The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

Hi all , I'm back with news about the neck of my 795. In fact there are no news!!! After 2 months under pressure I can safely say that nothing has chenged. I'd put a 5mm thick piece of wood between the 8th and 9th frets ( seems to be the measured middle of the neck ) and fret thick plastic strips in the first and last frets and then clamped a rectangular steel bar ( clamped where the plastic strips are ). Ok there wasn't much heat ( no more than 18/19° .
Should I increase the thickness of the wood bettween the 8/9 th frets ?
place that piece elsewhere on the fingerboard ?
put the guitar out in the sun during the day time ?
start removing the neck in order to replace it by another one ?

Any advice from you guys would be very much appreciated !

Bonne année 2015 à tous and a Happy New Year to all the others!

I'm still ( now and again ) trying to get my 795 completely playable but despite prolonged periods of torture the neck always comes back to its back bowed shape. I'm toying with the idea of defretting it , sanding the fretboard straight and refretting it.

I have recently attempted 2 refretting jobs. The first one ( which in fact is my 4th one ever ) was on a unidentified Les paul type neck and didn't turn out too badly - still some edges to get rid of on the fret ends . The 2nd was on my Ovation celebrity cc67 - a guitar bought cheap many years ago on which the first 7 frets had some mighty grooves worn into them. Both necks have binding - on the Ovation (in order to avoid the fret end problem ) I took more time and rounded off all the fret ends BEFORE setting them in their slots . A lot of measuring and re-measuring the frets before fitting but my patience paid and the result is great ( to my eyes and fingers )! Obviously that doesn't make a luthier of me but it does encourage me to try to rectify the 795.

Earlier on in this thread RSBBass and Barry mentioned a possible bad refretting and you, Barry, mentioned an oversize refret . Does that mean frets too big ? Or too fat in their slots ?

The back bow means that I will have to "flatten a hump" of at least 1mm around the 10th fret . Will the fact that the fret board will be thinner there have any other consequence than visual? Please bear in mind that this is a guitar that didn't cost me much ( no, I don't have any expensive guitars even though some are dear to me ) , I won't pay to have this done , it wouldn't be financially justifiable , Vantages like this one don't fetch much here in France but at least it would be playable/sellable.

I need to modify the photos before posting - will do so later...

By the way the seller told me that he'd lent the guitar to a friend who kept it for a long while and returned it in its present condition. I think he may have been glad to get rid of it to a Vantage fan like me - I bought it without asking questions after the AV 325 he sold me ... caveat emptor!

If the frets are too big for the slots they will force the neck into a back-bow. You could either get frets witha smaller tang or measure the ones you have an use a saw with the proper sized cut to enlarge the slots. Good luck,

Thanks for your reply RSB. It's obvious when you think about it - I should do so more often!

Although the frets seem fairly worn ( but then the guitar carries a serial no 2020332 and can't be that young ) it's quite possible that they're not the originals. In any case , whatever I do later they have to come out!! So I'll start by doing that...

If you carefully heat the fret with soldering irong they tend to come out with less chipping.

This tool is expensive but the process could be duplicated.
http://www.stewmac.com/Luthier_Tools/To ... arber.html

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Thanks for the tip Jorg - but my intention is/was to change the frets.

I say was ..... the old frets are out and the neck is still just as bowed despite 24 hours under pressure to straighten it. I really that 24 hrs isn't long but I can't help being a little disappointed. What also pi....s me off is that even if I wanted to sand the finger board to straight there wouldn't be much fingerboard left in the middle of the neck ! A straight line from the top of the board at the nut to the top of the board at the last fret leaves only 1.5mm of board at the 8th fret ! ( The board is about 4mm thick ). Not to mention that should the board be preventing the back bow from being worse ( mechanically ) the fact of thinning it will make things even worse.

My conclusion as of today is that while I'm at it I may as well (try and ) take the board off and see what's going on underneath. I could always flatten the neck / change the trussrod and refit a/the board and refret. None of that requires much investment ( other than time and that's what I've got most of ! ).

Nevetheless and as before all good ideas are welcome!

by the way "Je suis Charlie"

Pressure yes, but are you also doing it in a humid environment?
Moisture (or lack of it) is what caused the bow, and it will require moisture to allow the wood fibres to become elastic enough to stretch.

Also, 24 hrs is too short a time for anything to happen. Again, it likely took a long time to get warped, so it will take time to correct it.
Patience is needed mon ami.

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Patience I have,Barry, a humid environment I don't have! I've always done what I can to make the house as healthy as possible.

If I wrap the clamped neck in a constantly damp towel do you think that could be efficient?

I would avoid wetting the wood. That will swell the wood fibres and cause damage. Too much of a good thing you know?

There's no guarantee that you can return the neck to its correct position, but hanging a weight from the middle with the neck horizontal (bow up) in a high humidity environment might just do it. For most practical purposes, that usually means someplace close to the shower in the bathroom if at all possible. Over time you should see some progress. Alternatively, a humidifier close by, perhaps under a plastic "tent" might accomplish the same thing. You want to avoid condensation though.

The idea is to raise the humidity considerably higher than the ambient room reading so that the wood will start to absorb some water vapour. Tricky to do without a controled environment. Too much can cause it to move too much the other way.

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"A little song, a little dance. A little seltzer down your pants." -Chuckles the Clown
Guitars: https://legend.barryeames.com
Music/Pix/Videos: https://getback.barryeames.com