Guitar renovation
DEFIL Medium Guitar HS-1
I have an old DEFIL HS-1 Guitar since 70s. It was lying covered in dust because it was unplayable. It was just taking space so i decided to sell it (despite nostalgia, since I played on it in youth). Unfortunately even with drastically low price nobody wanted to buy it
.
Pic.1
By accident I came by a “DEFIL W-6 Renovation” web page http://www.gitara.positor.pl. That gave me an idea - Maybe I should try it too? It didn’t take long to decide. I should mention that the main problem in my guitar wasn’t the paintwork, it was the neck (Pic.1). Moreover - everybody that had in his hands Defil acoustic guitar and wanted to play on steel strings could experience what rod-less neck means. Just look at this picture: http://up.programosy.pl/foto/9_272.jpg. The curved neck is one issue, but the body mount is another one. In its place the glue was completely ruined.
Renovating it just to change the varnish and put it back on its shelf was kinda pointless, so i tried to find a tutorial how to install a truss rod to a finished neck. Unfortunately i found nothing. Everything that I found was about installing a truss rod to a piece of wood that was used to make a finished neck. Considering that my “box” had only nostalgic value i decided to risk installing one myself.
I started with disassembling tuning keys, frets (completely ruined), detachment of fretboard and neck from the body (I did it with an old iron - method I found online). (Pic.2)
Pic.2
And so the sanding begun. Laboriously, partly by hand and partly by a disc sander. I must’ve used a ton of sand paper, but with each day you could see more of the raw wood coming through. (Pic.3)
Pic.3
I must mention that my “box” was wounded by me when i tried to plug my guitar into an amplifier. On the photo (Pic.1) you can see that i mounted “Muza” pickup, drilling holes for knobs and output jack. I decided to fill them in, unfortunately I knew they are going to be visible. I was surprised finding out that the soundboard was solid not plywood.
Let's get back to the neck. I bought a 5mm threaded rod in a metal store and i started figuring out how to install it so it could perform its job. In my case the rod is supposed to straighten the neck by resisting string tension. So it should pass from the top part of the headstock through back side of the neck and end at the top part of heel. First I drilled out a hole in the backside of the neck 8mm depth, 125mm long and 9mm wide. Secondly carefully controlling the direction of the drill i managed to create two 4mm oblique channels; one starting from the nut and the second one from the heel to the hole i drilled earlier. It worked out! (Pic.4) Now I just needed to widen them out so the rod could snuggly fit in.
Pic.4
On the photo (Pic.5) you can see the curvature of the rod, that after adjusting will straighten out the neck.
Pic.5
The created hole I glued in with well fitted piece of wood, and sanded out to get the previous neck shape. Before the next step i tightened the rod so i could avoid any deformations.
Pic.6
Next step was fitting the neck to the body. The heel should fit in the joint, some glue should do the job right? Wrong! After cleaning out the old glue I found out that the joint so loose, even slight misake could make the neck tilt - thats what happened to adaskowy (http://up.programosy.pl/foto/10_271.jpg). I needed to create wedges that would position the neck in the right spot. Additionally I’ve added a slight slant, that will make the strings press harder on a bridge.
Pic.7
In other words I created an elevation near the heel joint. I knew that I would need to glue in another wedge under the fretboard above the 12th fret. Wedge wasn’t wider than 1mm.
Pic.8
I mentioned that the frets were unusable, so i bought a fret wire with similar size. There is a lot of information about installing the frets online. I chose installation with a drill mount before gluing the fretboard in. Radius wasn't a problem because the fretboard was flat.
Pic.9
And now it was painting time. I mentioned earlier the http://www.gitara.positor.pl site that inspired me so the paint and varnish werent a problem.
Pic.10
At first I thought I make matt, so i bought matt varnish, but unfortunately i wasn't happy about the end result. High grit sand paper would leave shiny marks on the body, and it didn't look good. So I decided to buy a drill polishing pad, and I polished it whole. I should mention that originally guitar didn't have a rosette (Pic.1). I managed to buy waterslide decal that matched my sound hole on an online auction shop. I put in after the first layer of varnish (Pic.11).
Pic.11
What’s left was to install the new tuning keys, original tailpiece, and bridge, and new steel .010 strings. (Pic.12)
Pic.12
After tuning i measured the curvature, and it was 0,25mm for the high E and 0,3mm for the low E (measured at the 6th fret after pressing the strings on the 1st and 12th fret). Action measured on the 12th fret was 1,65 for the high E and 1,95mm for the low E. Expecting changes in the stress, I won't change it for now.