1992 Alvarez Yari Repair

This 1992 Alvarez Yari came into my shop a week or so ago via a local music shop I do work for on occasion. The owner of this guitar plays really hard and it shows. The first 5 frets or so were worn nearly to the fingerboard on the first string, the nut and saddle where ground so low that every strings buzzed liked crazy and he had worn deep divots into the finger board at the first few positions. Here are a few pics of the condition it showed up in, I had already removed the first fret before I realized I should take some pictures.









After removing frets 1 through 5, I used a technique in which you score the divots with a razor blade, raise the grain with a knife and fill the holes with ebony dust and CA glue. Once this was complete I was able to sand down that portion of the fingerboard and the fix is nearly invisible, and will become less visible as it begins to wear again. After that I re-fretted the first 5 frets, leveled all of the frets and re-crowned them. Next I removed the existing nut and saddle and remade them with new bone. This raised the action a bit but not much. This guitar really needs a neck reset to restore it too proper action, but that was beyond what this owner wanted to spend. After some time setting it up this thing plays great again with no buzz even when played hard. Here are a few pictures of the finished repair.







This was a fun little project and I love to restore someones baby back to playable shape again.