Series 1 Guitar

[ed_zeppelin]

I apologize if my post offended anyone. After decades of scraping other people's funk off fingerboards, the topic makes me shudder like being tased in the shower.
 
The reason I quoted that segment of Doug Irwin's interview was simply because it's one of the only times the topic corrosive digital effluvience has ever come up, and I thought it was rather endearing that Jerry Garcia was just like the rest of us - a point he seems to have steadfastly maintained his whole life, from what I understand.
 
I didn't mean to disparage anyone. I just thought it was amusing.

[mica]

Forest, I imagine we've both seen some crazy gunk on fingerboards. Years of sweat, skin cells, dust, smoke particulate, animal hair, spilled drinks... it can be gross for sure. But that crud does clean off, and lo! who knew there was such a nice Macassar Ebony board under there?!
 
We deal with the corrosive sweat issue regularly. It's one of the reasons that for YEARS we installed only chrome tuners on instruments, even with brass hardware. In 25 years, they still look new, while the gold usually looks bubbled if there is a reaction or it simply just wears off.  
 
With the plating, what really happens is the coating isn't 100%, there are small pores that your sweat can still penetrate. When the manufacturer does it right, chrome and gold will be be most resistant. That's because they have a substrate layer of nickel on the brass. Usually, a pore in the gold plating won't line up exactly with a pore on the nickel plating and there for your sweat will never get down to the brass and start reacting.  
 
You can't tell what the under layer is (or even if it's there) by looking at it. It's only after the brass starts corroding that you can see the result.  
 
We had a gold plater that used a copper layer under the gold. Well, that corroded pretty fast!

[ed_zeppelin]

I have one of these for each instrument: http://thestringcleaner.com/
 
I use it when putting the instrument away, and just leave it on. Then I give it a quick zip up the strings before playing. My strings stay bright a lot longer now, and I can't imagine an easier way to maintain strings.
 
By the way, I always ask the bartender or waitress if I can have a clean bar-towel or two. They're fantastic for keeping your stuff clean and spanky. And they're free. Always an attractive quality.
 
The Dopera brothers (that's how they spelled their surname) were family friends, so I got to spend a lot of time in their Dobro factory when I was a kid.  
 
Here's the Dobro Ed Dopera made as a gift to my dad:
 


 
 
Ed believed that ammonia from Uric acid was the cause of corrosion, so the earliest Dobros were made of a special corrosion resistant bell brass from Czechoslovakia, which was then plated with nickel and/or chrome. (Ed still had a stash from the 1930s he used for special instruments, like my dad's.)
 
Fingerboards were red bean wood or ebony. (Most postwar models had rosewood fingerboards.) as a finishing touch the fingerboards and armrest area of metal-bodied roundneck Dobros were given a thin coat of bowling alley wax (I kid you not).
 
If I can quit blabbering down memory lane here and get back to the topic (my wife, the Foghorn, says I should wear a sign that says: don't get me started), the crack in the fingerboard of the Series 1 guitar that this thread was ostensibly about was probably not caused by drying out, in my astoundingly humble opinion. (Though of course that could be a factor.)
 
Look at where it is: a small area in the middle of the fingerboard, only an inch or two long. Most fingerboard cracks I've seen were near the ends of the fingerboard, especially at the body end. The nut usually keeps everything together on the other end.
 
Since the only thing going on underneath that section of fingerboard is the trussrod channel (I don't know if dual truss rods were standard then) that seems a likely culprit. I'll bet somebody went; ooh, something bright and shiny! I'll just stick a socket on that sucker and crank it until I hear a cracking sound!

[mica]

I'd be surprised if the truss rod channel were involved. For one thing, the fingerboard is glued to a veneer of Walnut, so you'd have to crack a glue joint too. A crack is most common at the ends of course (though I don't think the nut helps shield against water vapor coming or going, as it's not quite THAT close to the fingerboard and it's not glued to the end).
 
I've seen cracks all over the fingerboard, starting anywhere. They will continue to grow until arrested. This one happens to be in the middle. Anyway, it's probably possible to fix it, and in the absolute worst of all cases, fingerboards can be replaced

[ed_zeppelin]

Thank you so much for taking the time to clarify.  
 
>>> I've seen cracks all over the fingerboard, starting anywhere.  
 
I saw Dan Erlewine fix one of those unexplainable fingerboard cracks in about thirty seconds, in a demo at the ASIA symposium. http://asiartisans.org/content/
 
The frets were off in that area. He squirted a thin line of superglue in the crack, delicately ran a fine file against the grain so the wood-powder (?) filled it, hit it with activator and quickly dressed the fretboard. Boom, done. You absolutely could not tell where the crack had been.
 
I love playing Guitar CGI,  trying to figure out whodunit. Maybe it's because of my name.  
 
Oh what the hey. Might as well tell you my favorite story about it. I was working at the world's largest used instrument retailer in New Hampshire during a record breaking Winter. It had been over a month since the thermometer went above zero.
 
Part of my job was RTM (return to manufacturer) and suddenly we were hit with a mountain of guitars with finish problems, especially out-of-control checking.  
 
The owner of the company was furious, because it was tens of thousands of dollars in new guitars and the companies were understandably reluctant to replace them.
 
The owner had placed his 16 year old son in charge of the warehouse, promoting the guy who had ran it for over twenty years to manager of one of the stores.
 
The owner's son had cranked the heat in the warehouse. He wanted to show his old man what a good job he was doing, so when the trucks delivered the guitars, the first thing the kid did was open the (below-zero) cases and take the guitars out to inspect them personally.
 
The owner said that he walked in just as the kid opened the case of an expensive hollowbody and pulled it out.. He said you could HEAR the finish cracking, and his son said; there it is again! What keeps causing that, dad?

[elwoodblue]

I hear that sound when I pull french bread from the oven,only then it's a sign of things properly done.
Goes to show...knowledge IS power  
 
Thanks for the story and the Dan E. tip!

[jalevinemd]

What upsets me is that (as is all too often) the seller fails to mention this little detail.  I looked at these pictures several times and didn't notice the crack until Trevor brought it to my attention. If I bought a guitar on ebay only to find out that the fingerboard needed to be replaced, I'd be pissed beyond belief. Because then you have to factor in the cost of shipping to and from Alembic, the cost of the work to be done and the fact that you'll be without your new guitar until the repair gets done. I just don't get people sometimes.