Old Rene Gerome

Goatherd

I just received the old Rene Gerome that I posted about previously, after a long wait. Like a lot of you, I love the old European guitars. My French is not good, so chatting about the condition of an old guitar, or anything else is out of reach for me, without a translator. Google translator seems to be about the best I have found. Not that it doesn't make mistakes but, you get better at picking them out after a while. It is a big help accessing French jazz manouche websites, etc.

I had a few nail biting days when the guitar was held up in customs, but, it was pretty obviously pre-CITES and there was no problem. Also, be advised that there is no fix point of entry, so your guitar from France could enter the US in just about any major city. It will proceed from there by ground service, which is slow and could take weeks. My guitar came in through Chicago, but it could just as easily have been San Francisco, which would have added a week or so.

Like with any guitar ever bought on eBay, you just have to count on a few unpleasant surprises. If you do your own lutherie, and you don't have to earn your living by it, that's just part of the hobby and a learning experience. If you don't, you may be raiding your kid's college fund. The Gerome I just received has a sunken top, but, I was pretty much expecting that, with a little bit of hope in the back of my mind that maybe it would be an exception to the ravages of time and string pressure.

If you look at the 1940's Gerome that was sold through Djangobooks, the description notes that the top is slightly concave. The guitar still sounds great.

So my question for more experienced luthiers and players is: Is it really worth taking the back off of the guitar and doctoring the braces and top to correct this problem? It seems like it might be better to shim the bridge and see how it plays. Correcting the concave top could then be relegated to the "things I might possibly do someday" category, along with speaking better French.

Thanks for any insights you might share.

Dominik

hi Goatherd,

Are you talking of a guitar like this?



I restored that guitar. I removed the bidding on the back and popped the back and started fixing the inside. The top cracked on each sides of the neck and the braces were ALL loose. I'm in the process of sanding and cleaning the inside before closing it back. A new maple bidding will be created to replace the old one. the luthier used hide glue to build it and it's pretty common to have loose braces on those guitars. The braces are a little fine. I would have use thicker braces for sure.

If you can chime the bridge and get it right I think you just stick to it. I don't recommend to open an old guitar without any experience.

Best,

Goatherd

Nice job, Dominik. I just got the guitar a few days ago and we're getting ready for a trip, so I've just been entertaining myself a with it a bit. It's the same model as the one in your pictures, and with cracks each side of the fretboard. But, the brace is solid and the rosette is unchanged so maybe someone caught it in time.

Back before I got into neodymium magnets I used to have to take the back of a guitar more often. It's not a big deal for me except when the sound hole is too small to get my hand into. Then, reattaching the back is the tricky part. I was thinking of a way to use magnets in that operation too.

But, as you suggest, there is a lot to be said for "leaving well enough alone". Especially since everything you do to an old guitar destroys a little bit of its originality.

I actually like hide glue a lot. Some operations make me feel under the gun or racing against time, but, it's my glue of choice. The luthiers that taught me the ropes 20 years ago restored a lot of very rare, old instruments, mostly viols, so that's all they used, except on rare occasions.

By the way did you have to make a new pick guard for your guitar? Mine looks okay in the photo, but it's in a condition that you couldn't talk about in polite company.

Here's a picture: