Thursday, March 21, 2013

1926 Gibson L-3 Part 3

The card in my little point-and-shoot camera gave up on me this week, taking with it several process shots.  Suffice it to say, -I added some binding around half the back, scraped it to size using single-edge razor blades, and tinted it with orange shellac to approximate the color of the existing binding. I put a little on the bare spots on the sides where the finish had flaked off too, but I didn't try to get into exhaustive lacquer repair. This guitar is almost 90 years old and it looks it.

The Stew-Mac tuners went right in the old bushings with no fuss. They seem to be made to much closer tolerances than the old ones. I introduced a beefy set of .013 -.058" medium strings, as I imagine this thing spent most of the dustbowl years strung with Black Diamond baling wire.

Here's a video of me fumbling through some period-appropriate tunes. I apologize for the sound quality. If I do this again I'll get an external microphone.

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