Ray wrote: Nothing is beyond repair, at a cost, except possibly a piano.

I suspect you haven't owned a 12-string guitar. :-p

Look, the instrument I was referring to "merely" needed a new fret job, so yes, in the short term, it could have been repaired. But the advice was that it was not going to last much longer, and I accepted that and saved the money to use for another instrument. If you brace a 12-string enough to make it as mechanically sound as a 6-string, the sound stinks. But if you don't, they tend to implode, eventually. (Gordon Bok tells stories about how he and Nick Apollonio (sp.?) argued and built instruments and watched them collapse until they found the best compromise they could.)

And what about when it does implode? You need a new top, possibly a new neck, possibly a new back. Is that really the same instrument? And it's still going to implode again.

For that matter, there is a question of my heirs. This was a Washburn 12-string. A miracle Washburn, far better than it had any right to be, but the resale value is small -- and I'm getting old enough that I have to think about the value of the instrument to my heirs. A middle-aged Taylor has a lot more resale value than an ancient, repaired Washburn.

So I let the Washburn go.