Replacing binding?

[mcl116]

Is it a big deal for a luthier to replace the binding on an acoustic?

Is there high risk of damage being done?

[Simon Fay]

It depends on what you need done.

Replace all the binding -- the neck has to come off and the old binding taken out and new installed and then the body refinished. VERY time consuming and expensive.

Replace or reglue a small section of binding. Less intensive but the results will be imperfect and you will also still need repair work done to the finish.

[Wade Hampton]

Originally Posted by mcl116

Is it a big deal for a luthier to replace the binding on an acoustic?

It would involve a surprisingly large amount of work to remove a guitar's original binding and to replace it with something else.

Originally Posted by mcl116

Is there high risk of damage being done?

Yes, some risk, I suppose, but regardless it would involve a lot of hand work and finish repair and restoration. As always, the finish work would be far more costly than most guitarists idly thinking about having the work done could imagine.

This isn't a task that most repair techs and luthiers would want to take on for merely cosmetic reasons. If the binding has largely been destroyed in one part of the guitar and needs to be replaced, that would be one thing. But to have the work done simply because you think a different binding material would look better would be very costly, if you could even find anyone to do the work. Which is why it's not a common procedure.

It would be a very complex undertaking, as Simon's post illustrated.


Wade Hampton Miller