This old Guild came in for some restoration work, mainly the scratch plate had been replaced with a crude wooden one and the front of the headstock was is really bad shape.
I filled the gaps in the logo and sanded the headstock back level, then it was re-finished with some lacquer and polished up.
With jobs like this the full extent of what actually needs doing doesn’t become apparent until you actually start the work, this was true with this bass. The fingerboard had started to work its way apart from the neck and needed re-gluing, one of the strap buttons had bent into the body, it had been plugged with a plastic raw plug and I removed two broken screws from the hole before I drilled and re-plugged it. There had been a re-fret at some point and either the fret ends hadn’t been finished off properly or they had started to sprout from the edge of the board, I re-dressed the ends so they feel comfortable to play. The tuners had been tighten so much that they had been bent, as well as this the nubs that hold them level in the headstock had broken off in hole, the previous owner had chosen to glue these inlace, I removed the glue, drilled a hole in the tuners had added a screw. The bridge was falling apart as all but one of the cir-clips were long since lost and the one that remained was half way up the screw, wearing the thread away, I removed this and added springs to keep the saddles in the correct place.
After making anew scratch plate the only thing left was the truss rod cover which I got my friend John Swinglehurst at Swinglehurst guitars to make for em on his CNC machine. This arrives soon and I’m looking forward to seeing this bass finished, this was a long job though and the owner was keen to get it back so here it is with that part missing.
