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Guitar Repairman Sydney and Bermagui, Bermagui (2026)

30/04/2026

The owner of this Strat brought it in because he wasn’t happy with the guitar and wanted it set up so he could sell it. Apparently it was an impulse buy when he was in the States, it’s was a nice looker and inexpensive so he grabbed it but then when he got it back found it didn’t play well and was disappointed with his purchase.
After a few adjustments and a good service the guitar played really well and the owner was so pleased he decided to keep it and left it with me to add a bone nut.
For new nuts I use camel bone blanks and make them from scratch using this brilliant little jig pictured here. It helps me find perfect string spacing every time for any width of the neck.
Whatever kind of a guitar you have, an old cheap one or an expensive new one, never underestimate what a good set up can do. Find a good tech or Luthier that can give your guitar a proper set up and service and you might well be surprised at the difference it makes.

19/04/2026

Bit of a personal tragedy, builders on our property had an accident that smashed the headstock off the vintage J45 I recently rebuilt. You can see from the pictures it was a pretty bad break, as well as snapping the headstock off it also split it into 2 pieces! (Pics 1 & 2)
I was naturally traumatised for a bit but once I had recovered decided to just get on and repair it.
The first job was to glue the two halves together then once they had dried attach the now repaired headstock onto the neck stem which you can see in pics 3 & 4.
The real challenge was going to be the cosmetics to try and make it as unnoticeable as possible, the fascia of the headstock is plain wood rather than black which would have been easier to hide the break and I had thought of making it black but decided to leave it original. I cleaned and sanded down the repair lines, drop filled all the small holes in the break with tinted lacquer, sprayed a couple of coats of clear over it, then sanded it down again and continued repeating the process until it looked as good as I could get it, it’s almost impossible to make a break like this completely invisible but all things considered I don’t think it came out too bad. (Pics 5-6)

30/01/2026

There’s always one or two unfinished projects up on the top shelf in the workshop so I’ve been endeavouring to get them completed. Some of you might remember an old MIJ 175 type body I picked up and a Greco neck I intended fitting, the body was blonde and the neck a reddy brown. I decided to strip the neck and match it to the body then added hardware , routed a P90 and electrics and finally got it completed.
Very pleased with the outcome, it not only looks great but plays really well with a nice low action, feels smooth to play and sounds great both unplugged and plugged in.

18/11/2025

That 60's Gibson Folksinger has gone from a complete deconstruction and rebuild to a new guitar. It obviously needed a complete refinish during which process I was able to save the serial number, I also had to make a new bridge which included a camel bone saddle and pins.
Quite happy with the outcome and she plays and sounds very nice.

12/11/2025

(Pic 1) This lovely old Gibson, a 1951 J45 came in for restorative work.
The top and neck had been hand painted long ago with a thick lacquer that was deadening the sound and the back of the neck had become dirty and sticky.
The bridge plate had also been badly repaired at some stage using a strip of fibre plastic glued in place, obviously an attempt at a quick fix.
The finish problem was time consuming but fairly easy to rectify, I simply flat sanded the hand painted lacquer down to the original finish and then buffed and polished the guitar which made a huge difference not only to the guitar’s appearance but a considerable improvement in it’s tone and volume.
(Pic 2) shows the piece of fibre glued onto the bridge plate, I needed to heat it enough to soften the glue thus allowing it to be removed. To do this I made a small aluminum caul matching the size of the bridge plate, drilled a couple of holes that corresponded to the bridge pin holes attached 2 lengths of wire to these, I then heated the caul and from the inside of the guitar fed the wire through the corresponding holes in the bridge so I could pull the caul up flush against the bridge plate and hold it there. Once it was heated enough to soften the glue I used my home made bridge plate remover (pic3) to pull the piece of fibre free from the bridge plate, once that was out (pic4) I repeated the operation and removed the old bridge plate (pics 5&6) you can see how it had been repaired previously with inserts but these had deteriorated over time so that the strings would have been pulling through. I made a new bridge plate out of maple and glued that in place (pic7)
The owner says the guitar sounds so good now he can’t put it down!

17/10/2025

When I see people on Facebook luthier pages recommending the owner of a guitar remove the top to repair some problem with added comments like ‘Job done’, I can say with certainty those people have never removed a top off a guitar and successfully reattached it. A guitar that’s top is firmly attached is a very difficult operation to remove with potentially considerable damage happening during the procedure. Getting the top off and doing the repairs are one thing but getting it back on is probably one of the trickiest jobs you will ever tackle. Once the top is removed, the shape of the sides naturally change so the top no longer fits, compounding that, if the guitar had binding you will have had to remove the binding to get the top off and now will need to replace that too.
The old Gibson in the last post has been no exception, getting the top back on, new binding added and the whole thing smooth and looking good all the way round has taken about a week doing one section at a time, waiting for that to dry then doing a bit more the next day, a good exercise in patience!
Anyway this one is finally done and looking quite good so I can now move onto reassembling and finishing the rest of guitar.

12/10/2025

The Gibson Folk Singer was designed for the folk singers of the mid sixties and only made for 3 years, it had a jumbo body like other Gibson acoustics but a much wider and shorter neck in keeping with the folk singers style.
A Gibson enthusiast friend of mine bought this 1966 model online, sadly as is often the case with online purchases of ‘Vintage’ guitars this one had many issues not disclosed in the sale.
The top was sinking at the sound hole and had numerous cracks, the neck had been removed by cutting the fretboard off at the body and badly reset (see pics) There were so many issues we decided the take the top off and rebuild the guitar from the ground up
A few pics of the process so far, the top and base have been repaired, cracks cleated, many loose braces reglued. I also replaced the ply wood bridge plate with a Maple one which you can see in one of the last pics. The old bridge which had been sanded down and was in poor condition I’ve removed and will replace later. The last pic shows the gluing and clamping process to get the top back on, I do this in stages as once the top is initially removed the sides warp, without a special jig it is very difficult to get it back on evenly in one go, from experience I’ve found it easier to do it in 2 or 3 stages.

