In this video I'm setting up a couple of acoustic guitars for Dom - a Vintage VE900 MH and a Martin 'Backpacker'. They're both suffering from some 'distortion' of the structure which seems to happen to some degree with many, if not all, acoustic guitars eventually. In the case of the Vintage, the top is bellying a bit - causing the action to rise as the bridge rises up - but there's plenty of room to make action reductions at the nut and saddle so that's what I do here. The Martin on the other hand has more serious issues; the top is sunken and split which I'm pretty certain is the result of prolonged dehumidification i.e. being too dry. When a guitar top dries it shrinks and at first 'sinks' and eventually it splits because the tension in the grain of the wood is too great due to the shrinkage. That's what's happened here with the 'Backpacker'. In this video I glued the splits (just how much good this would be is neither here nor there; it was a quick thing to do), fitted a new Tusq nut and lowered the action at the bridge end somewhat. My advice to Dom on the Backpacker was to play it into the ground while out travelling and not worry about it.

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