James Roadman Instrument Repair

This old Washburn Mandolin came into the shop suffering from being stored in very dry conditions.  Several braces were loose, the top was separating near the tailpiece, there was a separation in staves of the bowl, the binding and purfling were loose in several places, and several pieces of the lining had come loose.  With a little patient gluing and clamping I managed to get everything solid again.

I wanted to bring the action down a bit. Not wanting to modify the original bridge too much, and possibly going too low, I decided it would be safest to make a reproduction bridge and store the original.

For more photo click here.

A good friend of mine decided he would like  to have his G & L ASAT contoured for more comfortable playing and routed for a humbucker in the bridge position. I rounded and relieved the waist, lower bout, and the backside of the horn to facilitate playing high up the neck.  The original flat finish was a little opaque and obscured a really nice ash body but after filling the grain with a dark filler and finishing in transparent red mahogany the beauty of the wood really came through. With the addition of a custom cut pickguard and a half tele bridge it was ready to go.  This is a really nice sounding guitar with a great feel. For more photos click here.

This 50′s Martin 0-15 was flipped and played left-handed for 30+ years. An additional pick guard was added, as well as the original replaced with new guards made from Formica.  The bridge was never altered and even the nut showed little suggestion that it had been strung in reverse.  Other than securing a few cracks all that needed to be done was to removed the additional guard and restore the original one.

I was worried that the finish would be damaged under the additional pick guard and that the wood and finish may have aged differently underneath.  Luckily, other than a little pitting and finish crazing there was almost no difference.  A little heat loosened the glue and both pick guards came off with no trouble.  I used shellac to fill the pitted areas and to seal the bare wood where the original pick guard went then cut and installed a new celluloid pick guard.

This is a sweet sounding little guitar and now it is back to its right-handed configuration.

For more photos click here.

This wins the award for strangest instrument to come into the shop!  If anyone has any information please contact me.

It is designed to be played either sitting flat like a lap steel or upright like a standard guitar.  Each finger lever controls a rotating metal rod with a helical ridge that rotates.  As the rod rotates the ridge contacts the string higher up the neck changing the pitch of the string.  Each finer lever is geared to a rod with a wound spring that brings the rod back to it’s original position.

It has a single coil pickup, thumb activated volume control as well as master volume and tone knobs.

The engineering and construction of this instrument is very impressive.

It came into the shop with some mechanical and wiring issues which I was able to put right but beyond making it function I have no idea what to do with it! I made some videos of myself demonstrating how it functions. For more photos and videos click here.

I found this 1936 Gibson EH-150 on ebay a while back and have been slowly restoring it.  I got it for next to nothing, most likely because it had no hardware and no pickup. Tracking down original parts would be difficult and expensive.  It struck me as a worthwhile project to test out building a Charlie Christian style pickup and milling the  hardware from scratch.  I was lucky enough to find replica knobs from Fake 58.

My good friend Gene Warner was kind enough to record a little sample (you don’t want to hear me play it!)

For more photos of the restoration click here.

For photos of the pickup construction click here.

I’ve been working on this Gibson L-1 for quite a while.  The major damage was to the bridge area. At some point a classical bridge had been installed to cover a large hole through the top and bridge plate.  I installed a larger bridge plate to span the area, patched the top, and installed a replica of the original bridge.

I had to replace one of the braces which was cracked beyond repair and spent a great deal of time regluing the other braces. The frets required reseating and the original pickguard was reinstalled.

This is a sweet sounding vintage player. If anyone has any dating info on this guitar please let me know.

For more photos click here.

A good friend of mine is really into vintage Epiphones and came up with the idea of making a 1958 style Crestwood with 3 New York Pickups.    We used on of his Coronets as a guide and came up with this design.  The pickups are rewound hotter than normals and it has a  1-2-3-All pickup selector switch.  The majority of the parts are vintage in it has the ‘Silver Fox’ finish.

For more photos click here.

I finally finished restoring this ’61 SG.  It needed a little bit of binding repair, filling of an ill advised pickup rout, and refinishing in cherry red. Oh…. and removing Ted Nugent’s signature.

Someone decided it would be nice to rout and install for a telecaster bridge pickup.

In this shot I am working on the rout repair but you can see where the the bridge angle was reduced to accommodate a more modern lightning bolt bridge.  I moved it back to the original location and patched the hole.

for more photos click here.

Here is a repair or modification I see fairly often.  In the 50′s and 60′s Gibson offered or used  adjustable bridges on J-45s culminating in 1963 with the worst bridge design ever – a plastic bridge with adjustable saddle and a plywood bridge plate.  The plastic bridges look and sound terrible.

Replacing the bridge involves removing the bridge plate and bridge, patching the extra holes from the mounting hardware, and installing a new maple bridge plate and rosewood bridge.

For more pics click here.

This poor Les Paul Deluxe suffered the rigors of the arid New Mexico climate. The maple cap was split and pulling away form the mahogany body in several places. The owner opted to replace the mini humbuckers with vintage P-90′s and have it refinished a Gold Top.

The frets were in need of being replaced and the binding nibs had already been removed so I took the opportunity to flatten the fretboard before replacing the frets. For more photos click here.