This old archtop arrived at my shop recently and it had seen better days. The bridge and sound board had collapsed, the back was separating, and tuning keys were shot. It had been an heirloom and in the owners family since new. They wanted it in playable condition again but didn't want to break the bank with the work.

I determined that it was fixable but was going to take some time as the back would need to come off, the sound board steamed and bent back into shape, the multiple cracks would need to be glued, new tuning keys sourced and replaced, a new bridge created, and anything else that was found after opening the guitar up.

The first order of business was to steam off the back of the guitar and see how bad it truly was. This Rex was incredibly dry with numerous cracks and splits in the wood so it was going to be a slow process.

I got lucky and the back came off in one very fragile piece. All the cracks were glued and stabilized so when returned to it's place it wouldn't continue to disintegrate.

The next step was to steam bend the sound board back into shape. Since it was so old this was going to be a long slow process to not add additional stress to the guitar top and potentially crack the thin wood. This consisted of numerous steam, clamp and wait steps to slowly bring it back to the beautiful arched shape it started with. This was a month long process by itself and gave me time to search for the replacement parts needed to bring this old guitar back to life.

While in there I also reset the neck to get the proper angle needed to make it playable, and reglued the bracing that had started to seperate due to glue failure.

New tuning keys and a bridge that could be modified to work were located during this process as well as a period correct pick guard.

The next step was to reglue the back onto the guitar and start to refinish it as needed while leaving as much of the patina as possible to show it's age yet still protect the wood. Due to the numerous cracks in the back that needed substantial gluing to correct the back needed to be completely refinished to try to hide the glue lines. The front and neck were also freshened up in the process resulting in a much better condition guitar.

Next was to make a new bone nut, install a modified bridge, install the new tuning pegs string it up and take it for a test drive.

The end result was a highly playable cool sounding old archtop that was shiny but still showed some of it's age and a very happy customer, who was afraid to hold it when it was returned to them. Another successful resurrection of a piece of history that is once again making music.