1931 Martin OM-28 Restoration

Posted By on July 26, 2013

This guitar came to me from a client in Portland in terrible shape: it had numerous badly-done repairs from its past, a gloppy-looking refinishing job (probably urethane, given how hard it was to remove), as well as some replacement pieces — notably the bridge — that didn’t look even remotely original.

My task was to undo the bad, and restore it to playability with some semblance of  original appearance and material.  I refinished it (since the original finish was long, long gone) with French polished shellac, did significant structural repairs on the body, and reset the neck, along with other playability-related and cosmetic repairs.  Here’s the finished instrument:

OM-28 full frontal OM-28 iso OM-28 back OM-28 front OM-28 neck heel OM-28 soundhole det

 

…and after all that, boy, does this guitar sound amazing!

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Back off, man. I'm a luthier.

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