1930s Regal Diamond Head 00-Size Guitar (X-Braced)

I've worked on a bunch of old Regal Diamond Head guitars in the past, but this one came to the shop already having had some work done by another repairman. He'd rebraced the top to a scalloped, x-braced pattern, fit a new bridge, and set it up alright, but it needed a bunch of neck work to make it playable.

These are lovely-sounding guitars either in original condition or rebraced, but their necks are funky as heck. In the case of this one, the frets were basically left alone and so were dry-creeping right out of their slots. The fretboard on this is maple with celluloid veneer on it and if you want to preserve it but have to remove warp from the neck (as in the case of this guitar), you can't really remove the celluloid to plane and refret the neck as you normally would because this particular celluloid treatment uses a mix of paint and plastic and so removing it ruins the look.

Thus, I had my poor guy Ancel learn how to do this the "workaround" way -- we refret with much bigger fretwire (tall jumbos) and then level the amount of warp in the neck out of the frets themselves. This makes the frets lower in different positions but it does allow you to get good playability, somewhat stabilize the neck with the help of the beefier tang of the jumbo frets, and rescues the original look of the guitar.

It will be going home soon and I hope the owner is happy with the result. It certainly play well, now, and sounds great.