21/08/2025

Many great guitars were made in Japan in the 70’s, especially the acoustic ones made by Yamaha and others, unfortunately many of them are now unplayable due to developing a high action over the years. For any other guitar a neck reset is fairly straight forward but for these MIJ guitars that solution if far from straight forward. They might be well made but unfortunately they were assembled with epoxy and not hide glue unlike most guitars made in the US. Hide glue (and wood glue like Titebond) separates easily with heat but not the case with epoxy making these guitars very difficult to take apart
Despite this fact I have been obliged to tackle quite a few over the years., the main challenge being getting the neck to separate from the body which usually results in at least some structural or cosmetic damage that has to be addressed later. All that to say, if you are thinking of attempting a reset on one of these old MIJ guitars, do go ahead but don’t be shocked if you discover some surprises!
This particular guitar, a Yamaha has been one of the most difficult I’ve had to tackle!
I started with the usual procedure of heating up the fret board end and separating it from the sound board, (Pic 1) I pulled the 15th fret and drilled down into the neck pocket (Pic 2) allowing me to heat up the joint with steam in preparation for extracting the neck and that’s when it got tricky. Despite several injections of steam into the neck pocket the neck refused to budge, then the bottom part of the heel decided to break off (Pic 3)
The neck finally did begin to move however not out of the dovetail joint but rather the entire neck block with the neck in it started to push up out of the body, the dovetail just didn’t want to let go!
I clamped the body to keep the block inside from pushing up and eventually with more heating and pushing with the neck removal jig the dovetail let go and the neck finally came out. (Pics 4-6) show the state of the dovetail and body now they’ve been separated
Once the neck was out I was able to remove the block (Pic 7) clean it up and glue the whole thing back together after which I will be able to start the process of resetting the neck..

01/08/2025

Some of you might remember a while ago the 1963 Melody Maker DC I acquired and restored. The thing I never mentioned is I made a mistake with the final clear coats. When I do a burst the yellow is usually too bright as is so I spray a couple of coats of tinted clear over it to tone it down. With this guitar I had a few tints on the bench when I mixed up the clear and accidently picked up the wrong one, resulting in a rather yucky brown tint, plus I had made the dark brown burst surround a little too broad and a little too dark. I was never very happy with it but as it was my own guitar I tried to tell myself it was fine and I could adjust to it.
Anyway after about a year of looking at it and hating it more every time I did I decided to bite the bullet and redo it.
The back was fine it was just the burst I needed to redo.
Pic1) You can see how yucky the brown tint really was
Pic 2&3) Once I got down to the original yellow I just sprayed another coat of yellow over the top.
Pic 4&5 ) I then added the brown surrounding ring of the burst making it not so wide.
Pic 6) Wet sanding
Pic 7) Buffing and polishing
Pic 8) Aahhh! Now that's much better!

26/07/2025

I have an interesting project in the shop right now, it was among a number of unfinished guitar body parts bought from a Gibson repair shop that closed down several years ago in the States, including this unfinished J45 body. It was bought as a sixties NOS (new old stock) body, the serial number stamped inside the body indicating it was made in 1962. Why it was never finished I don’t know but both Gibson and Fender sold off many unfinished guitar parts like this when closing down and moving factories, much of it going to ex employees. Some years ago I had the good fortune to find a seventies unfinished Explorer body and neck that had been sold to a worker when the Kalamazoo factory closed down in 1984

Pic 1) Along with the body I also acquired from the same person a 1970 J45 neck which will hopefully combine to make a very nice new/vintage Gibson guitar.
Pic 2) The body was quite rough and very much unfinished so my first job was to scrape the binding, sand and prep the body and spray a couple of light coats of nitro on to seal it.
Pic 3) In the 70’s Gibson started using a Mortise and Tenon joint on their acoustics rather than the standard Dovetail Joint.
They also switched to the narrower style heel and added the volute to the headstock, rather than the wide heel and smooth headstock of the 60’s.
Pics 4 & 5) This actually meant an easier job, routing the straight Mortice part of the joint into the body rather than a curved Dovetail. I used a simple jig to hold the body firmly level with the bench then clamped another jig originally designed to cut truss rod channels over it.
Pics 6 & 7) Once the channel is cut the neck is set at the right angle then glued and clamped in place.
Pic 8) Next I need to finish the ebony bridge I am making, refinish the body, add the tuners and she’ll be good to go!
Pic 9) So far so good, excited to crack on to the next stage. Updates coming soon!

26/06/2025

I still need to install the pickguard but now that I've added all the other hardware thought you might be interested to see how the whole guitar looks. The P90 is another one of JJ pickups, hand wound by Ben to as close as possible clone the original, it is spot on and sounds outstanding! The guitar itself plays beautifully and has that comfortable feel that you get with some of these old Gibsons

Guitar Repairman Sydney and Bermagui

30/04/2026

19/04/2026

30/01/2026

18/11/2025

12/11/2025

17/10/2025

12/10/2025

21/08/2025

01/08/2025

26/07/2025

26/06/2025

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