1933 National Style O Resonator Guitar

This is a nice old National that a customer brought in. It came-in playing alright, but there was a bunch of fret buzz at the fretboard extension area and the saddle was very low. The neck had already been fit with a new ebony fretboard and binding, though, which was nice. I've worked on so many of these old Style Os that I always feel a bit of deja vu when they come in, but a quick check of the old blog posts reveals this to not be one that came through the shop before.

It had some decent repairs done inside but the reason for the ski-jump/fret buzz at the fretboard extension was due to the fact that the fella who tried to reset the neck in the past both didn't get the neck angle correct and also didn't recut the top of the dowel stick under the fretboard extension to allow it to "sink down" as it runs over the body. If you don't do that during the reset, the neck always gets hump-up and buzz-out in that area post-reset.

Suffice to say, re-resetting the neck and then solving all sorts of setup issues was a little involved as I had to re-do and rework a bunch of old repair jobs internally, but now that it's done-up, it's a happy camper. As a bonus, I converted/added an adjustable saddle setup (archtop-style) for the owner, who is wont to adjust his action to taste more-often than other players depending on if he's fingerpicking hard, playing slide, or whatnot. The cone also had some evidence of previous collapse (it's an original) so I wanted to give him some adjustment room in case it sinks a bit in the future (as the cones are wont to do).