The string tension on your acoustic guitar depends on a few factors. String gauge, scale-length and tuning all play a part but if you assume somewhere around 200 pounds of pressure, you’ll be in the ball-park. 

If you sat there with 200lbs on your shoulders for years, odds are you might begin to buckle a bit. Your acoustic guitar holds up better than you would but that tension can take its toll. 

If you have any steel-string acoustic guitar for long enough, chances are good it’ll need a neck reset at some point in its life. That string tension alters the geometry of the instrument and the most obvious way is that the action creeps up to a point were it’s uncomfortable or awkward to play. When a reset will be needed is anyone’s guess. Different guitars are, well, different. Could be five years, could be fifty. 

Most guitars have some additional height in the saddle to allow it be lowered, taking the action down with it. This buys some time but, eventually, the same thing can happen. It’s not unusual, on older guitars, to see a saddle that’s been lowered repeatedly and is little more than a sliver, barely above the bridge. 

Might be a good time for a reset, then. 

A reasonable rule of thumb is that, the plane of the frets should be at the same height as the top of the bridge (that’s the wooden bit and not the white saddle). Putting a longish straight-edge on the frets can show you what the story is, as in the photo above. As you can see, it contacts a few millimetres below the bridge-top. Sighting down the frets from the headstock can give you a good idea visually if you don’t have a long enough ruler. 

What happens in a neck reset?

Basically, we’re trying to re-adjust the geometry of the guitar and neck so that straight-edge in the photo gets raised enough to touch or clear the bridge. That means changing the angle at which the neck joins the body.

To do this, the neck has to be removed and some wood taken off part of the heel. 

Carefully.

A neck reset on a bolt-on acoustic

Ahh, a bolt-on neck…

Dubious arguments about tone aside, if your acoustic guitar has a bolt-on neck, it does make a neck reset a little easier. The first step, you see, is getting that neck off and the easier that is for me, the cheaper it is for you. Bolt-on necks mean less hassle trying to get glue-joints to release.  

The first image clearly shows the bolts in the neck block (we’re looking inside the acoustic guitar here). Straightforward. Excellent.

The second image is the inside of the ‘top’. The image is taken with a mirror lying inside the guitar. It’s always a good idea to get an idea what’s going on in here before starting major surgery, especially as bolt-on necked guitars from different manufacturers vary in how the handle things in this area. That block of wood glued to the extension and shoulder-brace, for instance, is worth some consideration. 

A little work to get that block to disengage and some work on the fingerboard extension is all that’s needed here. You can see the way neck and body fit together relatively clearly above. 

Something I wasn’t expecting was to encounter an epoxy-like material in the body mortice around the neck tenon. It was in the area around that white tape (marked with an X in the photo on the left). Because it wouldn’t adhere well to this tape, I’m guessing its job was simply to act as a sort of gap-filler to ensure help ensure a solid connection here. Whatever, I noted it for reassembly and cleaned up the residue. 

Incidentally, I noticed a hairline crack in the heel between the two sockets for the bolts. It was pretty small and probably unlikely to cause problems but I made it good before proceeding to work the wood in this area.

The reset itself is done by removing a ‘wedge’ shape of wood from the heel—more at the bottom, graduating to none at the top where it meets the fingerboard. Calculating the amount to remove can be done by a relatively simple formula but I tend to do that only to get in the ball-park and then finish by eye. 

The tape in the left photo gives me a line indicating the wood to be removed. There are a few ways to go about this but I like to bevel down to this line and then bring the sides to meet it. 

Like this. Wood is carefully removed from the sides of the heel now. Very carefully. It would be very easy to mess this up. I don’t want to remove any wood from that far end where the heel intersects the fingerboard. Doing that would actually move the neck closer to the bridge and muck up the intonation. What we want to do is to take out that wedge shape I mentioned earlier. When that’s gone, the neck joins the body at a slightly increased angle and this means better action.

Most of the work is done as shown in the left photo. When the bulk is gone, I’ll test fit to the body and I’ll remove the remainder of wood using sandpaper between body and neck as in the right image. This helps perfectly shape the heel-fit to the body. 

It’s important to check alignment often. As well as the set angle, I’m checking for side-to-side alignment to make sure I don’t take too much off one side of the heel. That would point the neck too much to one side or the other—not good. 

Once I’m happy with the fit and alignment, it’s time to reassemble. In this case, thanks to the construction of this guitar, it’s an easy job. Bolted back on and a little glue in the appropriate places—especially on that little block of wood we found earlier on the end of the neck—and we’re good to go.

