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I view what Mark C. is doing as something that (hopefully) even the “leave it original” purists could get on board with. The instruments that he is restoring are not museum pieces, or even ones with the typical nicks and dings associated with play wear. They’re instruments that are need of serious attention and I believe he is doing them (and the archtop buying public) a great service by bringing them back to life.
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02-26-2026 03:41 PM
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Amen to that !
Originally Posted by mvp019aa
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Mark Campellone will be in the history books with all the previous master archtop builders. Hopefully not for a long time though.
Incredible restorations buddy !!!
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Are you sure that's not a custom "marbled" finish? Originally Posted by MCampellone
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Mark - I am absolutely dumbfounded by your ability to resurrect these old shipwrecks. As much skill as it takes to build the wonderful instruments you turn out, it seems like it what you are doing here is on an entirely different plane. It must feel really good to bring them back to life.
Are you sure you haven't built a 'way-back' machine????
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Ha - building a 'way-back' machine might be easier than doing the restorations - lol! Originally Posted by John Owen
Mark - I am absolutely dumbfounded by your ability to resurrect these old shipwrecks. As much skill as it takes to build the wonderful instruments you turn out, it seems like it what you are doing here is on an entirely different plane. It must feel really good to bring them back to life.
Are you sure you haven't built a 'way-back' machine????
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OK, here's guitar rescue #5 - a 1962 Super 400CN - an impressive guitar, and a great survivor to boot. It started out as an acoustic model and at some point underwent a very poorly done electric conversion – that’s the bad news. The good news is that the pickups were P-90’s, so damage to the bracing wasn’t as bad as it would’ve been if humbuckers had been installed. As you can see in the pics, the cuts for the pickups in the top were pretty messy, as were the cuts in the braces. I cleaned up the top routs as best I could, and did some pretty involved work patching up and reinforcing the bracing. I also added some horizontal braces at the long edges of the pickup routs. And since the guitar was originally built as an acoustic model, the top was fairly thin, so I added a number of cross-grain spruce patches in selected areas in an effort to stiffen up the top for better amplified performance.
There were some cracks in the rim where a jack had been installed – someone added a jack plate, which at some point was removed and the four small screw holes were plugged. I added some internal reinforcement for the jack. The fingerboard had already been re-fretted with medium/large wire – fortunately, the fret job was very well done.
Cosmetically, the sides and back of the guitar were in fair shape, however the top was pretty badly scratched up, and some of the finish on the neck was worn off. I stripped the top and the neck down to bare wood and re-sprayed them. I sanded back the finish on the rims and back – enough to cut through some dings and buckle-rash – and applied a few light coats of clear lacquer.
The seller of this guitar had replaced the previously installed P-90 pickups with a set of original staple P-90’s from 1957(!) – these are worth a ton of money, so I sold them and installed Lollar staple P-90’s.
Another interesting thing about this guitar is the neck – by the early 60’s Gibson was making necks of 3-piece maple with walnut veneers – the (factory original) neck on this ’62 S400 is apparently a leftover from the late 50’s, constructed of 2-piece maple with walnut center strip, and the elongated S400 peghead has the more highly crowned “mustache” of earlier design. Also interesting, while you’d expect a late 50’s neck to be on the chunky side, this neck has the early 60’s feel – shallow ‘C’ contour with very little increase in depth approaching the heel. Whether the neck was shaped like this at the factory or thinned down by a previous owner, I don’t know. In any case, when I got the guitar it was strung with a set of .014” strings, and surprisingly, this very slick neck handled them easily.
The original tailpiece has been re-plated - the tuners, bridge and pickguard are new - finally, just a fabulous and really cool guitar!
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Such rewarding skills you have MarK.
Thank you again for sharing these amazing rescues.
S
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That poor thing cleaned up real nice didn't it? Well done!
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It’s amazing how some people will butcher a top of the line instrument. Thankfully there are people like Mark Campellone to come to the rescue. Beautiful restoration Mark !
It has to rewarding to bring butchered guitars back to their full glory. Bravo
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Beautiful Mark!
I like your new gig!
And the sharing. It's very enjoyable to read your posts about these projects.
Thank you!
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Top shelf stuff as always...
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Here is guitar rescue #6 – emphasis on “rescue”, as this guitar was badly in need of it! A rare piece, this 1969 Byrdland came from the factory with a long scale neck. It was featured in Vintage Guitar Magazine’s column “Q&A With George Gruhn”(see pics). It was thought that this guitar might be one of a kind – however, forum members have discounted that by providing pictures of a few other long scale Byrdlands produced by Gibson.
