Restoration of a Thompson electric guitar.

 

Read from the bottom up for the sequence of restoration.

This guitar was custom built for my friend Aaron 30 years ago by Luthier Tony Thompson when he was living in Ireland. 

Aaron, the owner has developed considerable lutherie skills of his own over the years and is particularly clever at repairing anything electronic.

We discussed a course of action to correct the dimensional instability of the neck and I embarked on a considerable program of restoration, particularly of the neck which had twisted. The truss rod was also on its way out of the back of the neck near the peg head.

This Thompson guitar is a 

small body, Telecasterish design.

It is built from the usual tonewoods 

associated with an electric guitar,

maple, rosewood, etc.

Aaron tells me "the guitar plays itself"!
the first semi-automatic guitar.
I'm just glad he likes it.

The lacquered red body had multiple

large chips which I filled. I found a lacquer based nail polish in the exact same red so touch up with my airbrush was relatively straight forward.

The neck is refitted to the body after some modifications 
to the neck pocket and shimming to achieve the right 
string height.

The frets & side dot markers go in.

Building up the coats.

The tinted lacquer application.

Now for touch up and lacquer. A project like this
goes through a traumatic breaking and wrecking 
phase before it starts to look good again!

The fingerboard gets glued back in place.

The extra 1mm added to the neck width forced me to
have to bind the neck which I also achieved 
with 1.5mm maple veneer strips

I repaired the damage partially by gluing
a laminate of walnut veneer to the underside.

The finger board was damaged when I removed it

There was nothing particularly symmetrical about
this neck, particularly the position of the truss rod
slot.

Once the neck came off the strong-back
jig, it was straight and true!

Next I applied a second layer of maple veneer strips 
in the opposite direction.

I then began the process of cutting .5mm thick strips
of maple veneer, adhering them diagonally onto the neck
with Titebond glue, a very slow and exacting process!

I chose to remove the frets and fingerboard 
and to splint the neck onto a flat strong-back.