And this is what we’re looking for. The straight-edge along the frets just skims the top of the bridge. I’ll need to make a new saddle to replace this one that’s now far too low but that’s no problem. We don’t need to do any fretwork on this guitar as a consequence of the neck reset (frequently that’s not the case) so, all in all, it’s been a good day. 

I’ll try to pull together some photos of a more involved neck reset soon. Anything with a glue-in, dovetail neck involves messy work, steaming out the neck.

For now, though, I’ve strung up this baby and it’s sounding (and more importantly), playing great. 

I suspect this deserves a celebratory tea.

Or, more to the point, how do you repair a hole?

Damaging this was the (relatively) easy part: the owner is a ‘big hitter’. I’ve worked on some of his other guitars and, actually, this one isn’t bad. We’ve caught it reasonably early. This guitar is one of the owner’s favourites though and he wants to do something before it disintegrates into tonewood-sawdust.

As it happens, we’re in luck on this. The majority of the damage is inside the soundhole rosette. This gives us a natural break-line for a repair. It’s much easier to affect a discreet patch with that division between the existing soundboard and some newly-added wood.

With that in mind, I figured the best, and least obtrusive, way to manage this was to replace the entire circle of wood inside the rosette.

Using a trammel and my Dremel-type router, I can cut an accurate circle to replace the damaged part from a cedar board. Then, carefully, I remove the damaged wood right up to the rosetted edge and from underneath the fingerboard extension. The fit for the new wood was perfect first time (hurrah). All I needed to do was to square off the edge that butts against the shoulder brace.

Time for a little support. Effectively, what I’m doing in the photo on the left, above, is ‘extending’ the soundhole braces to support the new wood. This area contributes hardly anything to the overall tone of the guitar so I’m not worried about altering its sound by adding reinforcement here.

And, speaking of reinforcement, that’s what’s happening in the photo on the right. Not only will these shaped pieces of wood help to support that newly glued soundhole edge, they will also strengthen it against future, vicious, pick attacks.

Once it’s all glued up, I can shape the edge of the soundhole and round it over. That narrow circle of cedar would have been far to delicate to survive my doing that before it was part of the guitar.

Time for finishing. I’m doing something a little unusual here. I’ve finished this patched-in soundhole with cyanoacrylate (effectively, Super Glue). I wouldn’t normally use CA for something like this but, in this case, it will soak into the wood and harden it. This will help it withstand all that pick-punishment in the future. I can tint it to better match the colour and, once built up and cured, it can be buffed to a shine (or in this case, a satin sheen).

Last step is to add a custom-shaped, clear, mylar pickguard to a wider area of the guitar. Again, this will give a little more protection to the top. I’ve replaced the existing pickguard on top of that to keep the guitar looking original and give one more barrier against future damage.

Oh, that’s not pretty.

And it’s a shame, as this is a nice guitar. It’s a G&L ASAT (as you can see) but it’s got a bit of a ‘hybrid’ vibe going on. Mahogany neck and body and a tun-o-matic bridge with tailpiece gives a Gibsony vibe while the bolt-on neck and slab body bring things back to the G&L/Fendery end of the spectrum. As a man who appreciates some of the advantages getting the best of all worlds, I quite like this guitar.

So let’s get it fixed.

You can’t really tell from this image but this is actually the second time this guitar has broken in the same place. A second repair is usually more complicated because the residue of the original repair-glue makes it very difficult to ensure a clean joint. Also, this is a reasonably ‘short’ break—there’s not a lot of glueing surface to bear up to string tension.

All of this means that the best chance of long term success with this is to reinforce the repair. A strong and discreet way to handle this reinforcement is a backstrap. We’ve talked a little about backstraps before—the method involves taking a little wood off the back of the head/neck and overlaying new wood in its place to add strength.

First up, though, we need to get those two pieces back together and that calls for some inventive holding/clamping. This repair necessitates the pieces be mated longitudinally which required some thought. Meet the all-new Haze 3-D Fender-Style Neck Clamping System (patent application pending). This contraption allowed me to keep the neck aligned and rigid while I pressed the two pieces together and while the glue cured.

Once the parts are joined again, I can remove some wood from the back of the headstock, going past the break and into ‘good’ wood so that the applied backstrap has something solid to grip. We’re not taking a lot of wood here—around 2mm in this case.

I then search out a piece of mahogany that’s got a reasonably similar grain pattern to the headstock and thickness it to about the same thickness as we removed (in reality, it’s generally a hair over to allow for sanding out). Off to the bending iron to work in a slight curve that will match the transition from flat headstock down to the neck.

