Sylvan Music has a full featured repair shop here on the premises to take care of all your stringed instrument repair and maintainence. Our luthier Al has been building and repairing stringed instruments for over 25 years.

We do everything from a simple string change to a complete setup to a neck reset on your vintage acoustic guitar.

 

Repairing instruments always makes Albert happy!

 

Neck Re-Set

Albert has re-set scores of necks over the years. He is highly skilled at both vintage and modern instrument repair. His reputation is such that folks from all over the country send their instruments in for service.

Restoration

taking an heirloom, sentimental,or valuable instrument and bringing it back to life. Operations can includeanything from retracing, refinishing, inlay, etc... to completely rebuilding the instrument.

Replacing Tops

release fingerboard extension and steam off neck. Extract binding and purfliing, a pallet knife is then inserted between top and lining. Slowly work it around the entire instrument until they are seperated. Make a template that duplicates the shape and Dimensions of the old top. Thickness and cut the new top to shape. Rout slot for rosette, make rosette, brush glue on both, insert, make caul, and clap till rosette is pressed tightly into its new home. After drying, sand flush to top, then cut out sound hole. Make braces to original specs, glue and clamp in place according to template. Carve bracing to peak in the center. Lay top on the sides and fit braces into linings notches. Glue top on, rerout purfling and binding channel, glue them in place. Sand binding flush with top and sides. Apply finish to top and sides, sand and buff. Clean, set, and glue neck and fingerboard extension back in place. Take bridge off of old top, clean, locate, and glue on new top. String it up and perform final adjustment.

 

This bridge needed to be re-glued.
It's as good as new now.

The customer left the guitar in a car. Hopefully, never again.

 

Re-Finish

When we moved our shop to our present location, we lost our spray booth. When finish work accompanies a repair or a particular part of the guitar or the whole guitar needs to be refinished we do all the prep work, which includes sanding, taping, and sometimes taking off bridge and/or neck. We have a couple of very professional finishing masters in our town that we use to put the final touches on the instrument. Then it comes back to Sylvan and we put it back together.

Setup

It seems that we do more set-ups on stringed musical instruments than there are people in Santa Cruz. We probably average 15-25 set-ups a week. We have no clue where they all come from. It often bewilders us! A set-up is like having your car tuned up. We make sure the neck is straight, adjust your frets (which could mean tapping them in, gluing them in, or filing them down), adjust the individual slots in the nut, adjust the saddle for correct string height, and compensate saddle to the best of our ability. We also check to make sure that there are no loose nuts or screws. We check inside the guitar to make sure that everything is intact. We give the instrument a light cleaning, followed by a fresh set of strings, and we send her back home to her family!

String Change

We change strings on a variety of instruments including:
Bass violin,  Banjo,  Cello,  Dulcimer,  Mandolin,  Nylon Guitar,  Steel String Guitar,  12-String Guitar,  Violin,  etc...

Fretmill

With the strings on we adjust the truss rod so that the finger board is straight. Remove strings, remove nut, and flat file entire fingerboard. Tape off fingerboard to prevent scratches, then recrown each individual fret. Graduate sandpapers at 6 different levels and dress fret ends. Take off masking tape, clean fingerboard, apply fingerboard oil, and finish with steel wool. Restring and do final set up.

Our repair staff in all their glory!

Al shows off some licks on a repaired mandolin.

Greg putting the final touches on a repair

 

Pickup Installation

At Sylvan we install quite the variety of pick-up systems for acoustic instruments. Most of the installation procedures have similar operations. We have a flat fee for all pick-up installation, except for the Highlander because the saddle slot needs to be rerouted to create a concave base. Most of the other pick-ups need the endpin hole redrilled, a hole drilled through the saddle slot, often soldering to do, battery mounted, set-up, and final checking for balance of output.

New Saddles and Nuts

These are the two parts of the guitar that terminate the vibrating string length of your instrument. We have bone, macarta, graphite, ebony, rosewood, and a few other synthetic materials. Probably 90% of the customers that we replace these parts for prefer bone. These bone blanks come in many different sizes. Because all instruments have many sizes and shapes for their slots, these parts must be custom made to fit. We choose a part that is slightly oversized in all dimensions and then we thickness it to a perfect fit, rough file the ends till they’re flush with the fret board and for the saddle rounded to fit the slot in the bridge.
 
We then string the instrument up for the nut and measure the layout for the string spacing. Then we critically cut the slots down until the bottom of the strings rests perfectly even above the first fret. We then sand off the top of the nut till approximately half the string is resting in the slot. We then shape the nut aesthetically until we achieve the form we want. Lastly, we take sandpaper and graduate them out to 1000 grit and then off to the buffer to give it its final glow.
 
For the saddle, with the strings up to pitch, we get our measurement at the 12th fret which gives us the information we need to lower the saddle to its appropriate height. If the saddle is to be compensated, we put a pencil mark where the ‘E,’‘B’ and ‘G’ will rest. We then file the top of the saddle forward on the high ‘E’ string backward on the ‘B’ string and forward again on the ‘G’ string. The ‘D,’ ‘A’ and ‘E’ graduate towards the back of the saddle the low ‘E’ being the furthest back. We then sand the entire saddle, once again graduating sandpapers to a 1000 grit and off to the buffer it goes!