1966 Guild Starfire III

                                                                                                                        
A High School buddy called and made arrangements to drop off his Guild Starfire Guitar that had three fairly critical issues.  It was great to hear from Dave after many years.  He was a year or so ahead of me in high school, and was the school band's upright bass player.  He also played electric bass guitar, something I'd only seen on TV before that!
The first issue was, the output jack had broken through the guitar, leaving an ugly hole in it's swath.

Yep, ugly!  He informed me that if I used a jack plate such as one for a Les Paul guitar, although the originality would be altered, he was OK with that.  I used a black steel one and it does cover the damage. (Barely)

The next issue was the plastic headstock lamination was peeling back off the headstock.

The third issue was that the strings seemed to want to wander off the fretboard towards the treble side. A closer peek showed that the strings were cocked from the string bar on the Bigsby tailpiece on the travel to the bridge.

 When I pushed the edge of the bridge to the left to align the strings straight on the fingerboard, you can just make out the strings shifting to the left on the tailpiece, trying to pull the bridge and strings to the right.  Closer inspection showed the tailpiece was aligned perfectly straight with the center of the body.  It seems over the last 47 years, the neck has shifted ever so slightly, throwing the string alignment off it's travel.  After consulting a local luthier, here in Rochester, we came to the solution of removing the tailpeice and re-aligning it slightly to the left to force the string pull to be straight.  This is crucial to the proper operation of the vibrato. 

Back to the headstock lamination.  I slipped a thin knife under the plastic and began to slowly insert it under to free the rest of it from the headstock.
                                                                            

As we can see, a thin layer of wood

                                                              has remained on the plastic lamination.  I used 60 grit sandpaper to slowly remove the old wood and glue.  To make matters more critical, the Guild pearl inlay and design inlay had to be dealt with.  Patience is a virtue!                                  

Well, it did come nice and clean; wonders never cease!  I was concerned that the inlays would break away from the lamination!

After sanding, scraping, primping, and preparing, I brushed on my Titebond to both surfaces, and used the two truss rod cover holes to screw the lamination down straight, and a couple pieces of wood and 8 clamps to hold the old rippled plastic lamination down tight.  Over the years, the plastic has shrunk, peeling off the wood headstock.  The wood has remained the same size, however.  When it's all said and done, the top edge of the wood headstock will be exposed beyond the plastic lamination, ever so slightly.  The plastic has not only shrunk, but rippled, making it harder to straighten and glue flat. 

Today, I squirted more glue along the bottom of the lamination and worked it in with a razor blade and clamped. 

Remember the ugly hole?

BEFORE

AFTER

Well, today all the clamps came off and we got her cleaned up.  I couldn't wait to find out how my tailpiece alignment turned out.  This was the first time I strung it up since she came in.  The re-alignment worked great.  The strings are nice and straight over both pickups poles and much straighter along the fingerboard.  I put D'Addario Jazz Light Flatwounds 11-50.

 

http://www.gimmesound.com/BuckyGelo/index.cfm

Above's a link to listen to the test drive of the 1966 Guild Starfire III

The song's called Four Handed Guild.