Here is an interesting repair that was brought to me I'm curious as to how different people at the forum would handle it. It also seques into some of our recent discussions about what work makes sense for different levels of experience or "professionalism" and in particular, when to turn down a project.
A friend (and customer - I've built him a jazz guitar) brought me a lovely old Ibanez L5 copy that he bought quite a few years ago. It is one of the so called "lawsuit" guitars (altho my understanding is that there never really were any court cases).
Anyway, the guitar is in beautiful condition with a lovely sunburst, well played but nothing wrong, except....
The body binding, top and back, is totally decomposing all the way around. The neck heel plate has some damage, but all the other binding and purfling is fine (neck, headstock, f-holes are all bound and there is multiple b-w-b purfling). The lacquer has aged to a lovely amber and is in remarkably good condition. There seems to be a separation of the back from the sides and neck heel block. The neck joint is a dovetail - its not going to come off easily.
My friend had taken this to a well known luthier and was told that it was not worth the cost of trying to repair it. He brought it to me for my opinion.
So my questions are
- would you repair this?
- how would you repair this?
- what would your expectations be?
- what would your estimate (or quotation) be?
