More torture... Suzuki Model No. 700 Guitar

How do I explain what I've done here? It used to look like this.

But the bridge was lifting. I knocked if off. I sanded it back to flat.

But I didn't have any glue or the proper clamps. The guitar remained string-less, bridge-less and cannibalized (I used the tuning heads on my Di Giorgio). Then I came across a LOOG. A three-string guitar. I saw one at the music store next to the Park Hyatt on Bloor and University (or whatever it's called in Toronto). I was there for the 2015 Hilary Weston Writer's Trust Prize.

When I got back home, I found a door hinge, a broken set of tuning heads. And this is what I screwed together. I know, classy, very artisinal.

It is surprisingly loud in the first few strings - which is an improvement. It was a tad faint before.

It keeps in tune which surprises me because the door hinge tailpiece swings (how appropriate). And the intonation is better than it was originally. Still looks like hell.

My tortured cheap-ass Canora A102B (for 'brown') Guitar ...which I LOVE

I wouldn't recommend you do this at home but that's just what I did.

I got the Canora a few years back. It had a crummy bridge. One day I got a towel and a hot iron and melted the bridge off the top. Okay, I melted the glue but you get the picture.

I bought the tailpiece at Rufus's Guitar Shop in Kits/Point Grey in Vancouver. For about a year, I used a piece of oak as the bridge. Later I bought a busted banjo (are you seeing a pattern here?) and discovered a banjo bridge could work pretty well on a guitar top. There are always concerns of pressure on the top/table and pushing down where it is designed to pulled on...but well I took the chance.

Switching to a banjo bridge (Grover - $7.95 at Neil Douglas Guitar Shop in New Westminster), required the use of fewer strings. Fine by me. The neck is classical guitar thick and I always wanted a baritone uke so in a way this is a tailpiece, flat-top, steel-string baritone uke.

Recently, I electrified it with the removable single coil Fishman pickup. The cheap one. But I cut the cord and installed it with a jack. The jack I put in the lower side bout but recently I put it in the front...so yeah there's a hole in the side now.

Because, volume is an issue, the pickup is mounted high in the hole (which was too small and I simply gouged through the plywood to give the pickup maneuvering room). The pickup is set up on washers. The closer the pickup is to the strings, the louder the guitar when amplified. I'm not going to candy-coat it. That's what I did. It sounds quite raunchy overdriven through my Radio Shack Stack. It's comprised of a Realistic six channel board split into two mic channels that feeds into my very fancy Optimus 20 Watt MPA 40 amplifier which goes to my golden Norwegian 8" speaker, pre-57! The speaker is exactly the ones used as PA speakers in schools. It's killer. I'm joking. I don't really know what a gearhead would think of it.