OK, I know that’s not the most attractive clamping arrangement ever but it gets the job done. You can see a curved hunk of ash acting as a caul to clamp the curved area. Once the glue’s cured, I tidy up the edges with a magnificent array of routers, rasps, knives and, finally, sandpapers. The overlaid piece is pretty obvious in the photo above right.

A bit of work is required to fill the missing chips and chunks from the break. A little lacquer, some spit and polish and we have a guitar that’s soundly—and pretty discreetly—repaired. It plays great and it sounds great. This repair should outlast the owner if he can avoid Pete Townsending it into a speaker cabinet or something similar.

What’s going on here?

A nice maple neck from a nice 70′s Strat (yes, many of them are very nice—don’t tar everything from that decade with the same ‘seventies-Fenders-are-crap’ brush). However, thirty-and-a-bit years of playing have worn the frets to the point where a refret is needed to get it playing cleanly.

But what’s going on with that fret?

Well, from very early in its history, right up to 1982, Fender usually installed its frets ‘sideways’. Instead of being hammered (old-school) or pressed in from the top of the board, Fender used a weird jig that allowed them to slid the fret in along the slot from the side. This actually gave a pretty level installation along the board which meant less levelling after the frets went in.

When it comes to refretting, however, it’s important to know about this Fender quirk. If you pull these frets out the top of the board as you normally would, you’re likely to take chunks of fretboard and lacquer with them. This is because the fret-tangs didn’t make a ‘path’ in that direction as they went in.

The cleanest (and easiest) way to remove frets on an older Fender is back in the direction they were installed. As this was sideways, along the fret slot from bass to treble side, reversing this and extracting the frets in the treble to bass direction is the way to go.

The fret is tapped out (carefully—very carefully). It’s sometimes necessary to make a small divot in the fret end (see photo) to act as a ‘grip’ for a thin nail-punch. It doesn’t take a lot of pressure to get the fret moving and (as the fret is heated like in a normal refret), it generally comes out very cleanly without any lacquer damage. Hurrah for sideways fretting.

Some older guitars have had a refret put off again and again until there’s essentially just a bit of tang stuck in the board and almost no fret-top left. Those are a little more challenging but his one was straightforward and required minimal swearing.

UPDATE: Working The Board

I was asked, in the comments, whether I’d be cleaning the fretboard on this guitar as I refret. I’ll try to give bit more information about that.

In an ideal world, I’ll be able to keep a maple fingerboard as ‘original’ as possible during a refret. As luck would have it, that was possible with this one. Other than a little clean-up while knocking back the lacquer ‘ramps’ from the original frets, I didn’t need to do much with this neck.

This image shows, roughly, the area shown in the first photo above. The frets have been replaced (although not levelled or polished). You can see, most of this neck’s ‘character’ is still in place, even if it’s lost some of its finger-gunk.

It’s worth stating that this isn’t always possible however. Some considerations:

Chips and lacquer damage can happen, even to the most careful refretter. These can usually be touched-up pretty discreetly. Likewise, for various reasons, it sometimes occurs that ‘sand-throughs’ happen, also requiring touch-up.

In many cases, though, it’s necessary to go a bit further with the work and to modify the fingerboard itself to correct some original or age-induced issue. For example, it’s quite common for older Fenders to develop a ‘hump’ at the high end of the board. This guitar has a very small hump—small enough to need no correction at this time—but larger ones can affect the playability and need to be corrected during a refret. If that’s necessary, the original fingerboard finish is generally a casualty.

As I’ve said, we’ve been lucky that this neck didn’t need too much more than some nice new frets. If the finish or the board needs work, though, don’t shy away from getting it done. A good repair guy will have some tricks to prevent a vintage guitar looking like it has a spanking new neck and it should breathe new life into your old guitar.

I joked over on Google that the Fantastic Super Haze Setup Sale was speeding my inevitable nervous breakdown and descent into madness. It’s true. It can only be a matter of time until I climb a tall building with an air-rifle and begin to seriously smart the skin of innocent passers-by.

If you’re the sort who’s been desensitised to this kind of awful violence by TV and the internet and would like to speed my crazed, pellet-shooting, lunacy, then you should remember there’s still two weeks of January left.

That’s two weeks to pile guitar and bass setups on my sagging, tired shoulders.

And, as if ringside seats at my psychotic incident aren’t enough, remember that you can get these setups done for equally crazy prices. Seriously: €25 for any guitar setup (even those pointy ones with fiddly Floyds) and €35 for a bass including strings*.

It’s like I’m encouraging you to push me over the edge. It’s like I want to shoot plastic pellets at random people. “All the clues were there. He was a quiet type—kept to his workshop mostly.” That’s what they’ll say.

Those things can really sting, you know?

