gibson b-45-12 neck joint
Bill McKirgan
on having it repaired. The instrument is in need of a neck reset and
I'm clearing off my work bench and getting my espresso machine ready
for shooting some steam into the neck to body joint. I'm just
wondering if anyone happens to know what kind of joint is in there.
A compound dovetail, like they do in the Martin factory?
A regular dovetail?
A mortise and tenon deal?
Two or three dowel pins?
The guitar is a wreck, but will be a great opportunity for me to learn
the craft. In addition to resetting the neck, the shoulders need to
be pushed back out and reinforced, and there are some places near the
fingerboard where the top has been pushed down.
Thanks for any help
JD
scares me. Are you sure you don't want to try this
out on some offshore POS of no vintage importance
first? Fewer things are sadder than a good old
guitar made worse or totally unrepairable by
somebody "learning the craft".
Bill McKirgan
Thanks JD,
Pins is not what I expected, but that's probably why it failed.
Actually, I've practiced on many of the types of guitars you suggest
for learning the craft. On my first neck reset I was expecting pins
but discovered a compound dovetail. As for this Gibson, there are
other problems which may make it too expensive to take to a
professional ideal for an amateur like me.
--Bill
Ed Edelenbos
"JD" wrote in message news:00bcce44$0$23482$c3e...@news.astraweb.com...
> Regular dovetail, no dowel pins. "Learn the craft" scares me. Are you sure
> you don't want to try this out on some offshore POS of no vintage
> importance first? Fewer things are sadder than a good old guitar made
> worse or totally unrepairable by somebody "learning the craft".
>
Judging by the B-45's I've played, I wouldn't worry about "vintage
importance". The point is a reasonable one but unless the fellow wants it
back because it was his grandfathers (or some such back story), I'd say...
go for it.
Ed
JD
Yeah, they aren't a favorite of mine either BUT
more than a few times I've seen repairs done by an
exceptional tech (Cat Fox and an old beat-to-Hell
J-45 comes to mind) where the guitar came out
better than anything the factory ever produced.
JD
For that matter, what she did to my '63 Framus was
nothing short of incredible.
Ed Edelenbos
"JD" wrote in message news:00bd255e$1$23807$c3e...@news.astraweb.com...
Point taken.
Ed
Kevin Hall
no doubt accounts for their characteristic lively sound. In the late 60s
and 70s most guys who used them on stage had 'one for stage, one for the
shop', and rotated them. Similar deal as with the old Rickenbacher basses
which were so popular then.
The Gib. bodies want to fold in the middle and things start letting go, so
while you're at it you will want to check every top and back brace. Those
were undersized and poorly glued with a very brittle adhesive, so tended to
let go at the ends and at the crotch of the X. You will probably find the
X brace is doubled. Bridgeplates were a problem in them as well, with
several ill-conceived versions including plywood being used over the life of
the model. If it's the adjustable job the bridge and plate will have 12
holes for the pins plus 2 for the adjusters and 2 for tiny machine screws,
all of which drastically weaken bridge, top and plate. Gibson tried to
remedy that by going to a tailpiece and pinless bridge for a while, but
those mostly sounded like crap and the downward pressure just buggered the
tops in a different manner.
By the late 60s they went to a ridiculous spruce lintel arrangement,
supported by uprights on the inside of the rims. Those held up a spruce
brace about 3/4" by 5/8" or so to a point about 1/2" below the underside of
the top. A 1/4" allen screw went through the middle of that with a sort of
metal pad on the end so you could wind the screw in and put upward pressure
on the underside of the top in the front of the bridge area. Killed any
vestige of tone stone dead of course, so many of those were hoiked out over
the years. The same idiotic device was used on J-200s of the period as
well.
The joint is a straight-forward compound dovetail, usually shallower than
Martins' version. They spray body and neck as an assembly of course so
there will be touchup required after the set is done.
While the neck is off, secure the headblock and top where those tend to get
bullied about, do any reinforcing necessary to stabilize that area,
replace the bridgeplate with flat-sawn maple and make a new bridge deleting
all the hardware and extraneous holes. Secure any loose or cracked braces
and consider reinforcing the top in the area from soundhole to neck block
with a view to slowing down the inexorable tendency for the thing to hinge
at the soundhole.
The result can be a decent playing instrument which retains the Gibson
12-string sound but produces more of it with better defined trebles. The
amount of work required to do that can easily excede the potential value of
the instrument if done by a pro, but can be well worthwhile if you do it
yourself.
Many performers have done very good work with the old B-45 12s, noteably
Gordon Lightfoot and Ian Tyson, so if you're into that folk groove it's a
worthwhile project.
KH
"Bill McKirgan" <bill.m...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:139af136-a436-4443...@u7g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...
Bill McKirgan
professional repair and knew it was not cost-effective. Knowing that
I have been dabbling in this area, he presented the instrument to me
as something I can practice on. Thanks for your comments and
suggestions.
On Jan 3, 8:27 pm, "Ed Edelenbos" <e...@spookeasy.net> wrote:
> "JD" wrote in messagenews:00bd255e$1$23807$c3e...@news.astraweb.com...
