Winter project - my first guitar

redrighthand

This was my first guitar - the one I learned to play on.  It's been sat around for years, most recently in my loft, and hasn't been played in a long time.

Backstory is my brother and his mate found it in a skip in Glasgow in the early 90s, smashed up. They took it home and glued it together. He left it at my parents house and after a while I learned to play on it.

It was a bugger to learn on. Fat neck, narrow string spacing and high action that I couldn't be lower. But thanks to a few lessons paid for by my dad, I persevered and learned on it. I finally bought a more modern acoustic and this became a beater - used when I didn't want to risk damaging my "proper" acoustic. Ironically the latter has long been confined to a skip, while this one lives on.

I took it abroad when at university and managed to crush it in a train door, cracking the top and dislodging one of the struts. So, using the most rudimentary equipment (a penknife, wood glue and some string) I set about reopening the scar from its previous mishap, taking the whole back off, gluing the damaged top, then glued the back back on.  Hence as you can see it's covered in wood glue and the back is not quite flush with the sides.

When I opened it up I found a message left by my bro when he'd glued it the first time. I wrote my own before putting it together again.

Anyway, the frets are rusty, one of the tuners is broken, and the crack in the top is a bit worse. But I do love that big neck, and I have a spare bridge that should help with that action. Plus all those years in a very cold or very hot loft don't seem to have done any damage. So I figured I'll give it some TLC.

I'm certainly going to sort the frets, bridge and tuners. Also thinking about talking it apart again and trying to do a slightly better job gluing it together. Not decided on that though.

Anyone ever heard of the Marizza brand before? I'd always figured it must be some cheapo 50s British brand but never really found much out.

Anyhow, will post some updates as and when I start giving it some TLC.

http://i.imgur.com/PCbYpSv.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/S08POjM.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/dz9qems.jpg http://i.imgur.com/xAeUw7N.jpg http://i.imgur.com/gvLmjGA.jpg http://i.imgur.com/yjiapWh.jpg http://i.imgur.com/RtChWVG.jpg http://i.imgur.com/a99jfrb.jpg http://i.imgur.com/F9hOa4T.jpg http://i.imgur.com/5h6UErA.jpg http://i.imgur.com/GTvkDTr.jpg http://i.imgur.com/A4bPP0Y.jpg http://i.imgur.com/2CHaBzf.jpg http://i.imgur.com/JiZp8zu.jpg

Bridgehouse

Marizza was one of the brands used by the German company Egmond.. 

redrighthand

Ok so I've started prising off some of the wood glue from my jungle repair 17 years ago - and it's not shifting easily. I'm on the verge of giving up on the idea of removing the back again - however thought I'd ask - is there a technique for melting / getting through wood glue?