During the 1950s and 1960s, Maton sold a line of guitars under the "Alver" brand (apparently the name was a conjunction of Bill May's wife's name, and that of his brother's wife). This example was my customer's grandmother's guitar, and has obviously been played and loved. The budget didn't allow for a full restoration - the brief was to make the guitar playable again. I did find some time for some finish work (shellac). The tuners are Hosco/Gotoh vintage. Here are "before

The CW80 (still made by Maton) is an iconic Australian dreadnought, popular with country musicians in particular. This 12 string version is from 1970, and came in with an unplayably high action, and no way to adjust. The neck construction on this instrument (a "French neck") precluded removing the neck from the guitar body (Maton also confirmed that this was not possible), meaning there were only 2 viable options for fixing: cutting the neck off and converting to bolt-on, or