Irv said
Similar to that luthier, I am also amazed when examining my low shelf string instruments.  I find myself muttering, “what type of fevered mind would think that could be passed onto an unsuspecting public.”

  

I guess it's the market's tolerance of what another violin forum calls a "violin-shaped object (VSO)". It's all about the money, below a certain threshold form and function just disappear under the plywood and white glue; but when you (the user) is up against stiff circumstances, you will play what you can get (or make). Some things cannot be brought up to a usable standard - the British Army say that "You cannot polish a t*rd". However:

I bought a cheap Chinese bow just after acquiring the antique fiddle, and when I re-haired it a few weeks ago I had to re-build it entirely: the producer (I shudder to call them a manufacturer, much less an achetier) had glued the wedges in, the grip was a length of cheap fishing line and the facing on the tip had split. It hangs in my laboratory at work and I play every morning with it; it's now a great bow beacuse I took some time over the rebuild. Onlly the stick, ferrule , frog, screw and slide are original, and even they have been fettled and finished. As you well know, junk can be transformed.

What a lovely gift idea; personally re-crafted guitars.

The only guitar project I have on-hand is a Tanglewood Falcon strat copy, stripped and ready for a rainy day. I've already junked the horrid whammy-bar tailpiece and the corroded machines.

I've historically shied away from classical guitars, the flat fretboards feel unnatural to me having been brought up on solids with their narrow, radiused fretboards. Since the last piece I learned on guitar before switching in binary fashion to violin was JS Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze", this may change once I get a hankering for something tuned in fourths again.

Never say never. Ever.

A colleague at the saltmine has a Yamaha classical which has a permanent deformation from being steel-strung; the neck is straight, the neck joint is intact, the stringers inside the body all feel to be firmly glued, nothing appears wrong. It's just bent. It is an otherwise fine instrument, and I've instructed him to take 3 mm off the bottom of the bridge insert overall to compensate, and only to string it with nylon and take the strings down through the tie-off holes and back over rather than over the top. He wants to use the Martin knots, but I've advised timber-hitches. I've forbidden him to touch the nut.

It's a good way to correct it, for sure, but the man has already taken the bridge insert to the linisher. He reports 3 mm at the sound-hole edge of the fretboard on the treble side. I haven't seen the result yet; he's even shyer about playing than I am.

I didn't see the guitar strung, so I couldn't judge if the top plate had been pulled up. If it had, and it were mine, I'd take the table off and sort out the lower bout bracing.