Just bought my first ever acoustic guitar (a Taylor Big Baby) used on a local craiglist-equivalent for about 130$. It came in the original gigback which had only one back strap left. I decided to bike home and strap the guitar crosswise on my back… in hindsight I should have realised that the one strap could not be trusted. Anyway I biked for about 3m before the strao broke off completely and the guitar fell on the asphalt. Upon arriving home I found the damage you can see in the picture :( The tuning peg of the G string was very crooked, I pressed it back in shape and for the moment it seems relatively stable…
What do you think I should do? try to glue the piece together myself? get it done professionally? try to get a replacement headstock? thanks for any advice and condolences!
Easy fix for anyone else too, if you’re not that worried about the way it looks. Personally I’m in this category, and this is what I’d do:
Do not remove the broken piece of wood if it is not broken off already!
This crack is plenty small enough to fill with wood glue and clamp overnight.
Guitar repair is very Zen. You can’t ever really truly fuck up, because you’re starting place is fucked up. It’s just best to do what you can to not fuck up the fuck up Any more than it’s already fucked up. But if you do, that’s ok it was fucked up.
It’s very hard to get wood glue into a small gap like that. You should remove the piece to apply glue to the entire surface if possible. I just repaired a tiller on a sailboat like this. Don’t try to just get the wood glue in the gap, especially if the gap is small.
I am certified in acoustic guitar repair under a Luthier.
I would heavily advise against removing the wood.
There is still structural integrity by the machine head at the A string. Removing that structural integrity and replacing it by gluing the whole two pieces back together could lead to difficulty keeping it’s tuning down the line.
The only proof of my guitar-specific repair knowledge I can provide quickly is that I am aware of stewmac 😁 🎸
This makes no sense. Removing the piece ensures that one can cover both surfaces of the pieces with wood glue before clamping it back together to cure. The joint between the glued pieces will be stronger than the original solid piece.
Just use something like a toothpick to wedge it open just enough to get glue in there then take it out and clamp, you want to open up space to get glue in, but not enough to break it off or propagate the crack more
Yep.
You can pipe it in like a damn pastry chef. It doesn’t need to come straight from the tube you buy it in.
It’s important to get it everywhere and use it sparingly. use less than you think but you want it everywhere. Another poster suggested vacuuming out the excess which is fine to do if you’ve got a beater shop vac you don’t mind abusing 😁
Take the tuning pegs off and don’t remove the broken bit.
Wood glue joins are stronger than the wood itself. This is an easy fix and the guitar will be fine. Youtube a few videos, search a bit, but the instructions above are correct.
Source: wood-glued a snapped hollowbody neck a decade ago, been playing great, always in tune.