Repairs & Restorations
Instruments of historical importance & sentimental value.
Below you will find some of the most demanding repairs that have been carried out at the S. Miltiadou workshop. It is important to mention that some of these instruments had their own personal history engraved in the memory of the younger owners. The restoration in such cases gives life to the instrument for many years and thus you pass on its history from generation to generation!
3 STRINGS OLD BOUZOUKI REPAIR
OLD ACOUSTIC GUITAR REPAIR
(Unknown build) Estimated to be around 70-80 years old
This guitar appears to have had a large scratch on the fretboard as well as a serious break in the front tailpiece – arm. Along the way it looks like the guitar sat idle for many years and almost all the parts had come loose and disconnected from each other.
To successfully repair this instrument it was deemed necessary to disconnect all parts from each other. They had to be cleaned of old glues and tapes that were probably used in an earlier restoration. This made the task even more difficult since the old shellac had to be preserved as well as the coloring beneath it. It was also particularly difficult to connect all the parts with absolute precision to restore stability and balance.
In this repair, only the frets, the upper yoke bone and the white strings were replaced. All other parts are original.
The instrument was freshened up with shellac and rust removed from all metal parts. Photographs from the repair are shown below.
OLD STERIANO LAOUTO REPAIR
Built by Kyprianou X. Evagelidou 1917
This instrument arrived in the shop almost in pieces with quite large breaks as shown below!
In this repair:
– fixed all the breaks in the body and top,
– reinstalled the head stock, pickguard and bridge that had come off.
– due to aging it was deemed necessary to disassemble all the parts of the instrument and replace the old fish glues with new ones so that the instrument can be active after the repair!
– installed a new kerfing in the body to join the back and top
– the white purfling on the top were replaced since the original ones were missing except for a few pieces.
– freshened up the shellac glazes throughout the instrument trying to retain the original aging colors as well as scratches from throughout the player’s history.
– the keys were cleaned of rust.
– new berets Photographs from the repair are shown below.
OLD ITALIAN MANDOLIN REPAIR
FRATELLI HASERMANN NAPOLI 1901
In this mandolin, the top and part of the fingerboard had sunk in from the contact neck-bowl area to the bridge. The braces became detached from the top over the years as they did not rest anywhere on the body perimeter. Also, this particular instrument had such a thin fingerboard where the grooves of the frets reached up to the arm, i.e. it was cut from fret to fret. It had a very large frame and as can be seen from the photos it was impossible to be operable. For the successful repair of this mandolin it was deemed necessary to replace the fingerboard with a new one of greater thickness and to get the correct inclination to have a useful final string height! Also, the first small brace bar that had been deformed needed to be replaced. To the instrument it was found necessary to add additional supports around the lip to hold the brace bar, two reinforcing braces on the sides of the hole and some of the white shells on the lid rim. The instrument was refreshed with french polishing using shellac. Photographs from the repair are shown below.
