Howard Smith - Guitar Repair Specialist

Electric Photos

Pictures of some electric guitars that I have worked on and remembered to photograph - click on any picture for a closer look.

	A Gibson Les Paul with a headstock break that had been repaired before but had broken again
	The front of the same guitar after I had glued the break
	To reinforce the break, I have routed two channels in the back of the neck and glued in pieces of hard maple. This picture shows the guitar after one bit of maple was fitted.
	This shows the instrument after I had re-sprayed the front of the headstock with black and then clear cellulose lacquer.
	This shows the back of the neck of the finished repair with some new Kluson tuners fitted.
	This Patrick Eggle originally had just one volume and one tone control.
	The client wanted to have independent controls for each pickup.
	I enlarged the control cavity, fitted the new controls and made a new backplate.
	This Squier Stratocaster had a mid-gig collision with a bass.
	It was a nice clean break and I managed to repair it ready for more active service!
	An interesting story behind this one. The client didn't much care for the red metallic finish on this mexican Telecaster and wanted to see what the wood was like underneath.
	Unfortunately, the body was made up of 3 bits of wood with a cap on the back and front - not a great candidate for a natural finish
	The client decided on a new body instead and this is guitar with a new body from Axesrus.
	A few months later, I had a client asking about getting a Telecaster guitar with humbuckers put together
	A friend of mine did a great job of spraying that original Fender body and I put a guitar together with a new neck from Axesrus and some Seymour Duncan pickups that I fitted with nickel covers. Altogether a great bit of recycling!
	This custom 5 String bass fell off a stand and the body got damaged in a few places.
	The control cavity was quite deep and close to the edge of the body making that area rather weak.
	You can just make out where the break was but I made the control area solid again.
	I reinforced the bottom bout of the instrument with two maple dowels just to make sure that it wouldn't happen again.
	A good customer wanted an Esquire style guitar but couldn't find quite the right instrument off the shelf.I sourced a body from Ebay and sprayed it using cellulose aerosols from Manchester Guitar Tech.
	I applied a custom decal before some clear coats of lacquer
	A single Iron Gear pickup was selected but with a couple of different wiring options to get 3 different sounds out of the guitar
	I think the colour was Daphne Blue and with some slightly aged parts it looked great.
	This Ibanez bass got thrown under a train - apparently!
	I grafted on a new mahogany headstock with a scarf joint around the second and third fret area.
	I put a maple veneer on the front of the headstock and then sprayed this black.
	The finished bass ready for more rock and roll madness!