Workshop: The Little Things

The headstock on this Harmony-made '30s "The Prep" guitar looks pretty stock, right? Note, however, the parts-bin nickel-plated tuner ferrules for the G and high E string posts...

...and the brass plates and fresh lube.

What a lot of folks don't always see are the details of repair jobs. Where many would just pop new tuners on, I cobbled together an "appropriate" set by merging two messed-up tuners of the same make together to keep the instrument "stock."

The owner wanted something original-looking and this saved him the trouble of buying some StewMac repros at $45 or so.

The original plates (above) are rusted-out and broken in several ways. I used a slotted-headstock set from the same baseplate type and swapped all the posts back and forth until I had the set that's now on the guitar.

As you can see, however, the guitar's getting a ton of other work, too, including a double-bolt and glued neck reset, a b unch of seam repairs, and bracing repairs inside. She'll be done tomorrow!