*See here for more

It’s that time again.

All through January, Haze Guitars will be running our Super Setup Sale. Hurrah!

Seriously, hurrah!

For the month of January, you can get a guitar or bass setup done for half-price or even less.

Good, eh?

Why not take advantage of a slow-gig month, or maybe get the best from that new guitar that Santa stuffed into your stocking? Drop me a line and we’ll get your guitars or basses playing their best.

If you’ve a guitar, a setup will cost €25 and will include a fresh set of strings*. This will apply to acoustics, electrics, trem-equipped and even pointy, Floyd-equpped axes for the duration of the sale.

If you’ve a bass, a setup will cost €35. As this one also includes fresh strings, I reckon this is a mega-bargain*.

These crazy-person, sale prices will apply to any instrument booked-in and dropped off at my workshop in the period from the 3rd to the 31st of January.

There’s no upper or lower limit on the number of instruments you can bring. One or forty, whatever works for you.

Surely that deserves a ‘hurrah!’

*A little necessary small print about strings. The strings I’ll be fitting as standard are D’Addario and Martin for the guitars and Rotosounds (four-string) for the bass. If you prefer/need something else, I’ll be happy to use yours or supply some and sort out any difference in costs.

A while back, I outlined a (slightly) unusual method of repairing the broken neck of a Gibson SG. I mentioned that guitar would make another appearance soon and here it is.

The guitar suffered a broken headstock while still in its case. A neck-break in the case was the final straw for the owner—who’s had more than one Gibson require a neck repair— and he wanted to consider options to help prevent it happening again. We talked over the pros and cons of the various solutions and eventually decided on a backstrap overlay.

This methodis sometimes used where the break is too nasty or offers insufficient glueing surface to guarantee a sound repair. A backstrap was not a necessity to repair this particular break (and, indeed, it entailed additional expense to carry out) but the owner wanted to do something that would go towards preventing a reoccurrence.

A backstrap overlay involves removing some wood from the rear of the headstock and some way past the broken section. A patch is cut from new wood and is bent to conform to the curve between headstock-angle and neck. Because the inlaid patch has been bent to shape, its grain has no run-out and remains strong.

I explained to the owner, and I will to you, that this offers no guarantees. However, this method of applying bent wood certainly strengthens a weak area of the guitar and it will be stronger than the original.

The first thing that needs to be done is to repair the existing crack. I’ve discussed this in a previous post so I’m not going into any detail here. A repaired crack is necessary so that the section to accommodate the backstrap can be removed. My usual preference, when doing this, is to run the strap right to the end of the peghead as the inlaid wood is more discrete. In this case, doing so would have removed the serial number and ‘Made in USA’ stamp and I decided keeping these better served the future value of this guitar.

A 3mm section is removed from the back of the headstock. The Saf-T-Planer allows me to do this cleanly right up to the point the neck angle gets in the way. The remaining section along the neck is removed with hand tools.

A piece of mahogony is thicknessed to the appropriate size and cut out roughly to shape. Out comes the trusty bending-iron and I work the wood into a gentle bend to conform to the section I’ve cut in the neck.

Some inelegant, but effective, clamping and glueing and the backstrap is in place.

But it’s not pretty. The patched in piece does allow you to get a look at the bend clearly though. Because the grain in that patch (backstrap) runs—uninterrupted—from end to end it’s much stronger than the piece that was removed.

A little work with routers, drills, knives and sandpaper and the new piece looks a little more like a headstock should. Some touch-up work helps hide the evidence. A (relatively invasive) repair like this can never be completely invisible under a translucent finish but this is pretty discrete.

We’ve repaired and strengthened a broken-necked SG and preserved the serial number. Not a bad few day’s work.

Cross-posted to Guitarless

You know when you paint your sitting room and you break out the masking tape to stick around all the bits you want to prevent getting covered in that weird green colour that’s going on your walls?

Yeah?

Well, I’m certain you know the wonderful curvaceous ins and outs of a Gibson Les Paul.

Imagine having to fiddle about, awkwardly trying to mask off all that beautiful, curvy, binding on the top before you spray it? How much effort and time must that take in the Gibson finishing department every day?

Well, none really. Gibson don’t bother masking the binding here before spraying that sunburst or that Black Beauty. It’s just too much work. It’s far easier to spray over the binding and then scrape it off again.

This Les Paul is being refinished with a black top. I spray solid colour (after some surface prep and sealing coats) over the whole top, let it dry a little (not too much, though) and then scrape the new finish off along the binding. It’s actually pretty easy to use a blade, with a knuckle as a depth-stop, to remove the finish cleanly.

