'57-58 T-100 on the 'Bay! Blonde with binding problems!

gilded

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'57-58 T-100 on the 'Bay

http://cgi.ebay.com/VINTAGE-GUILD-T-100 ... dZViewItem

No financial interest, just thought I'd show you guys. A few issues, though:

1) Guitar stand mark on back of guitar- probably decomposing rubber that has permanently moved into finish.

2) I noticed that I can't see any thumbwheels on the bridge. I wonder if that means that the neck set is low?

3) The binding is in pretty bad shape. My luthier says that all the old Gretsch/Epi/Guild binding is starting to go, even if it's never been overheated. He says that once the binding starts to go, super glue won't hold it in place (the volatile chemical fumes won't let SG work!!). The 'temp' fix is actually white glue and it will hold for a few months to a year, then you have to do it all over again.

He currently has a really, 'minty' clean '50's X-150 in the shop. It is absolutely perfect except for the binding- it's all going to
pieces. He glued the upper body binding back on a few months ago and it's already starting to come loose again!!

The Big Problem with buying guitars like this is getting your repairman/luthier to actually do the repair. The work is very tedious, hard to do and extremely labor-intensive. The issue isn't even getting the old stuff off, it's more about putting the new stuff on and then scraping the binding level with the guitar's finish without damaging the finish.

When a guitar is being made, binding is put on before the finish is put on. Once it's glued on, the body and binding are scraped together until everything fits uniformly. Then and only then, the finish is applied. When you have to re-bind a guitar after the fact, it's becomes a real pain.

My luthier absolutely hates doing a re-binding. He told me that he would consider charging no less than $500 to rebind an old
Gretsch or Guild archtop. He rebound a bottom of the line D'Angelico (one of the plywood bodied ones from the '50's, so the binding wasn't really fancy or multi-layered) and was bit*&&^ng the whole time!!!

I believe (but am not 100% positive) that all the 'New York Guitars' in the '50's & '60's, Guilds, Gretsches and Epis (well, Epis before Gibson bought 'em), all used the same binding material; a Dupont product called Pyralin. As far as I can tell, it's all 'starting to go'. Having said that, I'm sure that there are plenty of fine old instruments from those decades that are still in great shape, but Caveat Emptor, 'let the buyer beware!

Any body got any opinions on Binding Jobs????

PS I'm going to list this on the eBay offerings list as well.
 

jp

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gilded said:
Any body got any opinions on Binding Jobs????
I've never been confident enough or tooled up to properly attempt binding myself. StewMac has a great article on it, though. It seems that many luthiers are hesitant to do it. I bet a luthier who only specializes in rebinding would do pretty well.
 

Guildmark

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The worst of the binding problem looks like it's on the edge of the fingerboard. It would almost make you want to do a neck reset (whether it needed it or not) so you could handle the binding at the same time.
 

gilded

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Guildmark said:
The worst of the binding problem looks like it's on the edge of the fingerboard. It would almost make you want to do a neck reset (whether it needed it or not) so you could handle the binding at the same time.

Man, I hear ya'. The neck does look the worst. I imagine it's all a bit bad, once you see it in person. It looks like it's a bit shrunk up in the cutaway, too.

As for specializing in binding, I dunno. That's like specializing in the most mind-numbing, mentally-exhausting work that a repair man can do, methinks.....
 
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