Gibson LG0 Rebracing March, 2003 by Ronnie Nichols

Here’s the patient. The owner says Gibson identified this as a 1949 model, but I’ve since learned that the LG-0 wasn’t made until 1958. I’d assume this one was made around the 1960’s. It’s a nice little guitar with solid mahogany body and neck. It just doesn’t have the sound that we like to hear. This first picture shows it with the bridge and pickguard already removed. The guitar played great but just didn’t have much punch.

You can tell this guitar has been around a while. There is evidence of some previous repairs to the back.

 Here is a shot of the original braces and bridge plate. This was the common bracing in those days for this style guitar. This style bracing was used in Gibson, Kay, Harmony, and a lot of guitars. These guitars all had pretty similar bracing. We feel that these guitars are braced too heavily for a good, rich sound that bluegrass musicians prefer. The top is also about .130 inch thick. We like to see the top at about .100 inch.

So, we removed the old ladder braces and spruce bridge plate. We also thinned the top from the inside to approximately .100 to .110 inch. We left the old brace that was in front of the soundhole.

 

 

 We used some red spruce for some Martin style braces. This guitar now thinks it is a Martin since it is braced like a HD-35 Martin. We like the sound of the narrower braces like a D-35 has. All braces are approximately ¼ inch wide. They are scalloped as detailed on Martin’s blueprint. The braces are shifted forward so that the bridge contacts the x brace at the right spot. This makes the braces show at the rear of the soundhole, but we feel it helps the tone.

The bridge pin holes in the top were over size so we made some mahogany plugs to fill them. This will insure that our new set up will have a strong bridge. There is a lot of stress on this area of the guitar. We made a maple bridge plate which is also .100 inch thick. It is shaped similar to a small size Martin bridge plate. We also added some thin braces around the sound hole.

Here is the bridge plate being installed. The guitar was bellied up pretty badly around and behind the bridge prior to our repairs. The new bridge plate and bridge should help flatten the top to the desired contour.

 Here are the completed braces and bridge plate. This should dramatically change the sound of this guitar.

Here is the back after some cleanup and smoothing. We left the original cleats in it because this is a proper repair for that crack.

 The back is now clamped back onto the body.

Another shot of the clamps.

Here is the guitar after we finished. We made a rosewood bridge that closely resembles the original. We did make it a little wider than the original because these bridges tend to split apart because the bridge pins are so close to the back.

The new bridge is about 1/8 inch wider than the original. We also made a pickguard that is of thinner material than the original one. Our bridge is glued on without any screws. The screws don’t add anything to the sound in my opinion.

Since this guitar did not have binding on the back of the body, we were able to reattach the back and make it look pretty near like it did previously.  We attempted to keep it looking pretty much like it was original, although anyone who knows guitars would only have to brush across the strings to tell it wasn’t like all the rest of them. We hope this guitar will give somebody a lot of years of enjoyment.