Why try and preserve the past? Because it's important!

     When my son +Chris Morris was 15 we found him a classic guitar. It's an old Ibanez from with a set neck and a set of hum-buckers, one of which has a coil tap. The guitar was about 20 years old when I bought it for him. It had belonged to a friend of mine named "Beaver", yes, really, "Beaver". Anyway, the guitar had been originally bought by a dude named Fred Dowdy who was in a band called "Porky and the Beans" yes that was a real band name. Beaver bought it from Fred and proceeded to drag it out every time someone was over and drinking. Countless drunks have punished this guitar throughout the years. It's a great guitar, but it's had a rough life.

     The serial number shows that she was the 5,792nd guitar built in May of 1980. That's the same month that Mt. Saint Helens erupted here in Washington state. The model is an AR-50, but it's a one off. The head stock is not painted like most of the factory guitars made that year. Someone also replaced the tailpiece with a "Bowen Handle" tremolo system. Based on this review it is apparently a decent tremolo option.

     The guitar has been kicked around and I really don't think anyone has done anything with it since I bought it from the Beav. The action is easily .250" at the 12th fret, someone has lowered the neck picup all of the way off of the mounts and the intonation is way off (someone lined up the bridge saddles - for aesthetics?)

     Someone stole a limited edition customer Taylor acoustic from me recently out of the studio. There was no sign of a forced entry, and whoever took the guitar also went through our freezer, and played my drum kit. Here's the weird part though. They left the case. If you were stealing a $3000 guitar I would expect you to take the case, but no someone took it out of the case. The only people that had access to the studio were my two adult sons but they say they don't know anything about it.

     Anyway, this prompted a short inventory and I came across Chris' guitar. I told him I would go through it and get it back into playable shape. The first order of business if the case. It is trashed. Many cases have a small cloth strap on either end that keeps the lid from flopping open all of the way. This case had those straps too, but they have long since rotted out, which allowed the lid to flop down and torque the spliced joint on the end of the case as you can see in this photo.

   
     My plan to fix the joint was to remove the old material, cut a splice out of some left over walnut, and epoxy it into place. The splice won't show because it will be behind the fake fur and padding. I thought about re-doing the case padding for him, but it looks better if it shows its age a bit. All we are doing here is making a safe place for the repaired guitar to live. Below is a photo of the splice being epoxied into the case.