Brad Spurgeon's Blog

PARIS – What’s that old story about a guy who was resurrected from the dead three days after he was buried? And they called it Easter, or something along those lines? Well, guess what? There will be readers who think my post of last week about a woman dancing on my guitar and destroying it was an exaggeration, and that, hey, just repair the guitar. But I never, ever thought my guitar could be repaired, and I feel it’s almost a miracle that three days after it died, I had a little help from a friend, and the guitar has been brought back to life over a series of critical operations on Friday and Saturday.

I was going to wait a while to see if my Seagull guitar is really fully back to life and does not break down, burst out of its own seams or melt in the heat of Bahrain, where it will be heading very soon. But now, I’m playing with it, and have been doing so since an open mic on Saturday night, and then another open mic last night, and I can say that I cannot truly hear a vast, brutal difference between the guitar as it was before it was used as a dance floor and how it is now, after having a few of its ribs and teeth and other inner structures permanently removed, and having the cracks and breaks and remaining ribs all glued up back together!

This Seagull, in fact, seems to have just been truly and miraculously brought back from the dead on Easter weekend!!!!

I went and saw two different professional luthiers in Paris, and while one warned that the sound of the past could not return and the other said it could, they both agreed that the work to be done would be massive, very massive, and that the cost would be so much that it would cost more than the guitar had cost me to buy, 10 years ago. Then, out of the blue, I received an offer from a friend, who said that they would be happy to give a try fixing it, for a symbolic sum, really just to pay for the glue, in my opinion.

I must confess that I believed they were full of crap, that nothing could be done. But out of kindness on my part for the kindness they offered, I decided to go and see what could be done. There I witnessed the whole process over two days of the guitar undergoing a chiropractic operation of pushing, pulling, tearing, gluing and clamping, that brought the thing back to life!!!! I am not persuaded that it sounds exactly as it did, but I do know that I feel really happy to have this guitar back in my hands, that I don’t have to buy a new one, and that the long and storied history of my Seagull S6 will continue for another chapter or two.

I want to thank everyone who was so outpouring in their sympathy to me on Facebook for what was one of the biggest musical nightmares I’ve had to face. I really, truly thought the guitar was dead. And I’m putting some “before” the fix and “after” the fix photos on this page so you can see why.