100 yr old mahogany, 61.2 scale length, parlor

[John Arnold]

A tapered fretboard or wedge under the fretboard is much more effective in lowering the action than one that is thicker all over, and it prevents the problem of making the neck too thick at the nut end.

....even worse is the height of the 'fret saddle' on these old guitars which of course results in awful intonation.

If you are saying the saddle is made from fret wire, it is a common feature on older inexpensive parlor guitars. The bridge is usually thicker than normal, to compensate for the low saddle.

[Jackknifegypsy]

I have large hands that adapt to thicker necks and wider nuts, up to 1 7/8".

(I have the typical 2" Classical that feels too wide when I switch to it,and 13/4 or lower always seems too narrow depending on the string spacing).

While the V-neck on this one is smooth to play, I wouldn't mind having another 1/4" all along the fretboard to take up some of my hand expanse.

re: thicker bridge. On this guitar I will have to replace the bridge. The old holes are getting knifed by the strings nearly 1/4" because the bridge is also giving way to the strings. As part of the new bridge I will use 'single saddles' for each string.

[Jackknifegypsy]

HHP,

Just caught that. Thanks for the reminder.

[gitnoob]

That's a cool old oak parlor -- nice marquetry! Probably Lyon and Healy.

The body rod (wire rope?) looks like an add on -- probably intended to increase tension in order to offset the compression load on the top.

I'd start by humidifying and trying to cleanly close up all the cracks before you do anything else.

The glue is probably failing elsewhere (besides the fretboard), so check for separated braces, blocks, etc.

[Jackknifegypsy]

This is a custom by T. Pettit. I think the e-bay seller may be not quite sure of anything else.


That wire/rod actually holds the neck to the guitar neck block. Remove it, and the neck comes right off after extracting a small 3/16" pin in the bottom. This is one very odd luthier, this Mr. Pettit was.

Today I got my $20.00 Regency parlor with a 30.5 cm scale length fingerboard and since I only got it for lotsa useful parts, decided to try something a bit looney.

The bouts are 3 ply, top and bottom. So I turned on the hot H2O, in the basement sanitary sink, got it really hot and filled the sound hole to the brim for about 5 minutes. (If you're interested I can tell you how much water a box that size holds in pounds of water).

And wouldn't you know it, all the layers peeled off the top and bottom like an overripe orange, one by one, so slick I once again celebrated the joys and forgiveness of Hide glue. All three layers. Though the top one was already so dried out, it is for my purposes useless, the middle one was perfect, and the bottom nearly so.

I highly recommend anyone looking to drum sand down their double top woods for their builds to ----instead of going thru what has already been done perfectly--- to consider using the "drowning guitar" method to get the layers off an old beater that they need for their build. Saves making another bushel of sawdust.

As a bonus to what I was trying to do (get that perfect 1/4" thick maple fingerboard off to replace the too thin one on the Pettit, without damage to the frets, which was done) I now have, count 'em! 4 layers of thin film 'wood' for my double top builds that I got the Nomex for.

Now I have to search the forum for how to crown frets.....a journey of a thousand miles.

John, thanks for the idea to taper the fretboard or in this case the 'thickener board' I'm using to lower the action. Works perfectly.

[gitnoob]

Just took a look at the auction. You got a killer deal on that one -- nobody knew what it was.

It's pretty clearly a hand-built small-shop guitar. Perhaps not top of the line (lower-end materials), but some nice hand-made touches.



No power-tools on this one, OK?

(You should give it to John Arnold and let him restore it.)

[Jackknifegypsy]

...to turn it over to John. I've already removed the badly cupped fingerboard, stripped off the top finish, CAed some fine top cracks, removed that ugly dysfunctional bridge, leveled the neck topside, and cut 1/4" taper-to-3/16" on the additional board I'm placing under the 1/4" fingerboard to get enough height so that i can get some decent action.

The holes in the top can be neatly covered by the new bridge because I can change the old scale length to a new one, using the Regency fingerboard.

I don't expect much in tone or volume difference since it's so small a guitar but I've been surprised before by some of the old guitars' response to some not so TLC.