The restoration of this guitar was probably the most involved I’ve done – the guitar’s poor condition was at least partially explained in this note from the gentleman who sold the guitar to me -
“Here's the story. I bought this guitar about 10 years ago. According to the seller the guitar belonged to his late father who used to be gigging a guitar player. After his father died he brought the guitar to his home in Puerto Rico where it sat in its case flat on the floor under his bed for many years”.
So with the restoration work about to begin, the most notable issue was the finish. There were indications that the original finish was the “ice-tea” sunburst typical of Gibson archtops from the late 60’s through the 70’s. However, the lacquer on the entire guitar had turned a very deep amber color, making any color gradation of a burst indiscernible. It looked to me as if the guitar might have been exposed to very high heat – possibly a fire – but there was no odor of smoke from the guitar or the case (in fact, the case is in excellent condition – very puzzling). Whatever the cause of the seemingly "baked" finish, there were other cosmetic issues, too, so a complete re-fin was necessary.
The body of the guitar was structurally sound, though it had taken a good hit on the upper bout bass side rim. A look inside revealed that someone had attempted a repair by pushing the puncture back out to get it flush, and applying some glue externally. There was no internal reinforcement added, though, so I glued in a small block to stabilize the cracked area.
Some of the peghead binding had deteriorated and had to be replaced. There was also a poorly repaired break on one side of the peghead – I routed out the cracked area and glued in a maple filler strip. The neck was pretty badly damaged, too, requiring some fill work and some heavy sanding.
I suspect that the guitar may have been stored with the strings tuned up to pitch, because the neck was pulled up badly enough to create a very pronounced "ski-jump" in the fingerboard extension and make a neck re-set necessary. In steaming the neck off, the laminations of the neck dovetail also came apart, requiring re-construction of the neck dovetail (note the “SPECIAL” written on the neck dovetail). After getting the neck off, I removed the fingerboard, which I resurfaced, re-fretted and re-bound. Also, as part of the neck re-set, both the neck and body dovetail cuts were made larger to provide more gluing area for a stronger joint.
With the above work completed, and the body and neck re-joined and stripped down to bare wood, I applied a dark Gibson style sunburst finish. The original Gibson patent number pickups and controls were re-installed along with the (re-plated) original tailpiece. Remaining new parts (tuners, truss rod cover, bridge, knobs and pickguard) were installed to finally complete the job.
Last edited by MCampellone; 03-15-2026 at 05:10 PM.
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Beautiful work Mark!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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When I got to the first "after" photo, I literally exclaimed "holy cow!". That is some serious restoration. It looks amazing. If it wasn't for a little yellowing on the truss rod cover, I would think it was a brand new guitar.
Funny, there's a '60s Super 400 for sale right now with a custom ordered 23.5" scale length. It's almost like those two guitars had their necks swapped.
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Amazing as always.
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Actually, I thought the original yellow truss rod cover looked out of place, so I've replaced it with a new repro : ) Originally Posted by andrew
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Fantastic work, as always, Mark. Thanks for sharing these stories and photos.
PR gets very hot in Summer, and they had power outages for months on end following hurricane Maria in 2017. Perhaps that's a factor... Originally Posted by MCampellone
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Hard to believe that is the same guitar. Mark, in the guitar world you walk on water.
Every one of these restoration jobs is a miracle.
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Wow! Another trip via the Wayback Machine! Absolutely stunning!
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That would be my dreamt of guitar!
Amazing how you brought it back to life.
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Thanks for offering that comment - it could explain much. Originally Posted by starjasmine
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Wonderful work Mark
It is a joy to see these restorations.
Gerry
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Hi @MCampellone, this 1955 model then predates the "Fretless Wonder" (low &wide) era, residue of which I still have on mine. Would be grateful for your view please. Had the bounding be still in good condition all around, would you have opted to task yourself at doing the refret but retaining the original bounding? Or is this just far too burdensome?
And because such refret would be so involved and time consuming, I imagine you chose a fret wire of the type that is long lasting. Could you please share your thoughts on this? Would a mix of nickel+stainless steel be an available and feasible option?
Many thanks!
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I'm no authority on the subject, but all the 40's and 50's Gibson I've had my hands on had very small fret wire - I assume that on the original LP fretless wonder models, they used similar wire, but dressed it down to a very low height (many years ago, when Gibson first re-issued the LP Custom Fretless Wonder, I owned one, and the frets on that guitar got the same treatment). Originally Posted by Zack
As for the '55 ES-130, the fingerboard on that guitar had been really messed up by a previous owner - it was sanded flat (with NO radius) and very sloppily re-fretted - I had no choice but to re-surface, re-fret and re-bind the fingerboard.
I don't know of anyone making nickel+stainless fretwire - there may be no point to it since nickel itself is already quite hard so maybe there's nothing to be gained by combining it with stainless steel.
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