With that done, I’ll let some of the solvents evaporate a day or two before starting on the clear lacquer top-coats (including a little ‘antiquing’ for the binding). This bundle of top-coats then needs to cure before being sanded and buffed out to a gloss—a gloss that I’ll actually knock back with some gentle relicing to get things in keeping with the rest of the guitar.

None more black. None more beautiful.

By the way, you’ll notice that the sides are masked. It’s a lot easier to mask here than on the top and, often (as in this case), you’ll want to keep the top colours off the side.

Cross-posted to Guitarless

Nobody likes to see this. It’s the headstock of a Gibson SG and, as you can see, it’s broken. Ouch.

Something slightly unusual about this is that this guitar suffered a headstock break while still in its case. This is unusual but not unheard of. I’ve seen a few in my time (and I mention it in my general article about Broken Necks). It’s a real pain to hear this but even a good case might not protect your guitar in all circumstances. If you want to be even more safe, you can slacken off the strings before you pop your guitar in its case. Not the most practical solution but it is what it is.

Anyway, we’ve looked at headstock breaks before but I wanted to show you some unusual clamping arrangements on this one.

First off, let’s get the glue pot heating up. I’ll often use hot hide glue for repairs. If you use it correctly, it’s very strong and creep-resistant. I like the ‘traditionalist’ vibe of it too. Depending on the repair, it can be particularly suitable too (as it was in this case).

And the next photo—whoa, what’s going on here?

We’ve looked at various clamping methods before and discussed making custom cauls and whatnot. Sometimes though, headstock breaks can be very soundly and securely clamped by the clever application of ratchet compression straps.

“Are you mental?” I hear you cry.

Nope. If the neck crack is held on by the headstock veneer and, if it mates cleanly and securely, it can often be easier to use this method of getting the break back together. The strap is secured at either end—around the strap-button and through the tuner holes and it can apply a strong, directional pull to keep the break together for glueing.

The block of wood I’ve used at the front of the headstock just protects it. Likewise, the cork padding on the rear of the body. Once the glue has been applied where it’s needed, tightening the ratchet applies the pressure that pulls the cracked headstock together again. There’s plenty of force—in fact you could probably pull the headstock off completely if you over-tightened.

Let the glue cure and clean up the excess with some hot water and a rag (another great advantage of hide glue) and it’s done.

This guitar will be making another appearance soon. Stay tuned.

Incidentally, I didn’t invent this clamping method (more’s the pity). Years ago, Stewart MacDonald’s catalogue used to include occasional tips from guitar techs and luthiers. I read this there and have been thankful for it plenty of times since.

A little ways back, I discussed the removal of an acoustic guitar’s neck for repair. I also talked a little about my opinions on the construction of that particular guitar. The neck-removal post was getting a little long so I decided to split out the reassembly part.

Putting an acoustic guitar back together generally involves some glueing. Sometimes more and sometimes less.

A bolt-on neck will generally just require that the fingerboard extension (the part past where the neck meets the body) be glued to the guitar top while the bolts inside will handle the job of pulling, and securing, the neck into the body.

A dovetail neck joint requires this but also needs glue in the joint itself. Depending on the manufacturer, the face of the heel (the flat portion that butts against the guitar side) may be glued too. Some guitar makers (Martin, for instance) don’t apply glue there while others (Gibson for example) glue it. This is one of the reasons it’s a bit more work to perform a neck reset on a Gibson.

In the case of this particular guitar though, the heel face is entirely flat and is all a glueing surface. The steel box-section tenons must also be glued into their corresponding mortice (channel) in the top and the fingerboard extension must be fixed to the guitar top.

Complicating matters is the fact that there is no force that would pull the neck into the body in the same way as a dovetail or bolt-on joint would. This means I had to clamp the neck into the body in some fashion while the glue cured.

Some inventive clamping-caul making later…

And I had a wooden caul that would fit the curved heel, letting me clamp the neck into the body. Ready to go. I did a couple of dry-runs with no glue as this was a tricky clamping job. When I was happy I could get the clamps on quickly and accurately, I went for it.

That clamp in the photos—running from the soundhole to the heel—wouldn’t normally be required but this instrument’s construction made it necessary. The clamp doesn’t actually contact the soundhole edge but I’ve got a piece of linoleum there to play it safe.

Once the glue’s properly cured, it’s ok to unclamp. I replaced the fret I removed (see the previous post) to help steam off the neck, made sure it was secure and level and I strung this little fellow up to make sure it played well.

This job was a little more involved than it might be on a different guitar. All that’s not important though. What’s important is that this guitar is making music again. That’s always good.

Cross-posted to Guitarless