The last of the snow will be melting in the next few days here at the shop. I finally finished the Mungus model pictured in an earlier post and delivered it to Prescott. We were both happy with the final result. 
I am most of the way done with another Mungus without the bevel on the lower bout. It has a slight bevel in the cutaway area which I find comfortable. It will be part of something call the Sonic Sitka Project. 
This was an idea of a guitar maker named Denis Merril who I met at an A.S.I.A. Symposium near St. Louis. www.guitarmaker.org. He bought a Sitka Spruce log and had 100 or so tops cut from it so that they would be relatively similar. He then distributed those tops to a bunch of builders, who will be showing the finished guitars down at the Newport Guitar Show, http://www.newportguitarfestival.com ,in Hollywood Florida April 16-18. There will be some sort of testing done with the idea being to track the guitars and listen and make notes about how the wood ages. I am fuzzy on the details but look forward to the big show which will be a first for me. The project will keep track of the guitars over the next ten years. A conclusion to be drawn at the end. It will be interesting, if you are into that sort of thing.
The path to the shop became a high speed luge track for a couple of weeks and my three boys quickly became expert.
A sad note to those of you who met, and were probably jumped on, by my dog Donkey, On February 26, he went on his last adventure down the road and was hit by a car and killed. He will be missed.
The top on this old Martin had broken under the bridge along with the bridge plate. The bridge had been shaved thinner and had holes drilled and bolts put through it. It needed a neck reset. 
The frets were worn out and loose and had a green goo on them that means that they will not stay put and need to come out and be replaced .
Besides that it had some sloppy repair work done in side at some point and there was a lot of glue and cardboard and unidentified matter inside. With all that in mind , we decided to recommend a new top. We could address all the other issues in the process. I was able to get a nice replacement from Mike Dickinson at C.F. Martin. It was Adirondack spruce, already braced and with the ro
sette done and sound hole cut out. That was a good headstart, but there was still much to do. I took off the bridge because it was loose and them steamed the neck loose and removed it. I set it up on my binding routing device and routed through the binding and into the top leaving only a little bit still connected to the kerfing.
Cutting the rest loose and removing the top I could clean up all the junk on the inside of the guitar which I wouldn’t have done through the soundhole. I fit the new top to the frame and glued it on. Then back to the binding router to get routed. I used new binding but after staining and finishing it matched the back binding pretty well.
I glued on the new bridge from C.F. Martin and then reset the neck. It ended up with nice low action and saddle height of 1/8″-3/16″. The frets came out and the fingerboard was sanded a bit. I was able to straighten the neck up nicely with compression fretting. (using oversize tang frets to wedge the slot open and straighten a bowed neck) . I made a new bone saddle and strung it with new strings and new bridge pins . I was able to save the old pickguard and put it on. It sounded great, just like an old D-28.
I found and purchased an old Vega tenor banjo with a 12″ style “M” pot with the tubaphone tone ring. We are making a 5 string neck for frequent shop visitor Jerry Corbin.
It has a repaired broken headstock and refinished sunburst. It was also retro-fitted with two Johnny Smith pickups floating from the end of the fingerboard and the pickguard. The pickguard sported two volume and two tone knobs with 1/8″ output which all work fine but are not installed very nicely. Several screw holes where there should be none or one at the most. I am looking forward to playing this though. It is getting refretted to begin with and a crack on the top glued. I don’t think the pick ups are going back on.
Stuart upgraded the mini Brian May Red Special with 3 Burns pickups with the correct switching. Tuned up to A it works with .010-.046 gauge strings.
Stuart also reset the neck on this 1955 Gretsch Country Club . Also pictured is a Fraley mandolin which belongs to Merle Johnson. It is having neck joint issues. He got it apart and cleaned up. It was not a dovetail joint but rather one where two dowels are inserted into the joint before the back got glued on. The way we chose to repair this was to put two hanger bolts in the neck , and nuts on the inside of the block , accessed through the endpin hole. Another Fraley mandolin belonging to our good friend, Danny Knicely,came in for new frets so we got a few pictures together. Danny is featured playing some of the bouzoukis I built last year on the Models page of the website here. These are both very nice sounding mandolins and Danny’s is especially loud. His top is very flexible, and is almost flat under string tension, while Merle’s arch stays much higher.
One Kay and one Epiphone which really sounded great when it was done. Both required bolts through the heel to keep it together. We then put dowels into the heel as well to provide a good purchase for the hanger bolts which will hold the neck on. 
The neck joints on these old basses, once they fail and the block is cracked, we have chosen to add hardware to repair the joint. It is cheaper than an all wood solution and is very strong. 
The only visible parts of the hardware are the 3 nuts on the inside of the block. We use a very long extension socket to tighten the nuts through the endpin hole just like on the mandolin. On the Epiphone, Stu made a new fingerboard out of Jatoba , sometimes called Brazilian Cherry, which is very hard and durable. Pictured also are a couple of Fraley mandolins which happen to come through the shop at the same time.
