Just bought my first ever acoustic guitar (a Taylor Big Baby) used on a local craiglist-equivalent for about 130$. It came in the original gigback which had only one back strap left. I decided to bike home and strap the guitar crosswise on my back.. in hindsight I should have realised that the one strap could not be trusted. Anyway I biked for about 3m before the strao broke off completely and the guitar fell on the asphalt. Upon arriving home I found the damage you can see in the picture :( The tuning peg of the G string was very crooked, I pressed it back in shape and for the moment it seems relatively stable..
What do you think I should do? try to glue the piece together myself? get it done professionally? try to get a replacement headstock? thanks for any advice and condolences!
Homie that crack isn't all the way through.
This is a simple fix. You can DIY.
Remove strings. Remove the hardware for your D string (assuming this isn't a lefty model).
Carefully pipe in some wood glue. Get it everywhere but not too much.
Clamp it with whatever you got. Gotta be sturdy though. 100 rubber bands would work. So would wedging it in your damn toilet seat with enough weight on it.
Clean off excess glue
Let the glue set over night.
Reattach that tuning hardware.
Restring. You done. It fixed.
That'll be $200 for the glue and the rubber bands, plz
Edit: added emphasis on wood glue. do t use Krazy Glue or any other Super glue. Super glue and wood glue are totally different products. This is an incredibly important distinction to make for a fix like this.
Edit 2: please DO NOT USE TITEBOND as the person below suggests.
You WILL fuck up your axe.
This. But I'd use hide glue and then after filling the crack with the glue, use a suction cup to pull it through both sides
Wood glue === hide glue
Traditionally, anyways.
Edit: this relationship is actually interesting and complex.
PVA is more commonly known as wood glue nowadays. But hide and PVA are both commonly used.
There are also liquid hide glues that are marketed as wood glue.
It's a messy relationship these days lol. I just looked into it!
There's variants and subvariants too. There's fish glue, which is close to hide glue. There's also waterproof versions of PVA glues. Not to mention PU glues and epoxies. Though, besides PVA and hide and fish, the rest are rarely used for guitars. But traditionally, only hide glue is acceptable. Not really rightfully so IMO, but it is what it is.
I thought I knew a lot about glue through lutherie.
🤯