D-35 neck reset options

[plaidseason]

A 5/16" thick bridge is already as short side as you'd want. And if it is Brazilian rosewood, replacing once a reset is actually done will cost a LOT of money. As much as it sucks, save up the $400-$600 it will take to make it right for the next 47 years. And yes, make sure you find someone who has done a few Guilds. You don't want anyone practicing on your guitar (but honestly, my guy says Guilds are not really much trickier than Martins or Gibsons, so he charges the same).

I've grumbled about this before - and I agree with your guy. A Guild neck reset shouldn't be any more of a chore than a Gibson. This has previously been discussed here and we maybe concluded that Gibsons are less likely to need a reset, but weren't any easier than Guilds.

Gibson Neck Reset - Curveballs — Haze Guitars

The last word on neck resets for a little while. We've had the theory . We've had the straightforward neck set on a Martin and we've had the Martin neck reset that fought back a little. Let's take a look at a neck reset that threw up some curveballs along the way. On a Gib

hazeguitars.com

 

[Guildedagain]

$600 I was recently quoted by a new tech in town who seems to be unphased by "It's a Guild".

I don't like any particular guitar enough to ever do this. Excessive attachment to a guitar is silly.

Speaking of value, it appears that Reverb no longer shows Sold listings

Top of the heap.

Orphans needing care currently listed as low as $430. Inflation/seller desperation is a healthy mix for those in a buying mood.

 

[Uke]

This is your guitar, and I am sure you will do what is best for you and your wallet.

I am personally adamantly opposed to "creative" neck resets. By that I mean shaving bridges, planing fingerboards, and other ways of getting an acceptable neck angle that alter the basic geometry of the guitar, and this doesn't just apply to Guilds, but ALL acoustic guitars. The fundamental reason is that once you alter the geometry of the guitar, there is no going back. Whether you shave a bridge, or plane a fingerboard, you cannot ever put the mission wood back, and it will be so for the entirety of the guitar's existence. Argument can be made that shaving a bridge will only require a new bridge to be added later, or planing a fingerboard isn't a big change, but both have their own issues. Shaving a bridge will alter the sound of the guitar by some amount, in that the string height above the fingerboard will change, which does have an effect on the "lever action" that the bridge exerts on the top. Proper string height is NOT just a matter of measuring where the straight edge meets the front edge of the bridge. Not only that, but it also has the potential for weakenging the front edge of the bridge in front of the saddle, increasing probability that the bridge will then crack. Planing a fingerboard is also an issue, as it most often requires also shaving a bridge. Planing a fingerboard in and of itself does NOT change the string angle, all you are doing is changing the clearance of the strings from the fingerboard surface; the string action is still being set by the saddle and nut, so planing a fingerboard will still require the bridge to be shaved as well. I added this edit as I thought about it more: note as well, that planing a fingerboard, as dubious as it is already, will also require removing the frets, planing the fingerboard as some incredibly precise angles, shaving the bridge, reshaping or replacing the saddle and nut, putting the frets back (more than likely, using new frets), perhaps making deeper fret slots in some fret locations, fret levelling, and fret crowning and polishing. With all that work vs. a genuine neck reset, how much money do you actually save? I'd be willing to bet, no much. In return, you end up with what is in essence, a damaged (perhaps beyond repair) guitar.

It is a fact of life that acoustic guitars, by their very design and construction will need a neck reset once enough time has passed. You can monkey around with all of these "band-aid" solution, but what you are doing is damaging the guitar and adversely impacting the value of the instrument. I can see doing some of this possibly being acceptable on some junker guitar, where the work will be more than the value of the guitar will ever be, but on any instrument worth keeping, no way.

Yes, treat the disease, not just the symptoms of the disease.

 

[Hobbesickles]

I had the neck reset on my '68 D-35 last year. I bought the guitar from the family of the original owner knowing it would need the work done. I paid $750 for the guitar to the family and then had a local luthier perform the work for $600 which included the neck reset, new saddle, new nut, new bridge pins, frets leveled and recrowned and the bridge glued back down as it was lifting. The luthier had issues with pulling the neck which resulted in finish damage around the heal. The touch up paint work is not that great but the guitar was never going to be a mint collectors piece to begin with.

I personally believe this effort was worth it for this guitar but if you are going to end up financially upside down for a guitar that you don't have any sentimental connection with then it would not be worth the trouble. As it is now, I would maybe come out even if I were to sell my D-35 as is. The '68 and early '69 D-35s are slightly different beasts from the later models because the early ones have the black headstock veneer with GUILD inlayed with M.O.P. as well as having the short pickguard.

 

[Rambozo96]

I’d go for it because I see some people sink a bit of cash into old Harmony Sovereigns for neck resets and some sinking cash to have them rebraced which I cannot imagine is very cheap. I mean those Harmony’s were budget instruments (though many still sound great) and Guild sat higher on the hierarchy of quality guitars. That and if anything it seems old Westerly Guild’s are on a slow climb in value.

