Gibson L-4 (1946)
There is nothing that I enjoy more than working on old Gibson guitars…. Glutton for punishment, maybe but because Gibson Guitars originated in my neck of the woods (Michigan) my personal curiosity is always very high for these very cool old guitars.
This 1946 Gibson L-4 was brought to us by a family member to the original owner with the idea being to have it fixed up and made playable once again as a gift AND a very cool thing to do!
When the guitar was first dropped off here at the Lenawee Lutherie shop it was marginally in need of a neck reset with the neck angle becoming over time under-set and the bridge was already all the way down. The frets were toast with the frets on the extension having seriously corroded from the nitrocellulose pick guard which was also self-destructing seemingly before our eyes. Any metal part in proximity of the pick guard showed a great deal of corrosion and the guitar’s black finish under the pick guard was also being eaten away from the outgassing of the pick guard.
The nut, possibly the original but I can’t say for sure but it did have finish on the sides which was and remains a standard practice for Gibson was also in need of replacement.
Here are some pictures of how this guitar appeared upon arrival….
Original HSC, tweed - the real deal!
Anyone else remember these straps...
This guitar still belongs to the original owner who purchased it new in 1946 and still has the receipt - he paid $155.00 for it!
On second thought this may have been a replacement nut in so much as I can see where the finish was scored in this picture.
Of interest to me was how deeply set this nut was with very little of the nut top proud of the fret board or the head plate. Getting it out was not all that fun either but now a month later it’s funny how one tends to remember the positive experiences and not so much the things that were overly difficult….
The fret board, BRW, was also very interesting at least to me. It seems that back in the day Gibson used a wire wheel as standard practice for shaping the fret boards. Of particular interest, and I was warned in advance of this, was the practice of using the wheel to take down the bindings on the edge of the fret board and perhaps go a bit too far creating plateaus that the fret is seated in/upon with radical scalloping between the frets at the edge of the board. Where this becomes important is that any efforts to level the board needs to preserve these plateaus for the frets to sit in/upon or the fret wire will end up having a dramatically increasing radius near the ends of the frets. This would be very difficult to play (and fret) and just keeping the fret ends down would be pretty difficult too.
Here is a shot of the results of the wire wheel and if you also notice in the photo above you can see deep scratches from the wire wheel. The photo below shows the plateaus preserved and the new frets installed and before getting final sanding and polish. Again had the plateaus been sanded off in the leveling process it would have basically ruined this guitar in terms of playability….
Before we go any further in describing this repair/restoration project what was decided as the plan for this guitar was as follows. First - make it playable for the original owner. This meant refretting the guitar, replacing the original, deteriorating pick guard with something function but not necessarily an exact replica, preserving all original parts even if they are no longer on the guitar, replacing the tuner buttons that had already been partially replaced but were cracking, shrunken, discolored, etc., and dealing with the under-set neck angle and possibly avoiding the need for an invasive neck reset at this time. In addition, the guitar was badly in need of being cleaned up, under the pick guard the finish was being eaten away from the out gassing, and most of the metal hardware was badly corroded and not even functional. The truss rod was seized and not working and needed to be repaired in place as well. The guitar had only one crack that had been professionally repaired many years ago using hot hide glue and the repair was holding fine. The binding was also coming off in numerous locations and had to be glued back in place.
Here is a picture of the original pick guard and you can see the deterioration with a hole forming above where additional layers of pick guard material was used as a spacer/stand-off to hold the guard off the guitar.
The next picture shows the underside of the pick guard and look at what the nitrocellulose had done with the out gassing to the metal screw - yes that round thing is a screw. I had to pick away carefully at this screw head until the proper sized screw driver could get a purchase on the screw slot to remove it. Lots of very detailed, time consuming work but this is also what I love about these old guitars.
It was standard practice back in the day to reinforce nitrocellulose pick guards with additional pick guard material. Here we see the pick guard stiffener delaminating from the under side of the pick guard.
As previously mentioned the hope was as per the measurements that we initially took of the guitar that a neck reset could be avoided by leveling the fret board in such a manner as to change the neck angle back to an acceptable angle. The plan was to take more material from the area of the first three frets and less from the body joint area but in any event the board needed to be leveled, freshened up, and some relief added where needed.
In the photo above the leveling process has begun, in the early stages and you can see the emphasis on the area of the first three frets. You can also see the profound dip in the middle of the neck. This guitar also had excess relief on the treble side of the board and not so much relief on the bass side - exactly what we didn’t want to see…. But with the leveling process AND a plan to correct these inconsistantcies in advance during the leveling process the board was straightened out on the treble side and relief added on the bass side.
After leveling the board it was determined that we would not need a neck reset and this is without messing with the bridge at all either.
The fret slots were cleaned out and many of them also needed to be deepened as well. Here is a shot of the guitar with it’s new frets.
Next it was time to craft a new nut from unbleached bone. I used unbleached bone for two reasons. First it tends to be harder than bleached bone, a desirable thing and second since this is an older guitar anything bright white would draw one’s eye, a bad thing….
For me nut making is something that I am getting better and better at but it has also taken much practice and many, many nuts to get to the comfort level that I currently enjoy…. My process, the way I was taught, starts with fitting the blank perfectly and then the outer string spacing. I copied the outer spacing from the original nut so as to not change the feel of the guitar for the original owner and then corrected the internal spacing as needed and man was it needed too…. I guess that back in the day Gibson did not have Stew-Mac’s string spacing ruler but surely would have benefited from it….
It takes me way too long to make a nut still but I enjoy the process provided that I am not on a deadline….
Although this picture is not very good the nut is amber in color, not white, and came out very well.
As you can also see in the picture above the tuner buttons were replaced as per the plan.
With the refret completed, new nut installed, need for a neck reset belayed, new tuner buttons installed all that was left was to make a replacement pick guard, again something functional but no attempt was made at making an exact duplicate of the original. 
Using modern materials and the original metal parts once cleaned up…. here is what we came up with. It looks rather jazzy I think!
A final set-up was done on the guitar lowering the action to make it an easy player and the guitar was cleaned up.
This guitar lives in Florida and the original owner is planning on replacing the original case. It sounds wonderful now and playes very well. There clearly is that old-time vibe going for this instrument and it was one of the most rewarding repair projects that I have had the honor of participating with to date.
