This full body guitar repair on a Martin DCPA5 was a tricky one. Martin has totally embraced sustainable resources; HPL sides and back, Richlite fretboard, and laminate neck. However, HPL can be tough to repair, if not near impossible. Because of its hard and thin nature, it can also be brittle. When it breaks on a guitar side, it will likely be jagged and won’t tear the layers evenly; that’s what makes it so hard to repair. This particular guitar repair started out tragic, with the owner thinking the guitar was salvageable. A worship leader (also a student) came in with this, after it got knocked of the stand at service. That’s it. The guitar fell from the stand and it cracked the HPL side, peeled the back, and cracked a small strip of kerfing. There was also a bit of neck damage to the tenon, but we don’t have decent pics of that to show. That’s a lot of damage for a short fall, but common with HPL. My student was positive he was going to need a new guitar, but Mark and I were fairly sure it was fixable. See for yourself in the following pics, this Martin guitar repair turned our beautifully. You can’t even see the glue joint in the side tear, but we’d expect nothing less from our tech. Mark has been in the business a long time and it really shows in his work.
If you’re looking to have any repair work done, make sure to email us with all the details. We may ask you to send us some pics if it’s structural or cosmetic, so we can give you a better estimate of cost. Guitar repairs are usually picked-up/dropped-off once or twice a week.