At my age I should know better

Timbuck

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
6,606
Reaction score
1,833
Location
Stockton on Tees..North East UK.
I spotted a guitar on E-bay that looked like a bargain...In need of repair...it was described as an Experimental Gibson Baldwin SG ..with a new "Les paul neck" fitted...It had been accidently damaged and the the neck/headstock splice had been seperated (you know the break that looks like a sharks mouth :)) .....I received it today and it was just as described...I had previously looked up how to repair this on the web and the gluing job seemed quite straight forward...but when I got the neck stripped down i was dismayed to find it was just a cheap neck that had never ever seen the Gibson factory and i suspect that the rosewood fretboard is just a thin veneer over some lesser wood..and worse! when I put the straight edge on the frets I discovered a 6mm back bow:(....It is now in the shed clamped to the router table with a huge C clamp bending the bow 6mm in the opposite direction...I will report on further progress...and stick to what I know best in the future...E-Bay is for the gamblers.
 
Sorry to hear about your disappointment, Ken. Do you think the guitar was misrepresented, or posted by someone who didn't know? Either way, that's a piece of rough luck.
 
Anyway.....Looking on the bright side..this has given me an opportunity to practice a major repair job on a cheap instrument and maybe one day I can have a go on something more valuable......the back bow didn't cure much overnight and the neck splice didn't glue very well either due to contamination from the original glue still in the joint....I think scarfe joints and truss rods don't go together very well ..co's when I turned the truss rod anti clockwise to remove some of the back bow it just popped the joint apart again.....so now I've removed the fret board cleaned off all traces of the old glue and now it is clamped up again for another try....it looks like I'll have make another fretboard for it as the MOP inserts turned out to be plastic MOT and some of them melted when heat was applied. .....The truss rod works great out of the neck by the way.
 
Last edited:
Anyway.....Looking on the bright side..this has given me an opportunity to practice a major repair job on a cheap instrument and maybe one day I can have a go on something more valuable......the back bow didn't cure much overnight and the neck splice didn't glue very well either due to contamination from the original glue still in the joint....I think scarfe joints and truss rods don't go together very well ..co's when I turned the truss rod anti clockwise to remove some of the back bow it just popped the joint apart again.....so now I've removed the fret board cleaned off all traces of the old glue and now it is clamped up again for another try....it looks like I'll have make another fretboard for it as the MOP inserts turned out to be plastic MOT and some of them melted when heat was applied. .....The truss rod works great out of the neck by the way.

That's a great attitude. There's usually always something positive to be gained from something like this.
 
Look on the bright side pal, once it's fixed, I'll give you a monkey for it.
 
I'm getting right ito it now ....Got the splice glued nicely and I'm spraying some black finish to make the damage invisible..also I'm not doing a bad job of putting the fretboard back together (It broke in half during removal:eek:) it turns out to be solid rosewood after all, it will need new binding and a couple of MOP inserts replaced tho'...And can anyone tell me what the plastic or teflon stripe down the centre of the fretboard over the trussrod is for?and is it important :) ?
 
Last edited:
A man's GOT to know his limitations



As "Harry Callahan" once said.....I gave up on this job in the end and ordered a new neck......I took the original neck apart cleaned off all the glue from the scarfe joint reglued ..clamped it together for two days...re-fitted the trussrod & fretboard I got it all back together gave the trussrod a couple of twists to remove a slight back bow...it looked fine:)...And then this morning I gave it another look and ..Oh no! :wallbash:the scarfe joint was starting to break again :(..It is now in the bin.
 
Sounds like a great slide guitar!
 
I think you might do better to just scrap the neck and make another one - you've already got the tuners and the truss rod. One time I actually even pulled the frets and reused them on the "rebuild" as well. So all you need is a piece of maple or alder for the neck and a fretboard.

Anyway, good luck with it.
 
Ha ha reading your initial post...I was thinking of scraping the neck.....it was getting promising though with the rosewood neck and then took a dead end curve to the trash bin...LOL
 
And so the Saga continues

The replacement neck arrived this morning ..all the way from China/Hong Kong... the quality is very good for the price..but the packing is rubbish..and it came with the head snapped off :( thanks to our wonderful delivery services around the globe...I am now in negotiations with the supplier.


Ken Timms .. Dis-chuffed guitar repair man..in the north of England
 
Last edited:
The Company who supplied it "Eden Guitars" were very good about it..and a replacement is now on the way :)...one day this will make music :music:

They said "keep the bust one".... is it any good to some one I wonder.:confused:
 
Last edited:
They said "keep the bust one".... is it any good to some one I wonder.:confused:

Know any artists who might want to do an "After the Concert" rock star guitar sculpture? :)
 
Classic "Gibsonitis"...short grain going across the area of the greatest stress with that huge hole for the truss rod nut. I can't tell you how many of those I've repaired over 50 years. It's way past time for them to go to a modern truss rod with an Allen adjuster that would allow significantly more mahogany where it's needed. But factories are incredibly slow to change anything at all. I tried to get Gibson to try epoxy at one point for gluing carbon fiber to mahogany...no way...the production manager insisted that one could NOT glue carbon fiber to wood. I tried to tell him that that's how many ocean racing yachts are made...no go...
 
Seeing as the supplier didn't want the broken neck returning, and i'll have to wait a while for the replacement to arrive..I thought i'd have a go at fixing the damage...I used an industrial epoxy that I just happened to have .. it's very slow to cure epoxy I use it to fit the coils to high power loudspeakers..It takes about 30 hours to cure and it's super tough, way better than "Araldite" ...after rubbing down with wet-n-dry I stained the damaged area with a black permament marker pen :D and sprayed it over with an areosol can of laquer that I've had laying about for a couple of years..and it's looking quite good ..but it still needs a bit more work...when it's done i'll have to think of some use for it..or give it away...Rick will say "give it away Ken" you need more practice...I'll stick to Soprano Ukes in the future I almost know what I'm trying to achieve there.
As it was when i received it


 
Last edited:
Well, it may hold for a while, but the only strength is in the glue you used. Its just a matter of time before it breaks. Some of the mahogany they are using these days is just garbage, especially in the import stuff. If it were me, I would find a nice piece of Honduran mahogany and make a new neck using the truss rod and fingerboard off of the broken neck. Put the adjustment for the truss rod on the body end and not the headstock end. Since the finish is dark, it should be no problem for you Ken. Also, use a niece piece of 1/8" thick ebony for the headstock overlay. It would take some work to do all this, but the neck will be 10 times better then the replacement neck.
 
Finally got this job done ...The replacement neck arrived undamaged and it's turned out pretty good, the intonation is spot on thanks to the charts on the Stewmac site... I re-crowned and leveled the frets..upgraded the pickups and tuners and fitted a better quality 3 way switch...All I'm going to do now is rewire with vintage style wire and fit a couple of push pull pots so I can split the humbucker coils into singles and reverse phase..The mods outway the the value but it will be a great guitar..and I can do some "Angus" impressions with it :cool::music: and then it's back to ukuleles for me.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom