I took Juliet in to the local guitar place, mostly to get there opinion on her and more importantly to have the last, bigger hole checked out. As it turns out, the hole is harmless. In fact, they both chuckled at how concerned I seemed about it but they were really nice guys so I suppose I shouldn’t complain.
And they found me some far nicer strings too. A much lighter, Phosphorus Bronze blend. They sound so much nicer than the steel strings I had on before.
Yay!
So, I’m apparently just really stupid or really careless but either way, I’m starting to think maybe I should have gone for nylon strings over steel. The steel strings were definitely too heavy and difficult to handle, which is made worse by the fact that I have short, rather weak fingers.
Which means, shopping tomorrow, finding new strings, and paying attention while I tune next time rather than drifting off plucking the D String and watching Scrubs. And buying an electric tuner which I’m in terrible need of.
Actually, I’m taking Juliet to have the last of the needed fixes looked at tomorrow. So, fingers crossed, let’s hope the prognosis is good.
Repairing Juliet actually turned out to be easier than I thought it would be, thanks to eBay and my grandpa.
As far as parts went, things were pretty cheap.
A new bridge: $9.90
New pins: $7.90
A new saddle: $2.71
A set of strings: $2.28
Which totaled to a whooping $22.79
Well, I wasn’t able to find what I thought was a suitable glue until Tuesday. I think the neighbor I was borrowing the glue from called it “Super Nano Glue” or something. Well, it wasn’t what I expected. It was dry by that evening and it did seem suitably dry. So I went ahead and put the rest of it together. Drilled holes in for the pins. Adjusted the saddle which was just a smidge too small but easily adjusted with some paper. The only real issue I had was getting the strings in. Which was my own fault because I didn’t think ahead to actually learn about doing it before I went ahead and did it.
She was playing beautifully Tuesday night. But because the strings were fresh, they were out of tune again by Wednesday night. As I was tuning, I could hear this sharp crackling noise. The bridge was ripping off of the body from the tension of the strings. Which is just a warning to really research what type of glue you’re going to use before you use it.
Well, I dashed over to Grandpa pretty fast after that, mostly for the fact that he’s stocked up on power tools and all sorts of stuff. It was really a simple fix after that. I’d never seen a guitar with it’s bridge bolted on this way, but it didn’t really effect the sound or even really alter the look much. If anything, I kind of like the bits of shiny metal now.
The only thing I couldn’t really fix were the places where the finish had been stripped off and the larger whole that had been cut into the side. A smaller one that had been located near the bottom of the body was easy to fill with a chunk of cork from a wine bottle.
And honestly, she didn’t turn out to bad if you ask me. Beautiful even if you ask me.
Honestly, there really is no way to describe what was wrong with her in words. Which is why there are pictures. Add that to the fact that I really didn’t know much about the guitar, and after a month of researching, I still haven’t learned anything, this looked like it would be a hopeless case. I didn’t figure I would be able to find parts. I knew practically nothing about guitars. And I didn’t know how my dad would react when he caught me working on it. But the pictures really do say more than my rambling does.