> > Ed Edelenbos wrote:
>
> >> "JD" wrote in messagenews:00bcce44$0$23482$c3e...@news.astraweb.com...
> >>> Regular dovetail, no dowel pins. "Learn the craft" scares me. Are you
> >>> sure you don't want to try this out on some offshore POS of no vintage
> >>> importance first? Fewer things are sadder than a good old guitar made
> >>> worse or totally unrepairable by somebody "learning the craft".
>
> >> Judging by the B-45's I've played, I wouldn't worry about "vintage
> >> importance". The point is a reasonable one but unless the fellow wants
> >> it back because it was his grandfathers (or some such back story), I'd
> >> say... go for it.
>
> >> Ed
>
> > For that matter, what she did to my '63 Framus was
> > nothing short of incredible.
>
> Point taken.
>
> Ed- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Madgamer
Thanks Keven,
I always wanted a brief history of the B45. I don't think it was a
good guitar from the start. Other than Guild who by the late 60's built
12 from the ground up as 12 strings with the extra bracing and other
needed features. When did the guitar builders start to realize that 12
strings needed to be built differently?
In 76 I bought a Guild F412 from a dealer order even though he had a
letter from Guild saying the F412 had been discontinued and was limited
to what they had on hand. The funny thing is that it arrived in less
than 10 days.
I played it for 25+ years with the neck coming up ever so slowly and
having the bridge cut down to a point where things needed to be
addressed. In 25+ years some of the inlay on the neck was loose, the
trim was coming out.
I found a guy who removed the neck and frets and planed the neck
correctly and ferreted it. He reglued the trim and inlays and carved a
new bridge out of a solid piece of ebony.
When he put it together he called me into the shop and showed me the
neck joint. It was not stable and had been that way he figured sense
day one on top of which the serial # indicates it is a 1974. I did not
play much on the upper neck in those days and he thinks it might have
been the last F412 shipped because of the unstable neck. Any player
with any knowledge could see the neck was not right.
He had to order some Maple shims and after 3 months of finding a
place that would sell him the things without some minimum order amount
he out it back together.
If I and you ever get together in the TX gathering you have to play
it to believe how loud it is and the action is as good as most 6 strings
and it even has a matrix 2 pickup installed. My playing partner
complains it don't need any amplifying because it is so loud.
I thought you would like this story.
Larry A
Kevin Hall
will still be responsive. Some of those old B-45 12s sounded very good
indeed, but were fragile as noted. A lot of the 12-fret slothead Martin 12
sound grand but again they have troubles keeping it all together in spite of
added bracing and the short neck. The principal problem remains the same;
the body folding at the 'hinge' where the soundhole weakens the top and the
waist constricts the body.
The small Guild 12s may have been the worst examples of that phenom., since
the waist is very tight and the upper legs of the X are terminated much too
far down the body to offer much in the way of structural strength where it
is needed most. Over the decades I've seen dozens and dozens of those
things on which people have paid to have neck resets done, several times on
some. There's little or no point resetting the neck unless you address the
real cause of the problem; poor top design. Of course most folks don't
consider those instruments to be worth the cost of re-topping, which is a
shame really. With a well engineered lid on them they can be delightful.
A few years ago a chap from this newsgroup sent me one of those Guild 12s on
which he'd spent over $900 having neck resets and bridge shaves etc. done
over about a 6 year period. The guitar was part of his youth and he wanted
to keep it no matter how much it cost. By the time I got hold of it the
neck had been reset to the point where the fingerboard tongue had to be
elevated and shimmed in order to compensate for the pronounced bend in the
body and the top collapsing into the soundhole. I re-topped it with a
properly designed replacement and got things back to where they should be
for a total cost of just under what he'd already spent on techs messing
about with the symptoms instead of the problem. Worked like a charm and
sounded first rate.
The modern trend toward 'A-frame' upper bout bracing goes a long way toward
solving the problem. If the body is sufficiently stiff from the crotch of
the X brace to the headblock then you don't need to brace the rest of the
top like a barn and you can get wonderful light response out of a very
strong body.
Guild neck joints have always been a bit troublesome to undo. Like Gibson
they also choose to finish body and neck together, which makes resets more
expensive and time consuming since the tech has to get into lac. touchup
which is uneccessary on Martins and other makes which spray necks and bodies
separately.
For your repairshop to claim they had to wait months to find maple shims for
a single neck joint is a joke, or at best a very poor excuse for stalling
on the job. Any competent shop should be able to make up their own veneer
shims in a matter of minutes.
Thanks for the invite, but it's extremely unlikely I'll be attending the
Texas gatherings. The hassles at the border these days and flying in
general are just way too much bother. I'm not about to let some
semi-literate border guard stick his head up my ass to check for explosives
so I can attend a music convention or have a beach holiday. ;-) The world
has gone mad, so Deb and I are content to stay here in our backwoods lair.
All the best,
KH
"Madgamer" <madg...@mchsi.com> wrote in message
news:ufKdnceaTOm3zN_W...@mchsi.com...