Takoma PK-30 Guitar Set-up and Crack Repair (Pt 1 of 2)

In the last few weeks I've had two koa instruments on the workbench, and this one makes three!

I love koa. I want to build a koa shed on Moloka'i and build instruments there.

This is a Takoma PK-30 guitar, built in Tacoma, Washington. Takoma guitars were made there from 1997 to 2008. Fender acquired the company with plans to move production to Connecticut, but it never happened.

This particular guitar was finished on February 28, 2001. It's pretty typical - very high quality tonewoods, some striking cosmetics, and fine tone.

It's in for a minor setup and a crack repair. While working on it, I discovered the built-in preamp had an issue, and I also removed the clear pickguard per the owner's request. I'll talk about the setup and crack repair here, with the other repairs in the next post.

Here's the builder's label.

I read a post on the interwebs where someone said the sides and backs on these guitars were laminate. Uh, no. You can clearly see the koa on the inside in this shot. It's solid wood throughout.

Another 'expert' debunked.

The top is nice spruce - I believe it's Sitka. And the back and sides are fantastic flamed koa.

The headstock has a nice koa veneer. Note the shape of the truss rod cover - that 'curve' theme is carried on to the fret markers and the bridge.

A fret marker. Very nice, huh?

The bridge is really neat. It's made of rosewood, and has a cool curved shape.

The guitar plays nicely, but I noted just a touch of extra relief in the neck. I'm using a feeler gauge to measure the relief at the 8th fret here. 

You can see we have about .011 inch, or .279mm.

I can take some of that out and the guitar will play a little better in the middle of the neck.

I always mark the location of the truss rod nut before I make any adjustments so I have a reference point.

Then I loosen the nut fully and see how many turns it makes coming back up to this point before I go further. We really shouldn't be going much beyond a full turn on the nut - any more than that could over-tension the rod and break it.

On this guitar, the nut had gone about a half-turn to this mark - meaning we have plenty of adjustment left.

Here we are using a nutdriver to turn the nut...well, duh.

I got the relief down to about .004 of an inch. At this point, there were a couple points on the low E string where it was buzzing a touch, so I backed it out.

The final measurement was about .006. The nut wound up being turned just about an eighth of a turn past the original mark.

The action at the nut was nice and low and the string height at the 12th fret was about 5/64 on the bass side and maybe 4/64 on the treble - really ideal. I didn't touch the nut or the saddle at all. The guitar had been nicely set up already.

Now to repair the crack. The guitar was accidentally hit against the edge of a table. We've all done it. The hit cause a short crack on the lower bout, which you can see here.

Above this crack is a spot where the finish cracked due to the hit. You'll see more of that later.

The wood above the crack is indented a touch below the surface of the side. Usually I can gently pop a crack like this flat, but this one was very tight and immovable from the outside.

This is a good thing, because it hasn't had time to spread and open up at all.

I wasn't able to reach the crack from the inside of the guitar - my fingers fell about 3 inches shy of the area where the crack was.

So I grabbed a wood chopstick and went to work. These are the 'disposable' kind. I keep them around (unused!) for these kinds of jobs.

They're also great for poking around the internals of troubleshooting live amplifiers or radios without getting shocked.

I was able to gently push the top of the crack out level with the side.

Wipe down the area to be repaired with naptha to get any dirt, wax or oils off.

I just got this little blow gun as part of a crack repair tool kit from Stew-Mac. It comes with a super cool bit to make cleats and glue them inside an instrument. I haven't tried the cleat tool yet, but this job was a great opportunity to test the gun.

It's just the sort of blow gun you see at The Despot, except that it has a suction cup on the end.

Connect it to a compressor running about 10 psi.

On the Stew-Mac video, Dan Erlewine says that thinning Titebond a bit with water will help the glue really get into the crack.

You can see here how I brushed the glue on, then used the gun at that low pressure to get the glue into the crack.

You can see the crack here before I wiped off all of the excess glue. The glue really got into the crack. The crack was so tight I was concerned not much would get into it, but the gun really helped.

The gun is definitely a good thing to have in your...ahem...arsenal.

Obviously it's easy to wipe the excess glue off the outside of the guitar, but I wanted to take a shot at getting it off the inside. Not that anybody would see it.

So I wrapped my damp towel around the chopstick and reached in and wiped around the crack before the glue set.

Chopsticks...is there anything they can't do?

Here's the finished repair. You can see the scratch/finish chip at the top. I didn't touch that aside from polishing it.

And see the repaired crack below. It's almost invisible from a foot away - this was shot about 2 inches away. Compare this to the original picture above.

All you can see now is where the finish cracked also.  The actual crack is solid and won't move at all.  We may refinish those finish cracks in the future.

Now let's clean and oil the fingerboard.

There's a small amount of fretwear on the first couple frets, but I'm not going to level the frets at this time - the wear isn't excessive yet, and polishing the frets will take some of those marks out.

I cleaned the board with Dunlop fingerboard cleaner and prep. That stuff is fabulous. You can see the dirt that came off.

Here I am polishing the frets with my fabulous Fret Erasers. I now have grits going from 150 up to 8000 grit. They make frets look great and play very nicely.

The final touch is to oil the board.

I have this Finishing Oil you may have seen elsewhere on the blog. I really like it, but whoo boy, the lid gets badly stuck on the bottle. I've tried wiping it clean to no avail. Every time I use it I have to open the bottle with pliers!

But it's worth it. The fingerboard winds up silky smooth and has a nice satin glow.

I think that bottle is a lifetime supply - it takes just a small amount to dress the fingerboard.

Next time we'll take a look at the electronics, remove the pickguard, and do a final polish.