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Old 03-18-2012, 11:26 AM
Alan Carruth Alan Carruth is online now
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If the objective is to hide the damage from your friends father, forget it. It's usually possible to do that, mind you, but that sort of 'museum quality' repair doesn't come cheap.

What you spend on the repair has to be predicated on the value of the instrument, but 'the value' is a more variable quantity than it might seem. If it's something that your friends father got a while ago, didn't play much, and just never got around to listing on e-bay, then the 'book' value would probably be a good guide. If it's the guitar he carried with him when he hitch hiked across the country and back four times to court your friend's mother while he was in the service it might well be irreplaceable, and your friend's best bet might be a witness protection program. Although it probably doesn't apply in this case, replacement value is another thing to consider. Sometimes the guitar that Aunt Tillie bought in her hippie days for next to nothing will turn out to be hard to replace at a reasonable price with anything new of comparable quality. Her old guitar could well be very well built of solid wood, and you might find it hard to get something that sounds and plays as nice for $400, even though the 'book' value is only $50.

So, the first thing for you to do is determine the value. Once you've done that, you can find out what it would cost to get a repair that would restore it's value to the owner. Note that it's not up to the repair guy to tell you what's worth doing, unless you've decided that the book value is the real one. His job is to tell you what it will cost to do what you want done. If he doesn't want to do it, you can find another repairman. I've seen too many instances of repairmen doing a quickie job on something that had a lot of sentimental value to the owner simply because it didn't have a big book value, which ruins the instrument for the owner, and makes life harder for the ethical repairmen.
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