A customer brought in this beautiful and great sounding guitar, but they were concerned about the cracks in the soundboard eminating from the bridge.

These cracks are often caused by the ball ends of the strings damaging the soundboard. This happens when the bridge plate, which is a piece of hardwood, normally maple or rosewood glued to the underside of the soundboard, is worn away by years of playing, changing strings etc.

The cracks suggest this, and if you look at how much of the end-winds of the strings are protruding from the bridge, this suggests that the ball ends are embedded deep in the soundboard. On the low E they are right over the saddle.

A look inside the guitar showed that the ball ends were indeed imbedded into the soundboard. A previous repairman had stabilised and cleated the cracks, but not fixed the cause of the cracks.

These diagrams sould help show what the process is. This is a side view of a bridge, showing the soundboard, and bridgeplate retainer.

The next diagram shows the cutaway section. The first three pictures show the degradation of the bridge plate (shown in orange) until the ball end is anchored in the soundboard, causing the cracks.

The lower three diagrams show how I attach a retainer to the bridge plate, fill the void with epoxy resin, then drill out the pin hole again, thus protecting the soundboard from further damage.

The bridge plate retainer is usually made from a small piece of the same hardwod that the bridge plate is made from. In this case, Rosewood.

I have drilled a small hole in each end of the bridge plate retainer, and fed a string through each, anchored with a knot. Glue is then applied to the upward surface of the retainer, and the strings are fed through the two E string pin holes in the bridge, from inside the guitar.

I then use these smal jigs to clamp the retainer to the bridge plate.

Once dried, it is then possible to fill each pin hole with watered down epoxy. This will dry overnight, and the new bridge pin holes can be reamed out, and the guitar can be strung up, ready to play with it'ssoundboard fully protected, and no more cracks will appear.