Official Luthiers Forum!

For some reason this thread reminded me of a guitar from the distant past. I live in a small river town, and in my youth I would wander down the railroad tracks to a point of land created by the deposition of soil washed down from where a stream valley met the river. One day I met another youth who had an old beat up guitar with multiple unglued cracks and missing pieces of wood in the top. It was a Martin size 1, and even with all the damage it sounded great. I was amazed it could be so beat but sound so good. I'm sure most people would want that guitar to have a new top, but if it were mine I don't know if would do that.
Obviously with a new instrument you don't want to sell it with known structural defects, so retopping it is probably the best option. Being the experimentalist that I am I would throw it together to see what it sounds like before I did that.

I've had instruments that fight from the beginning. Sometimes getting rid of it just feels right! Sometimes you just want to surrender. There is a battle going on.

Re-topping a violin is far easier than a guitar, unless you make 3mm wide bindings like I do; and then it's just a little easier. I could have done that on my problem child: but I chucked it.

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Why be normal?