With a break like this with plenty of surface area, I would just glue it without any additional supports. My glue of choice is hot hide glue, but there will be lots of opinions on that and many option…
I think that's a good move. One thing I might do to kick things of is to hit the area with some ultra thin master glue so it wicks under the area and prevents more chipping from potentially delaminate…
Hi guys, I finally managed to sort the problem out. Seens like was a simple issue that I cant see in that moment. I took the whole bridge apart and did a complete setup from scratch. I read somewhere…
This is precisely why Leo Fender developed the insideless guitar. A compromised neck block is super hard to come back from and when I see something like this, it leads me to believe that it's the tip…
Chris, can I add this for the council of elders show ? Also, we are going to have @member on pretty soon to talk about a job about this dramastic. Here's a link to the live show co…
I should do a neck reset on a Guild 512B from probably 1973.
I have done neck resets before, but this is the first on a guitar that has some value.
I want to look out for information about this specific model before i start working.
Has anyone done a neck reset on a simular model? What kind of neck joint did they use, and what are the dimensions? Is there anything specific to look out for?
I will probably not start working on the guitar before february, but the guitar is already in the workshop, so if you want photos or more infos I can upload it :-)
I will of course document the process for the neck reset section (:
Any help is highly apreciated!
Thank you in advance and cheers from Germany Jacob
The customer was satisfied with the repair. I had some unhappy stuff happening on the road, the lower oart of the heel cracked during the sandpaper pulling, which resulted in alot more touch up and respray, than I would have hoped to do.
The lower 2,5cm(1inch) of the heel are in new laquer, and the color of the binding is maybe a little too yellow/ too red. On the photo it is not yet buffed. But I think it is good enough, and so thought the owner too.
In the end everything turned out nice. Action is now 2mm to 1.6mm with 0.15mm neck relief. tuned to Eb flat with 11 to 52 ernieball strings. The top is under some stress, but it seems to work. I told the customer that D Standard would be probably better. the bridge bone is protruding little under 3mm over the wood, the treble a little over 3mm. Bridge wood is a lot thinner at treble side. I tried to tilt the neck away from the bass a little, but it would have shown in the footprint if i would have done more.
Intonation is on the vintage side of guitars. Saddle slot is small, so I could only do what i could do.
Thanks for your help!!!!
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it is 8:30pm now, and i will make Feierabend -google that word yourself ;-)
Thanks everbody for your help and advice so far <3 <3 <3
I will keep you updated about the finish repairs and more
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heating up the neck joint and removing the neck lastet around 2houts 15 minutes with wiggeling every 10 minutes..
I tried to carefully to warm the joint from the outside , but that was a bad idea and made bubbles.
After oneandahalf hour I decided to saw away the heel cap, because I felt that it was too well attached to the sides and the binding. It will eventually become smaller anyways
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now to the guild. The laquer is way more sensible! I will have to in est in a smaller iron, because the heat made a mess with the laquer...
Besides the laquer trouble, removing the fretboard was harder than with the test-run-framus, but still reasonable. Glue was more gum like.
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Hi, her is an update.
I did build a new neck jig, because my old one was a little wobbly. Than I did a practice-neck removal on an unexpensive guitar. (Framus 50/1, probably from the 1970s) That went super smooth, no issues with the laquer (more to that later ;-) ). I did some experiments with four holes and the solder/copper wire idea.
I still prefer the foam cutters, because they are faster, but maybe that is not an issue with a higher wattage soldering iron. I will see in the future ;-)
It took me about half an hour to remove the Framus neck
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Oh......I just thought of this. If you are going to go for the soldering pen and haven't purchased yet, can I recommend going to 80 watts? The 60w will work fine but I've been meaning to upgrade as the rheostat was near max on. I think the 80w will give you more heat/rheostat variability. Yay. Let us know how it goes!
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Great answers from Ian and Tony!!!! If you can paint some reducer around the joint, wait until it activates and cut the nitro with a scalpel it will improve your chances with the finish issues. You'll still most likely have to drop fill around the edges, sand and buff.
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Thanks for the reminder! the laquer will definitly be a thing that I have to be very careful. Also the plastic heel cap..
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Spicey meatball!! Haha! SoJacob. Check out the soldering pencil vid. I believe it is much cheaper and a better tool than foam cutters. Also......Is that a fair bit of sinkage in front of the bridge? Asked differently, is there severe belly bulge/sinkage? If so this may want to be factored in? A couple of 12 string repairs with severe bulge/shrink addressed changed the action/neck angle relation significantly. One bulge/shrink repair got the angle/action right where it wanted to be. And I think you said the actions playable? If significant bulge/shrink, could fix the action and would be a much easier fix.
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Thanks Tony!!
I saw your video and yes I will try that. :-) I think I will go through my old and cheap guitar collection and make a test on something that I own, before I trying it on the customers guitar.
