This Gibson A40 (1963) led a hard life in the oil patches from the jungle to the arctic. When rescued, it had cracks in the top and most way around the rim, missing pearl dots, a finger board hump at the join and with ski jump up to the nut, F style tuners with deformed lump buttons like resins, no two screws alike.....
It required work well beyond anything I’ve ever tried before. I had so many questions on how to do the repairs, and found all the answers by searching the MC site. I would not have had the guts to try to fix it, but for the excellent, and patiently passed on, advice found here. I was even able to fix some of the damage I did in the first few hours of my repair time. Boy that ultra-low-viscosity CR glue gets around!
Cracks glued and cleated, board flat, new larger frets, correct tunners... So, now it is set up as per Mr. Meldrum’s book, and plays better than it looks. The value to me was in seeing if I could do it, and I got some new hand tools. It will ship to a God Daughter who loves mandolin, has a bad one, and won’t spend a dime on herself now that she has kids. It’s loud and sounds woodier than I thought. So thank you members of the Cafe for teaching me so much and usefully occupying hours that just flew by. Maybe I’ll even build one, you never can tell. - a short clip of how it sounds.
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