 

[GC]

Take it from someone who took the shortcut and has regretted it for 50 years. At the time I was not very well versed in things like neck resets and such. I thought that the luthier was doing what luthiers do. The guitar in question was my 1966 D-40 and he concluded that I didn't have the money to spend for a reset. It was several decades later that I became more knowledgeable about acoustic guitars and started to get suspicious when I would read people saying how their D-40 was this amazing guitar with all this projection and I started to wonder why mine didn't sound anything like that. I then took it to another luthier who educated me about the sound robbing repair that I had paid for all those years before. He also filled me in on what it would cost to undo it; somewhere around what the guitar was worth. To date I have kept the D-40 in the hope that at some point I will invest the money to make it right. Knowing it is not what it should be, it sits in its' case while I play on of my other Guilds. The lesson is, have the job done right. Don't spend money on a stop gap solution.

 

[E-Type]

I'm not a fan of considering only the monetary cost-benefit of a repair. Say I pay $800 for a guitar that I love and then spend $600 getting it to play well for the next 30-40 years. So now I am in for $1,400. Now say, repaired, it would only be worth $1,100 on the market. Did I lose $300? Am I upside down on the guitar? If my goal was to flip it, then yes, but if my goal is to play it for 20 years, then no.

By that "upside down" logic, I have been upside down on every sandwich I've eaten, every movie I paid to see, every concert I went to, etc. Instead, I choose to view it as me only having to pay $300 for 20 years of enjoyment (as I can get all but $300 of what I have invested back). Is a great guitar worth that, for sure!!!

 

[kostask]

I’d go for it because I see some people sink a bit of cash into old Harmony Sovereigns for neck resets and some sinking cash to have them rebraced which I cannot imagine is very cheap. I mean those Harmony’s were budget instruments (though many still sound great) and Guild sat higher on the hierarchy of quality guitars. That and if anything it seems old Westerly Guild’s are on a slow climb in value.

While some may look at Harmony Sovereigns as "budget guitars" based on their original selling price, the materials used in those guitars are quite good, and impossible to find today. If you look at the "big" basic Harmony Sovreign H1260, you get a guitar made of all solid woods, assembled with hide glue (which nobody at the factory seemed to use anything besides copious amounts of), with a nitrocellulose finish, and lastly, a 16" wide, ONE PIECE, back of solid Honduras mahogany. Try to find a guitar with these specifications today, any you are talking a custom, which will take many, many thousands of dollars to have made, if it can be made at all. Yes, the original selling price was low, but it was not because they scrimped on materials, and by today's standards, it is a great guitar. And most of the 1960s Sovreigns did have a truss rod.

Yes, the body shape is a little offbeat, and the sound is somewhat different due to the ladder bracing pattern, but used for most kinds of music, the guitar is just fine. They used to be found all over the place at less than $400. Now, those days are long gone, but the guitar is still a fairly good value. And if it is in nice shape, can still be a usable guitar ( it will probably need a neck reset if it hasn't been done yet). And, no, it doesn't need to be rebraced, unless somebody thinks that X bracing is the be all and end all of guitar bracing patterns. Just enjoy it as a guitar with a different sound, a new colour to play with in your sound palette.

 

[wileypickett]

By that "upside down" logic, I have been upside down on every sandwich I've eaten, every movie I paid to see, every concert I went to, etc. Instead, I choose to view it as me only having to pay $300 for 20 years of enjoyment (as I can get all but $300 of what I have invested back). Is a great guitar worth that, for sure!!!

I'm with you 100% on this. I've heard people say that if they're not likely to get back what they put into a guitar, they're not interested in buying it / repairing it, etc. It's as if what a guitar is for takes a back seat to its value as an object.

Yet we rarely apply such thinking to almost everything else we buy: cars, toasters, mattresses, food, washing machines, clothing, books, records -- pretty much anything you can name. Why are musical instruments different?

If we have the wherewithal to purchase a house, we cross our fingers that the market value will have increased by the time it gets sold, but there's no guarantee of that. And though some things I've bought -- some guitars, books, records, artwork -- HAVE increased in value, I never bought any of those things with the idea that they were investments I expected to pay off down the road.

I bought them for their utility, or whatever pleasure I thought they were going to give me.

 

[plaidseason]

I'm with you 100% on this. I've heard people say that if they're not likely to get back what they put into a guitar, they're not interested in buying it / repairing it, etc. It's as if what a guitar is for takes a back seat to its value as an object.

Yet we rarely apply such thinking to almost everything else we buy: cars, toasters, mattresses, food, washing machines, clothing, books, records -- pretty much anything you can name. Why are musical instruments different?

If we have the wherewithal to purchase a house, we cross our fingers that the market value will have increased by the time it gets sold, but there's no guarantee of that. And though some things I've bought -- some guitars, books, records, artwork -- HAVE increased in value, I never bought any of those things with the idea that they were investments I expected to pay off down the road.

I bought them for their utility, or whatever pleasure I thought they were going to give me.

Exactly!

Recently someone I know found very rough around the edges 1950s J200 for somewhere around $2500. He then put another $1200+ bucks into it. It is magnificent. And even more magnificent is that he paid less than $4000 for a now beautiful vintage J200, when a reissue of a 50s J200 will cost over $6000.

 

[Br1ck]

Anyone looking at an old Guild from the perspective of dollars and cents is missing the point entirely. Sure, buy a late 80s guitar for the same money you'd pay to fix a seventies. Not to slag on 80s Guilds, but to my ears I've liked and have gladly paid for my 70 D 35 to be fixed, NOS Brazilian bridge and all. Eight years later I'm about even financially, but that was never a concern, but I won't pretend I don't like it.