Guitar Crack Repair

We provide repairs of cracks and damage to bodies or necks at our workshop on the east side of Tucson Arizona.

Guitar Cracks & Breakages

Cracks or breakages of guitars occur for several reasons. Most commonly, cracks can are caused by physical trauma or shrinkage due to humidity changes.

Acoustic Guitar Top & Back Cracks

For an acoustic guitar top or back shrinkage can frequently cause disaster. The sides of the guitar are quite rigid and will hold their shape. The joints holding the guitar top to the sides are strong and will hold the top without giving. As the top shrinks across itself, the top will find relief by cracking at its weakest and most stressed point - This often being somewhere toward the center of the top.

Headstock breakage due to shock

One of the weakest points on many guitars is at the headstock. Necks for Guitars that have an angled headstock, are traditionally made out of a single block of wood such as Mahogany, with a fingerboard glued to the top. The grain of the neck wood runs along the length of the neck. At the point where the headstock angles behind the nut, the wood grain continues its straight path. Wood is weakest across its grain and if any force is applied at the tip of the headstock, the headstock can simply snap off at this point. This is a common problem even with many expensive guitars - Electric or Acoustic.

Damage to acoustic guitar sides

A split or crack can occur to acoustic guitar sides for either reasons of extreme stress due to shrinkage of the top or back or simply through trauma of some kind.

The example pictured here is the result of an accident. The side of the guitar is caved in by the forced of an impact. Most of the wood is still attached in some way, but it is certainly in majorly poor shape.

The repair to this guitars damage is to pull the wood back out to its original position and re-glue it in place. The fact that it is a solid black color makes the repair simpler and less costly than a clear finish over natural wood grain. A caul is made that perfectly fit the inside and outside contour of the side where the damage is. After applying glue, we clamp the caul tightly and it pulls the broken wood back into it's intended position. Here you can see the cork-lined, wooden caul in place during glue drying.

After drying the caul is removed we carefully sand and smooth out the repair. At this stage, we may have to add more filler to the glued areas to ensure we can achieve a flat finish. To achieve an invisible guitar repair, any bumps cracks or holes must be completely levelled before we apply any finish.

Finally, we apply finish to the guitar to make the repair totally invisible.

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