The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

yesterday i picked up an epiphone ea-250. (sorry....no pics....but there is one on this site somewhere to give a general idea of what im talking about.

this guitar is a bolt neck hollowbody along the lines of a 335. unfortunately, the body is slightly warped at the neck joint-enough so that even with the neck perfectly straight and the bridge all the way down the strings are almost 3/8 inch off of the neck. being as the neck is straight, a truss rod adjustment will do no good. i can see two possible soloutions to this.

1. shim the neck-maybe the easier soloution....but a rather unattractive one, with as much as id have to shim it.

2. this is the tough one.....the bridge that is on this guitar currently is a tune-o-matic style bridge that you would find on an archtop, with the wooden base. now, being that this wooden base is already pretty short, id be hard pressed to come up with a shorter one. but i could mount the bridge directly to the body. the problem with this, however, is that the top is rather thin and might not be able to support the bridge being mounted directly to it. so i was thinking that if i got a piece of wood carved to the contour of the body-small enough that i could fit it inside the pickup hole-and glue it in under where the brige is mounted, that this would give me the stability needed to mount the bridge directly to the body...and thus lowering it to the point where the action could be corrected.....and making it so that the bridge is fixed in place instead of being held on by string tension and moving around all the time....i hate that....but the problem with having the bridge that low is that the bridge saddles would be lower than the string hieght coming off of the trem (more or less a bigsby style).
if i were to string it under instead of over the bar, it would solve this problem, but then the trem would be backwards. another way to do this would be to have some kind of bar mounted between the bridge and the trem to hold the strings lower, but i would rather not try to do this. what i was thinking of doing instead was making a spacer to go where the trem spring goes and locking down the trem completely, as i never really use trems anyway, and it wouldnt be impossibly altering it as i could convert it back at any time. this would give me the effect of a fixed bridge and tailpiece.....and slightly increase tuning stability.


i just want to know....am i crazy for wanting to do all tht work? or should i just shim the neck? or is there another soloution that is completely passing me by?

tough call. i can see what you mean, and there's reasons to go both ways.

i think the answer lies in the question: what do you want from this guitar? Is it all original? And how do you balance the value of it with how much it would cost to replace it with something that doesn't have this problem? (not that you want to, but it has to be asked.

my opinion off the top of my head is that you should shim the neck and leave the bridge and trem all in its original state. You didn't mention what the string height from the pickups would be after those changes, but it would be lower than stock, so you'd also have to adjust the pickups- all of it sounds like trying to take the guitar out of its normal adjustment range and make changes to make it work.

most probably the problem is that the neck pocket block and the body of the guitar have warped slightly- this is rather common in vintage hollowbodies of this age. I have a Hoshino-built that had exactly the same problem. If this is the case, then trying to correct a problem at the neck pocket by changing the bridge is going the wrong way- trying to fix one problem by creating another in the oppostie direction.

The real, correct answer is most likely to shave the neck slightly to change the angle of it- but that's something you'd want to do very very carefully, only when you know exactly how far to go to get the right effect. To do that, install it with a temporary shim to find out the difference needed. In my case it was about the thickness of two matchbook covers. I had to shim, mount, test, disassemble, and reshim like six times before I got it right- then suddenly everything was right, and the guitar felt like it had settled into the groove it liked.

In fact, this was so successful I just left it that way. A hollowbody has nothing to fear losing sustain- it has way plenty. Best of all, you can make this repair in an hour of careful effort, no expense, and be able to compeltely reverse it and return it to the way it was within minutes, with zero chance of irreversable damage.

So- you asked. You should shim it, leave the bridge stock as much as possible. It'll be completely playable and you'll be happy!

im not 100% sure if the bridge is original or not, most of the pictures ive seen of these have roller bridges like a jaguar, but everything else is 100% original. im going to disable the trem either way, but in such a way that i will still have all original parts and can covert it back to normal in a matter of minutes.

pickup height isnt an issue, there would still be more than enough room.

an even with changing the bridge, i could still convert it back to original without any visible evidence, the most there would be is two small holes-about the size of the posts for the bridge-less than 1/4 inch-that would be underneath where the feet of the bridge are now.

the body is indeed warped. the neck pocket block had seperated from the body slightly and the interior of the cutaways is actually pushed in to the point where the binding has broken free of the sides and sticks out about 1/8 of an inch, with some minimal chipping of the finish. this damage appears to be irreparable and s the only reason that ive even considered doing this modification in the first place.

at any rate, i also want to find a way to make the bridge completely stationary. as is often the case with guitars like this, (ive had three other boltneck hollowbodies-two teiscos and an eko) at least in my opinion, the tailpiece doesnt line up perfectly with the neck and the string tension pulls the bridge in whatever direction it is off...so the strings arent centered on the neck in the first place...a stationary bridge would fix this. and since i rest my hand on the bridge alot when i play, i also often push it out of tune.

as i said before, if not for the irreparable damage by the neck pocket, i wouldnt even be considering this. because of this damage, this guitar will never be a perfect example in mint condition, thus any thing i do to make it more playable is a plus, at least in my opinion. one of the reasons that i collect guitars like this as opposed to vintage american stuff is that these guitars can be modified (if necessary) and it doesnt immedialtely kill the value. with the bright red finish, it really is a beautiful, eye catching instrument (aforementioned blemishes aside) and i have no plans of altering that in the least.

i probably will try to shim the neck, but if i do go through with the rest of it, i will definitely make sure that it is well documented with photos, which i will post here.

Fredrum:

Is the wood itself torn, or has the glue joint failed? If you remove the neck pickup, do you gain any access to the neck block at all? If so, you might be able to use a glue syringe to inject some epoxy into the mating surfaces between the block and the body.
That may buy you back enough room to shim or shave the neck to make up the rest.
I bought a Rickenbacker 330 copy that had a broken neck joint. The cardboard box it came in had a support under the neck behind the nut, but no support under the body by the neck, so one drop during shipping and...sproing!
I was fortunate in that one of my childhood friends is into guitar building. He steamed the neck joint apart and routed out the old neck block and installed a new larger block. He then grafted an extension onto the neck tenon to lengthen it. The neck reglued in very well. Also, fortunately, I have another friend who works and Fender's repair center in Nashville. He was able to touch up the poly finish around the neck joint so the repair is virtually invisible. I made sure I bought a properly fitting Rickenbacker case for it so the neck doesn't get knocked off again!
I offer the story only to illustrate that home repairs can be made with great effect and with little cost. That's the great thing about these guitars. If the worst happens, you haven't risked all that much.
Let us know how it goes.

Eric

Hey Fredrum!

Just joined here, haven't seen you since the last time I was on the Univox group. Sounds like a heck of a project you got here, my sympathies. I came across a similarly damaged dog-orphan 250 horrifically beyond repair, but I took all the electrics, the pickguard, and the lyre-style tailpiece out of it. Also saved the neck, but the fingerboard has been badly scalloped for some reason. (Hate to think!)

The body had the same damage you describe here, but with very significant deck cracks the entire length too. No saving this puppy. Kinda toying with building a body for it, but that neck...

Anyhoo, I just put up some pix of a 250 I bought new in '72, and an Aria Pro II Ironman Standard I got on EBay a while back. Reviews in the respective sections, pix on the Treasures page.

Cya around!

--Ray