New pick guard for the old L-5

[Howard Emerson]

As is typical with many old floating pickguards made of celluloid, the pick guard on my 1930 TGL-5 started to decompose, and the out-gassing causes metal parts near the scene of the crime to react badly.

I found a half finished pick guard on eBay, and aside from the binding on the back needing to be scraped flush, it was ready for a new bracket block and screw hole.

Here's some pictures. The first shows the rot around the screw hole. The frets next to this area needed a bunch of cleaning with 3M pads.



The old & the new. The old one has a bunch of screw holes that I filled with shellac stick. They're from pickups that the original owner, Louis Baumann, had installed over the years. The larger holes had volume & tone pots.



The underside of the old one shows the steel rods that were installed (along the straight edge) to stiffen the plastic against warping. It doesn't work. I only added a piece of plastic to the straight edge to double the thickness.





I managed to remove the old threaded bracket block cleanly, and re-glued it to the correct location on the new pick guard.



I drilled a hole and reinserted the old screw after cleaning all the green tarnish, and it came out looking pretty good.



Best,
Howard Emerson

[Dave Richard]

Nice looking replacement guard, on a lovely old L-5!

[Sage Runner]

Nice work on that Pick guard Howard. A lot of folks could care less about having a guard on their A Top. I prefer them. I crafted a pick guard back around 1992’ for my 1930’ L-5. Sure Wish I had kept that old 16” L-5.

[Glennwillow]

The new pick guard looks great, Howard!

Nice job!

- Glenn