Starting out

I still can't fully wrap my head around the idea that this instrument is a hundred and six years old. It survived two world wars! 

I'm aware it's not a unique instrument; it's not terribly hard to get your hands on a parlor guitar from the early 1900s, and they don't sound like the more coveted vintage instruments. Nonetheless, to me it feels special. It makes me wonder where it has been, what it has seen and who has played it.

So it's a Levin; it was made in Göteborg, Sweden by Herman Carlson Levin. It needs quite a bit of work, and I want to give it some new life. I'm not a professional Luthier/guitar tech, but I have some experience with building/restoring stringed instruments and woodworking in general. In this blog, I will describe the progress and choices I made, and the learning process behind it. 

As often, there's good news and there's bad news. Let's do the bad news first:

- There are several cracks in the top of the guitar: two major and two smaller cracks.
- The top has warped considerably: there's a valley around the soundhole and a belly behind the bridge.
- The fretboard past the 12th fret is sloping downward into the body.
- The back is separating from the body at multiple places; some of the back braces seem to have expanded and are pushing through the seam between back and sides.
- The bridge shows a gap on the backside.
- The fretboard has considerable wear in the wood at the second and third fret.
- The finish has faded in some places.


Luckily, there are some good points too:

+ The biggest relief is that the neck is straight and flat up to the 12th fret. It hasn't warped and the angle to the body seems reasonable. There are signs of a neck reset and I get the impression that it was done pretty well. Strung up it plays well with a good action at the nut. At the higher frets the intonation isn't that well though, probably due to both the bridge design and movement of the top.
+ The back is flat and doesn't have any cracks, same thing with the sides (there's one crack but it has been repaired).
+ None of the braces seem to be loose.
+ The tuners work well.

So there is some work to be done. Most important is repairing the cracks in the top. I already tried to force some moisture into the guitar by leaving a little cup with a wet sponge in the body and closing it up for a week. As expected, this didn't do much as the cracks probably have been in the top for a long time.

First thing will be removing the bridge. This is needed because one of the cracks runs beneath it, so to be able to repair it I need access to the wood under the bridge. After that I'll probably take the back off too, as it's already halfway loose and there's no binding either, making it not too difficult. Also, taking the back off will grant good access to the top and will enable me to clean the age-old dust inside!
I'm thinking of replacing the whole bridge. I don't like losing the original one, but in this case I think a new bridge (made from hard wood) with a compensated saddle would help flatten the top as well as contribute to the intonation and overall tone of the guitar.