I have been primarily making instruments for many years and am just now getting into more repairs and having to make decisions about when to "fix" stuff and when to leave it alone.
In the recent thread about stripping varnish my thought was just don't. However some one asked if the replacement of necks and bars should be thought of in the same way and of course this was and is done fairly often in order to allow an instrument to play evolving music which didn't exist when the instrument was made.
There are many times when one is repairing obvious damage but when faced with original