Broken Gitane

Graham_Fellows

I'm in a world of pain here I opened the van door and it slipped out and fell about 4 feet onto tarmac. It landed on where the soundboard joins the bottom side about 3 inches behind the bridge, which took a little chunk off the purling but doesn't look too bad considering. However what I'm worried about is that the volume isn't what it was before and the tone on the upper strings sounds quite flat. Also there's quite a bit of sympathetic vibration on other strings when playing lead, so I'll be playing something on the top strings and the bottom ones will start humming or vice versa. Gutted So have been playing a lot of electric these last few weeks.

I was thinking that some of the bracing might have come loose or moved, there's no rattling or anything that feels audibly loose if i shake it. Has anyone got any idea if that's likely to be what's wrong with it? And does anyone know someone that knows this type of guitars I could take it to to get fixed and how much it might roughly cost? Could you fix bracing without taking the whole top off, what with the tiny sound hole for access.

Any advice much appreciated.

Bob Holo

Well, if you're getting a lot of odd buzzes when you play notes and you've recently hit the top corner hard & under tension it sounds as if something might have come loose that touches the soundboard.... brace... tonebar... tailblock... lining... topseam... If you've broken the tailblock loose from the soundboard and damaged the seam between the lining & soundboard in that area and you're still cranking the top of that tailblock forward under string pressure - you might open the case to an unfortunate surprise one of these days - so loosen the strings till you get a chance to have it checked.

Any good guitar shop could look at this - it's not a gypsy jazz guitar specific thing. The only surprises might be the solid lining and the brace orientation - but anyone with experience & a mirror or camara can check it out and re-glue bracing or a tailblock/tonebar etc... if necessary. There are a lot of little tools for doing this sort of thing through a soundhole. It's tougher with a Petit Bouche, but not impossible. I mean, yeah, if it's completely FUBAR then a retop might be necessary but you're probably just looking at getting a new one at that point if it's a starter guitar for you. But it doesn't sound that bad... no large pieces of wood rattling around inside ;-) It's likely fixable.

Graham_Fellows

hey thanks a lot for your advice, much appreciated