Getting back into Harmony

I have a customer, (or his friend, rather) who has sponsored the restoration of the guitar of his youth. I understand the owner’s health is not great, and his resources limited, so this is a laudable act of friendship. As it turns out, the collectors rather enjoy this model, so I’ll post something about it here. It’s from the mid-late 60’s, and was all-original when we started. Over several hours and a few visits we slowly brought the instrument back to life. Initially, there were setup issues, hum, intermittent connections and one pickup out of order. He initially declined to have the pickup repaired, for cost reasons, but later we did it anyway. I chipped in and covered the cost of one of the rewinds myself, and did some surgical rewiring to make it all happen. This guitar uses unusual pots that are nearly impossible to find today, and the knobs are crazed and threatening to disintegrate, so much of this work was done with a super-light touch and extreme care. Working on a hollow-body is tedious at best, with access to wiring limited to the pickup holes and the F-holes. We taped up, covered and protected the finish as we worked, to keep the instrument nice. In the end, we prevailed and had everything working, although I recently got a text saying the one original untouched pickup was now getting intermittent, so a rewind on that third one may be needed soon.