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"Fixing" a Loose Fingerboard:

Here's a black Gibson Les Paul with a very loose fingerboard:

The guitar is so black and the binding so white, I had a bit of trouble with the contrast in the photo, but you can see how loose the board is.

Now, most of us foolish traditional types would waste precious time regluing the loose fingerboard.

Here's how to get that old guitar back on the road right away:

Just level the frets, and you're off and playing again:

Oops! Went right through the frets into the tang!

Oh, well, we'll just file the ebony down around the tang and the frets will still work. . .

Yikes, what's been living in my guitar?

ROACHES! EEEEUUUWW!!

Yep, this 1943 Martin 0-15 was home to a LOT of roaches who left their egg casings behind. The owner of the guitar was surprised when I looked inside and told him what I saw. Previous repairmen, including the fellow who installed the pickup either didn't notice, or at least didn't tell him about the previous tenants.

Here's a view with the black & white inspection camera:





All around inside the top, along the braces there are these little (empty, I hope) egg casings:




How about a nice close-up:

Yuck!

This instrument has been owned by a series of Hawaiian slack key guitarists, who live in the tropics where roaches do very well, thank you.

No real harm done here but there is a lot of staining from roach "you-know-what" and a bunch of crud to clean out where the egg casings attach. Fortunately, it appears that the roaches left town decades ago.

When the folks at Martin make a guitar, they glue the braces on the top but don't clean off every drop of glue because you can't see up in there. The roaches appear to have liked the hide glue, which, being gelatin, is food (yum.)

Here are two photos of an insect construction project:


Mud dauber wasps have started building nests in this guitar. Their building plans were not approved by the Acoustic Guitar Architectural Review Board, so the dwellings were "red tagged" and subsequently demolished. . .

Oh, all right, here's the back of the peghead:

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