There is no significant sink in, I guess that is from the camera's fish eye effect.
I will keep you updated, I will probably start working on the guild in february
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Wow thanks, that is a lot to take in. I feared it would not be easy. I never used steam, I have 2 heat probes/foam cutters. I should probably get two more than..
While I try and read some more, in the meantime i attached some pictures.
I tried to talk the owner and asked him if he wouldn t be better off with just a refret, because the action is still more or less playable. But he said he wants a neck reset, because he wants to play the guitar for the next 30years or so :) I also told him, that I can t 100% garantee that the finish stays intact.
That's a tough job. Add to all of what I said before that it's got a laminated neck. If that lets go, you've got a spicy meatball on your hands.
Budget 10-15 hours for the job including finish repair. That's for someone that knows a thing or two about a thing or three. First time learning experience, expect more.
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Ian’s advice is spot on and Ian’s ideas on dry heat have moved neck removal forward greatly.
Just my two cents (well, maybe four):
I think dry heat technology is evolving and making what was considered “difficult” much easier. And the timing of dry heat use and, that guitars from the 60’s and 70’s appear to be aging out en mass now, is pushing development. Also, your mentioning “valuable” factors in because this human construct causes us to pause and fear creeps in, causing development to slow. That’s why it’s great to experiment on “less valuable” instruments or to create lab like experiments. At any rate, in the case of neck joints, As Ian mentioned, getting heat to the glue joints is the key. I’ve been able to remove what are considered to be “tough” neck joints by putting in as many heat probes as possible aesthetically because it makes sense, to me, to get constant heat to all the joints at once and to heat the heel up as a whole, instead of moving one or two probes around, losing heat. I’ve tried to move the dry heat idea forward. I’m providing a vid here that I honestly think shows a tool that I think works well. https://youtu.be/GjcX1MZUzYI?si=HGt87m3JKtnAbIBW
In the case of your guitar, there might be measurements out there of joint location to help find probe locations. At any rate, I’d use four heat probes, two at the fret past the neck/body intersection and two at the fret at the neck/body intersection. The reason I’m saying to use only four probes is that this is pushing it as far as what appears to be the acceptable norm for probe numbers. I’ve only seen two probes used at one time which I feel is not providing enough heat to all areas of the heel/joint areas. I’ve used four probes many times and using a heat temp gun shows that more probes heats the heel more evenly as common sense would dictate. And I think there is concern over ruining the finish if applying too much heat. Manufactures specs and real time experimentation shows that nitro starts to brown at around 280 F give or take and ignites at 350F give or take. I’ve heated nitro directly to 220F without any discoloration or damage. Same for most poly finishes. Experimentation and real time neck removal shows that most PVA glues start to soften at around 150F. I try to heat the heel so that the gun on the outside reads 150F. To get there, I’m trying to heat the inner core of the heel and joints to about 200F. Wood is a great heat sink and the air cells in the wood fiber and the fibers themselves absorb a lot of heat so heat transfer/convection is poor. That’s why I think heat needs to be applied as directly as possible to joint areas. The joint between the dovetail end and the neck block is usually (although on the Guild, probably full of glue) is usually a gapped slot and applying probes only there, to me, is not as efficient because the gap doesn’t convect heat as well as when probes are in full, direct contact with the wood. And your only applying heat to that area of the heel. By adding probes in all areas of the heel at one time, your applying heat to all joint areas evenly.
If I were doing this, I’d use six probes and heat the crap out of the heel. I’d run three across the fret slot at the neck/body intersection and three across the next fret towards the body. By using the pencil solder idea, you can use any wire size you want so there is no concern for using an overly large hole in the fret slots.
Attached is an image from the forum "lets talk guild". It illustrates some of why these can be super duper challenging to get off. Primarily all of the extra wood to wood glue joint that doesn't receive any steam if the dovetail is tight.
This is actually not one of the worst examples either as the heel isn't as wide as some. What it is, though is super skinny. On this one, if it were a 12 string, once you got done correcting the neck angle, you might not have a whole lot of heel left. Something to think about.
With modern steamless removal techniques, these sometime aren't as bad, but more often than not, it involves putting a pallet knife into the joint to break the glue joint between the sides and the face of the neck. This can result in finish work.
These get a lot harder than this one right here because the dovetail bit used on this one wasn't super aggressive. When they are and the dovetail face has a serious angle, the wrap around on the bottom of the dovetail makes positive contact (unlike a martin dovetail) and effectively seals off the bottom. This mean no water, steam, gets past there to break loose that big bit of heel glued to the sides on the bottom.
For this reason, when I'm using resistance heaters or the like, I drill past the dovetail, into the neck block as far as I can go without drill out the back. This will at least get heat in that zone.
These projects are tough. Half of repair people don't take them on. The other half charge more to do them.