Gretsch Project

This guitar was brought in by a customer who found a semi-hollow body Gretsch at Marina Park. It was in really rough shape when I first saw it: there were cracks in the headstock and on the neck. The fingerboard had separated from the neck near the nut and there was some delamination of the wood at the bottom of the lower bout on the back side.. All the hardware was still on the guitar; one of the two pickups still worked when tested and I assume the other pickup didn’t work because of the broken toggle switch.

The first thing we did was take off the bridge and tailpiece. This is when the guitar was probably still damp. We let it dry for a good few weeks before actually starting repairs.

I felt the most important thing to address was the neck. The finish on the neck was cracked was some of it had come apart from the wood itself. I needed to determine if the neck was cracked or broken in a any way. Upon some inspection, it just seemed like it was the finish and nothing else. I glued the fingerboard back into place. It looks like the fingerboard had shrank as it was shorter than the wood underneath.

The many cracks on the headstock were filled with crazy glue and epoxy for the cracks with chunks missing from it. There were also a few spots along the back binding strip that had the clear coat come right off. These were fill with epoxy as well.

The bottom of the lower bout had some wood come apart. I am not sure if this is from water or from being hit. I did glue this back together but had to sand the area as there was a hump from the wood splitting apart.

After all the high spots from the epoxy and glue were sanded down, I did my best to try to buff out the scratch marks. I still need to learn to do this correct.

While putting the hardware back on the guitar, it was obvious that the tuning machines were in the worst shape. A lot of corrosion was apparent in many spots on each tuning machine. I used so aluminium cleaner to take off the rust spots. For the most part, it worked out well.

With the hardware on, it was time to install the strings. I put a notched ruler on the fingerboard and found that the guitar had up bow. My guess is that this happened from the water the guitar body took in. With the truss rod in the loosened position, I installed the strings. There still was some up bow and it did get better but it did not get the neck straight.

My next approach was to clamp the neck to try to straighten out the neck. It only helped so much so I finally gave in on using the truss rod to straighten the neck. I could have done this to start with but I really wanted the neck wood to counter the up bow on its own. Maybe over time it will but I also don’t want to be sitting on this guitar for weeks or months.

With the neck straight, I levelled the really high frets but didn’t take off too much. There is a dip that starts in around fret 2 and straightens back out around fret 7 or 8. This caused some buzzing in around fret 4 to 7 on the higher strings. It wasn’t so bad on the lower strings but it was still there. The goal was to not file down the higher frets to make up for the dip.

Only the 3 way toggle switch was replaced as it had fallen apart. All the other electronic components were still in working order. I did give the potentiometers a good spray. A new set of knobs are installed as well.

Overall, I think this project went pretty well considering the circumstances of the guitar. I could have been worse or not even salvageable. It could use more work but it is playable at where it is.