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Martin Taylor’s guitar – ‘The Chet’ – Last Train to Hauteville
Dec 16th
Martin using the guitar to record his latest album Last Train to Hauteville
Recently I refurbished Martin Taylor’s guitar which was signed by Chet Atkins. This video shows him using it to record his latest album.
The guitar is also on two album covers:
Before I got my hands on it!
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- There it is on the cover!
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- …and again….
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- Also found this pic of Martin playing it
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- ….And this one…
I did a quick search to see if there were any pictures on the net of the guitar before I got hold of it and loads turned up. There are many videos of it being played pre-baileyfied and one of when he used it to record his latest album – Last Train to Hauteville. I will add some more pics when I can. What an honour to work on such an instrument – THANKS MARTIN!
This is the best pic I could find of the finished job
Martin Taylor’s guitar – ‘The Chet’ Part 7/10 – Removing the fretboard inlays
Nov 13th
…..Now you see them, now you don’t…..
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- A plug cutter is used to make some ebony dots
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- I drilled out the old ones by hand – that brought out a sweat I can tell you
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- Thankfully the first one came out great, so I stuck with it…..
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- The hole is filled with black super glue and the new ebony dots pressed in
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- The fretboard with all of the new dots gued in
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- The dots are installed so that they sit ‘proud’ and then trimmed flush with a chisel
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- A light sand with 320g finished them off
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- Look really close and you can see them – not bad at all
Jul 9, 2009 @ 11:48
Removing the mother of pearl inlays on Martin Taylors guitar ‘The Chet’
While I was waiting for a reply from Martin about whether or not he liked the inlay design I decided to crack on with the next bit, which was removing the old MOP dots and replacing them with ebony ones to make them ‘disappear’. Of course if you are Martin Taylor you can probably do alright without them! Most mortals need these fret position dots as markers to let us know where our fingers are but he just uses ‘The Force’……or ‘The Ears’ …as I like to call them…..The Ears are strong on this one….OB1.
I thought it would be easier and quicker to just drill them out by hand, but I did have to seriously brace myself for this one. I did the first one very carefully as the beads of sweat formed on my forehead. This one worked well so I went for it – It is best to forget at this point you are working on a virtually priceless irreplaceable instrument and just get on with it.
The drill makes a slighty tapered hole and the plug cutter does the same to the ebony dowels so they fit perfectly. The end result was pretty good – if you didn’t know they were there you wouldn’t see them. They will look even better after a coat of Lemon Oil. Success!….Now what’s next? Bring it on!…….
Martin Taylor’s guitar – ‘The Chet’ Part 6/10 – Removing the old headstock inlay
Nov 11th
….nothing to see here…..at least that is the plan…..
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- I have to remove the old inlays – preferably without touching the binding
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- My idea is to remove a strip down the centre of the headstock
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- The piece on the left will be inlaid to hide the old inlays
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- A recess is cut and the new piece is very carefully fitted into it
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- I used black glue hoping to hide any joins
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- Can you see a join? I’m getting the hang of this now!
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- I found this picture to use for the new inlay
Jun 8, 2009 @ 11:44
Replacing the inlay on Martin Taylor’s guitar signed by Chet Atkins.
Sometimes I even impress myself….I had been worrying about how I was going to remove the old inlays without leaving a horrible mess behind or wrecking the binding. I really didn’t want to get into repairing the binding as that would have meant a lot more work and it would be difficult to duplicate the colour as I didn’t have an exact match in stock.
My solution was to inlay a strip of wood down the centre of the headstock just large enough to take out the inlays. That meant I only had to fit it into the curve at the end – the sides are straight making them easy to fit.
I managed to find an almost exact match for the wood from a bit of scrap I had kicking about in the workshop. After it had been glued in and cleaned up I sprayed a coat of sealer to see what it looked like – you be the judge – do I sound smug? – good.
Now all I had to do was make and install the new inlay – Martin had told me he wanted some kind of ‘Horse inlay’ so I had a good trawl around for ideas….I didn’t want it to look naff or namby pamby so it took a long time to decide what to do. I also had the idea to recess the truss rod cover so the inlay could run into it. Then I had the problem of mounting the truss rod cover – normally you would use screws but I didn’t want to do that as it would have interfered with the inlay design, so I had a brain wave and came up with the idea of using magnets to hold it on.
In the end I went for the ‘FireHorse’ design – I could see that looking very cool made from Mother of Pearl, so I sent him a picture to see what he thought……
Martin Taylor’s guitar -‘The Chet’ Part 5/10 – making the finger rest
Nov 9th
…..for the resting of the fingers on……or ‘Ebony and Irony’
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- Pieces of ebony for making the finger rest – the top piece will become the mounting block
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- I used the bandsaw to cut out the shape (bottom piece)
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- The finished finger rest will be glued to this block then screwed into place
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- After careful fitting the screw holes were marked out
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- During the process I noticed that the neck wood was split
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- The original mounting screws had split the wood
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- No problem – very thin superglue was run into the split – an easy fix
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- A small notch was made using a file for the pickup to fit into
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- Tools used to fit the pickup (top) to the finger rest (bottom)
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- Epoxy glue is mixed with a drop of black dye
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- A spring clip holds the parts together while the glue dries
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- I just couldn’t wait to see what it looked like in place
Jun 7, 2009 @ 11:39
Work continues on Martin Taylor’s guitar….The finger rest is made from two pieces of ebony – one for the mounting block and one for the finger rest itself. This guitar had an unusual recess on the neck, to house the mounting block, so extra care had to be taken to make sure it was a good fit. This makes the rest much more solid – I might try that myself in future.
Whilst working I noticed a small split in the neck where the old screws had separated the wood. Super glue comes in several different thicknesses – I used the runniest – it is great for this sort of thing as it penetrates deep into the crack for an instant fix.
After that it was fairly straight forward to fit the pickup. A small recess was cut into the rest before gluing it on with epoxy. The mounting block was also attached with the same glue.
To finish I sanded the whole thing to 1500g before polishing it on the buffer.
Martin Taylor’s guitar – ‘The Chet’ Part 4/10 – Making the new bridge
Nov 7th
Making an ebony bridge for Martin Taylor’s guitar
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- The larger piece is what I will use to make the new bridge
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- I cut out the shape roughly on the bandsaw
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- Using the old bridge to mark the new mounting holes
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- The bridge mounting holes have to be drilled very accurately
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- the new bridge piece is marked out for carving
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- the old bridge at the top has a plastic saddle – good riddance to that!
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- The bridge piece is finished by adding the string slots
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- The ebony is finally polished to a high sheen
Jul 6, 2009 @ 11:36
Back in my comfort zone after making the celtic knots in the last part – can’t wait to see what it looks and sounds like.
The old bridge had a pieze pickup under the saddle which Martin wanted to have removed and replaced with an all ebony one. I decided to keep the base of the old one as it was already made from ebony and there was nothing wrong with it. All I had to do was make a new saddle piece.
The blank was roughly cut to size and then I used the old bridge to mark the mounting holes. After that the bridge was shaped and sanded to 1500g before finally being polished….
