Saving an HIH Acoustic Guitar

It just warms the cockles of my heart whenever a guitar is loved and regarded as a family member. One sweaty morning in the Age of Covid, a pleasant young man and his mom brought in two guitars in need of repairs: an HIH acoustic and a Yamaha C-80 classical. The HIH was his dad's, while the C-80 was a recent yard sale acquisition. As dad was too busy to bring in the guitars himself, mom and son decided to jointly shoulder the task. I found that very touching. Although keeping costs down was a major consideration (as always); both of them politely requested that I do my best as the HIH had "been in the family" for a long time. 

The HIH was dusty and grimy, clearly well-used; and had on five rusty strings. The major issue was, however, the unsightly crack between the neck heel and the body. In effect, the neck heel had completely separated from the body and was just held on by the fretboard. This really surprised me until I forced the crack open and found that only one measly wooden dowel and glue had been used to "join" the neck to the body. No siree, it would have cost too much to fashion a dovetail joint, so this is the path HIH chose. Way to go, HIH! To minimize cost, I suggested that the neck heel be glued back into place with Titebond III and the repaired area touched up; no refinishing would be done. They agreed, and so I proceeded with the task at hand.

The damaged area was thoroughly cleaned of any loose debris, following which Titebond III was liberally applied to surfaces to be reattached. Clamps were then applied, and any glue squeeze-out promptly wiped off with a damp rag. Two bricks in a bag were tied onto the middle of the neck with nylon rope. This was to provide sufficient downward pressure to the neck heel. The clamps and bricks were left on for some 24 hours to give the Titebond III sufficient time to cure.

Once the clamps had been removed, it was time to clean up any dried glue squeeze-out and make the repaired area presentable. After sanding and leveling this area, a diluted mix of various StewMac ColorTone liquid stains were used to tint exposed areas of wood as best I could. Finally, light coats of Tru-Oil were applied to seal everything nicely. Normally I would have refinished the areas in question; but that would have blown the repair budget out of the water.

That issue having been taken care of, it was time to replace the old grimy tuners. One of the tuner buttons was even missing. After removing the old tuners, the mounting screw holes were plugged with bamboo dowels dipped in glue. These dowels were then trimmed flush, sanded; and each sealed with a drop of super glue.

Now, as the replacement tuner posts would not fit into the old holes, a reamer was used to slowly widen them until they could. New tuner mounting holes were then drilled; and the replacement tuners installed. I must say, the HIH headstock looked a whole lot better with these new tuners.

What was left, then, was to spruce up the fretboard and frets, clean and polish the whole guitar, install a fresh set of strings, tweak the truss rod; and call it a day. Which is exactly what I did, by the way. Thus ended another thrilling episode in the life of a guitar repairman. And what of the Yamaha C-80? Well, that is a subject for another post :)