Last time I lend a guitar out.

[Cathedral]

Surprisingly, it was also the first time.

Some of you may remember I had a sustainer installed in my RG a few months ago, my beloved RG which is my main guitar. A friend wanted to try out a sustainer, so I lent him my RG for the evening to have a play with the sustainer.

RG is returned this morning, I have the day off so I think great, a whole day for playing. I open the case and notice the whammy bar is still in the bridge, meaning the strings have been slack all night. I take the bar out and see the neck bow right in front of me. This isn't minor bowing, I actually see the headstock raise slightly towards the guitar body. Leaving the action after the twelfth fret getting steadily higher, to the point that its almost half an inch off the fret board by the twenty-fourth fret.

I went straight to Mid-Air Music and asked if they had any advice on how I could fix it, they turned me onto Brian Rogers (Kind chap who installed the sustainer and carried out various other mods to my baby) who gave me some great advice and offered to look over the guitar if I can make it over to his workshop. I'm strapped for cash (yay for still not having a full time job) so Brian advised me to carefully slacken the strings and stuff the bridge cavity with some folded up card etc. to prevent the bridge from falling in.

So yeah, I doubt I'll be lending out another guitar in the foreseeable future, at least not my workhorse.

The strangest thing about this? Before I slackened the strings, she was still in tune, despite the neck bowing. Thankfully the neck hasn't split anywhere, I've given a thorough examination and as far as I can tell, the only problem with the neck is bowing, the screws haven't ripped away from the neck and there are no splits in the wood, so hopefully it'll just be a tweak of the truss rod (and a ringing of a certain friend's neck) to get everything back to normal.

Sorry for the rant, let's make something of this topic. Any mishaps in lending out gear? Share your stories.