Your worst guitar accident

[Nama Ensou]

Originally Posted by frets4fun

I fixed it, sorry. I meant " (inches)!
Darn Progressive lenses.

I knew what you meant just milliseconds after my shock, but just had to have some fun with it.

[1Charlie]

A buddy of mine was headed to a gig on foot, carrying his Taylor in a gig bag strapped to his back. Somehow, he failed to navigate a curb, lost his balance and fell right on the guitar.

He showed me the irreparable splinters. I will never, ever carry a decent guitar in a gig bag as a result of his misfortune.

[ed62]

Originally Posted by Bob Womack

I was playing my second acoustic guitar, a '72 Slivertone grand concert, while seated on a swivel chair. I rotated the chair and THUMP! the lower bout hit a padded couch nearby. I looked down, no nicks or cracks, we've got to be okay. But the next time I strummed a full chord there was a reedy buzz resonating along with the chord. I was devastated.

I asked my father to take a look. Besides being a quiet genius (160 IQ), an engineer, and an avocational woodworker, he was pretty much a Renaissance man, a multi-discipline type person. He looked it over and by tapping we figured out that a brace had come loose. Not being luthiers, we didn't have a brace clamp. What to do. He sat looking at it for a while and said, "I can fix this." He assembled a mirror, a flashlight, a syringe, a long, thick hypodermic needle, wood glue, a scrap of wood, a smallish flat paperweight, and a stack of encyclopedias. We dropped off the string tension.

Using the mirror and flexing the top he found the disconnected portion of the brace and injected some wood glue between it and the top. He gently wedged the wood scrap between the glued brace and back bracing of the guitar. Then he used the flashlight to highlight the affected portion of the brace from inside the guitar and placed the paperweight at the spot we had glued. Finally, he stacked encyclopedias on top of the paperweight, using the small surface area of the paperweight to concentrate the weight on the glued portion. With the mirror he checked that the excess glue was forced out of the joint and then we let it sit for a couple of days before removing the clutter.

Voile'. The brace was re-glued!

I first lap steel suffered a sadder fate. A short while after I started playing guitar I found it hanging by a bent tuning key in the window of a pawn shop. It was an early Magnatone/Dickerson covered in luscious green pearloid mother-of-toilet-seat. After I took it home on a city bus in a brown paper bag, I noticed that it had a hum and buzz, like there was a partially open wire somewhere. I spent a couple of years dreaming of being Steve Howe while suffering through this racket until i decided to pull off the pickup cover and take a peek. I removed the screws and as I pried up the cover, the ancient, brittle mother-of-toilet-seat shattered into a thousand pieces, breaking apart the decal "fingerboard" as well. Apparently the time in the pawn shop window had made the pearloid extremely brittle. It was the end for my little lap steel.

Bob

Good thing your dad wasn't a garbage man.....The outcome may have been VERY different..

[619TF]

Originally Posted by 1Charlie

A buddy of mine was headed to a gig on foot, carrying his Taylor in a gig bag strapped to his back. Somehow, he failed to navigate a curb, lost his balance and fell right on the guitar.

He showed me the irreparable splinters. I will never, ever carry a decent guitar in a gig bag as a result of his misfortune.

HIGHLY anecdotal. Maybe you'd want to just walk carefully and watch where you're going? Problem solved.

[Nama Ensou]

Originally Posted by 1Charlie

A buddy of mine was headed to a gig on foot, carrying his Taylor in a gig bag strapped to his back. Somehow, he failed to navigate a curb, lost his balance and fell right on the guitar.

He showed me the irreparable splinters. I will never, ever carry a decent guitar in a gig bag as a result of his misfortune.

Wrong bag, wrong conclusion. I've got several gig bags that offer better protection than some hard cases.

"My friend built a cabin and made his own fireplace, then burned the place to the ground. I'll never go into a building with a fireplace."

[Yale C]

When I did the first string change on my new D15 StreetMaster, I used a peg winder with a little too much depth... and I made little circle scratches on the headstock, on every peg.

I didn’t worry so much about minor scratches after that, but wow, did it hurt.

[Ed66]

I was strolling around the house a couple years ago with guitar #1 (i.e. my favorite) on a strap and wearing a wool poncho, in the Clint Eastwood style. A combination of bourbon and my not-so-nimble feet resulted in my tripping over the edge of the poncho and falling. My guitar hit on the lower bout and immediately I was worried something critical had occurred. Luckily, it was only the tiniest of cracks and was almost perfectly hidden by the purfling. I took a deep breath and made a mental note to watch my poncho usage

[Ergoetal]

I'm a fiddler. I sat on my bow. Cost me a few hundred for repairs.

[EZYPIKINS]

1986 my Guild D25M leaning against the wall in the kitchen. Daughter just learning to walk knocked it over, broke the headstock. That was a teachable moment for me. That was the day I learned what a case was for. Today ALL guitars are in the case when not being played.

[Steel and wood]

Playing my Martin on the side of the bed and without realizing, took the binding off via the corner of a bedside table.

Could have been a lot worse.

[robrick]

After a gig, a friend helped me break down. I had my Taylor 200 series in a gig bag unzipped. He picked it up, threw it over his shoulder to carry it and the guitar popped out and hit the concrete. Cracked the top off! He felt horrible, I assured him it was ok, it was my fault for not zipping the gig bag and that was why I play 200 series and not 900 series. Luthier I knew glued it back on and honestly, it played and sounded fine, you could see where there was some damage, but not unless you were up close. Such is gigging!

[NotveryGood]

Back in the seventies, I Had an Eko Ranger 6. Built like a wardrobe and about the same weight! I only knew a couple of chords but it seemed an exotic thing to do to part exchange it for an EKO Ranger 12 string. I knew nothing about detuning, string gauges, or correct pitch, only vaguely how to get a guitar in tune with itself. (Pre internet days of course!) So looking back, I probably had the heaviest of strings and no doubt "tuned" to an impossibly high key, so I blame myself not the integrity of the EKO.
Anyway, in the middle of a quiet summer night as I lay in bed there was a loud crack ,and a harplike shimmer of strings from downstairs. I couldnt work out what it was at first. However........

[Inyo]

Originally Posted by 1Charlie

A buddy of mine was headed to a gig on foot, carrying his Taylor in a gig bag strapped to his back.

Somehow, he failed to navigate a curb, lost his balance and fell right on the guitar.

He showed me the irreparable splinters. I will never, ever carry a decent guitar in a gig bag as a result of his misfortune.

Originally Posted by 619TF

HIGHLY anecdotal.

Maybe you'd want to just walk carefully and watch where you're going?

Problem solved.

HIGHLY unhelpful pontification.

Maybe you'd want to just accept that 1Charlie has a good idea.

Problem solved.

[Bridgepin]

My wife knocked my Martin D-41 off it's stand with the vacuum and that resulted in a nice dent in the top.........AAARRGG and we had a agreement if the are guitars out in my music room DON'T go in and vacuum PLEASE.....well thankfully that was the first and only dent that guitar has received.

[DungBeatle]

Not really an accident, but I left my first (cheap) steel string behind when I moved out of state. Took years to replace it.
~Bob