Classical Rebuild for Sue 2 Years in the Making

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Diane Kauffmds
Posts: 3246
Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2014 8:13 pm

Classical Rebuild for Sue 2 Years in the Making

Post by Diane Kauffmds »

Sue was my husband's German middle daughter; she succumbed to a long term illness almost 3 years ago. We were the same age, so she was more of a sister than a step-daughter. Sue didn't own many possessions, and traveled the world, spending years in India, Thailand, Mexico, Israel, and in Central and South America. She learned to play the sitar in India, where she played it at the Indian Capital, for foreign dignitaries. The one constant and her cherished possession was this classical guitar.

In her last writing, she willed the guitar to me. When I got it 2 years ago, it was in pretty sad shape. It never had a case. She got it in Munich, in the late 70's, used. She carried it with a strap, held on by a big fishhook. I tried to fix the top, which had 2 loose and one broken brace. The top had dished, so I humidified it and got the bridge to lay down. But, the problems continued. After 2 more braces broke, I still heard a strange sound. I found the bridge patch broken. The spruce under the bridge had rotted away.

I made a new top without knowing that classical guitar tops (at least this one), have no radius. The guitar waited while I built my other two guitars. I finally picked it back up a couple of months ago and replaced the top with engelmann spruce with a modified finger brace system that makes the top strong without over bracing it. I stripped the old, darkened, finish, which seemed to be 1/4" thick. I cleaned up the back braces, replaced the old corroded tuners with Rubner tuners with teflon bearings and replaced the bridge and fretboard. I french polished the box with shellac and finished the neck with satin polyurethane.

After the gabon ebony fretboard was slotted, I decided to do a kind of bas relief area, with a simple MOP motif. Sue made jewelry out of natural materials like MOP. I thought she'd like that little detail. The inspiration for the shape came from the shape of MaineGeezer's fretboards. I french polished the box with shellac, and used hand rub polyurethane for the neck.

My husband's other 2 daughters now call me "Guitar Momma". LOL
Sue's corrected label.jpg
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Diane Kauffmann
Country Roads Guitars
countryroadsguitars@gmail.com
Kevin Sjostrand
Posts: 3712
Joined: Sat Feb 09, 2008 8:06 pm
Location: Visalia, CA

Re: Classical Rebuild for Sue 2 Years in the Making

Post by Kevin Sjostrand »

Most excellent Diane! What a wonderful revival of an old instrument that means so much to you.
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