Gibson J-200 Guitar Repair

A guy brought this guitar to me a while back. It is a Gibson J-200 made in probably the late 60’s or early 70’s.

I don’t know why these old Gibson Guitars were prone to doing this but I’ve seen it before on them. The top cracks alongside the fingerboard and the neck tension moves the whole thing back toward the bridge.

This is a nasty looking place.

 

Note how the binding is crushed.

You can see how the neck angle has gotten out of shape.

You’d think that with all these extra braces they put in these guitars they would not move. They have 2 cross braces in front of the soundhole.

We decided to remove both these braces since they didn’t appear to be doing their job.

 

Then we applied some downward pressure on the neck until the wood lined up on the edge of the soundhole.

Here is a shot of the underside of the top after we removed those 2 braces.

Here are the 2 cross braces we made and installed. We also made a couple of wood blocks an installed them for added insurance.

That looks a lot better.

I forgot to mention that we removed the pickguard for access to the top.

All in all, this job turned out pretty well.