |
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The 'spreader' in action...it worked very
nicely to put the block into the proper position for gluing. |
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The block being reglued. The upper
soundhole brace also was reglued in a separate operation. As
you may have notice in the pictures, this D-18 did not have the
"popsicle" brace, the wide and flat brace the apears between the
upper soundhole brace and the block on most Martin guitars. |
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The top section that was removed had to be put
back together, having been cracked in several places. It was
placed beneath a plexiglas clamping caul and glued flat. |
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After the top
section was glued back into place, the top looked pretty much as it
had before, which was bad. Not due to the current repair, but due to
the old scars from past top work. But a lot of that would go
away when the neck was reattached and also after the rosette was
repaired. Old rosette material is not very flexible, so when
it bends and breaks it is difficult to repair well. Given that
there was a lot of old rosette damage in the area of the cracks, I
felt that the best solution was to replace the entire center ring.
Using a heat lamp (sparingly) to heat the center ring of the old
rosette, I was able to soften the old glue enough to remove the
center ring from the D-18 top without any further loss of spruce
from the area between the rosette rings. Using an old Martin
D-18 top that still had it's rosette (the rest of the guitar is long
gone) I peeled a complete rosette center ring to use as a
replacement. This allowed for a complete replacement of the
original center ring with no evidence of past breakage (as would
have been the case if the old rosette was repaired...see pic below). |
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The replacement rosette, taken from an
old D-18 top. |
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The new rosette,
now installed. After this operation was complete, I used bits
of spruce from another old top to patch in the missing small pieces
of spruce from around the rosette edges. |
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The fretboard needed to be removed as it was
non original, too thick and the wrong material. After heating
and carefully removing the board it was evident that yet again, the
previous "repairs" had done damage to the original item. In
the case of the neck, the bearing surface for the fretboard was
gouged up a bit and not flat. After flattening the neck and
reattaching the proper thickness ebony fretboard, the neck was ready
to go back on the guitar. |
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After the neck
was reattached and the bridge repaired (not detailed here, but the
saddle slot was filled with ebony and re-routed, as it had been
widened), a decision had to be made about the cosmetic damage to the
top. As I have noted, there was spruce loss, finish loss, old
adhesive and other ugliness under those pickguards. As was
true with this instrument, if you see oversized guards on any
guitar, they are usually covering up something ugly. With such
damage, there is often little to do but cover it back up if you
don't want to refinish the top or part of it. And I didn't
want to do that. After removing all the old adhesive from
previous pick guards I made several attempts to color the lighter
areas to an acceptable color to match the surrounding top. At
this point, the customer and I both hoped that a decent compromise
of color touch up would make it possible to restore the proper size
single pickguard to the top of the guitar. This turned out not
to be the outcome. After several less than satisfactory
attempts, the customer and I agreed that the best solution was to
simply make a large double pickguard and cover the color problems
and spruce tear out up again. Not my ideal solution, but a top
that has such cosmetic condition issues often leaves little
alternative short of refin. Thankfully, the guitar still sounds
thunderous even though the pickguards cover a large area. The
pickguards are cut at the soundhole to allow full view of the
restored rosette, and there is little evidence of the damage that
was previously present. |
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The material used for the pickguard is from
Deep River Vintage. It has very good color and texture, and
looks far better than most modern pickguard material.
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