Viewing entries tagged
clamps

Major heel break :: Rickenbacker 4001 bass

July 18, 2016

A pretty gnarly heel break on a 1987 Rickenbacker 4001 stopped in this morning. The player admits he's pretty rough on his bass but has no idea how this happened. He just opened the case one day and ~!!!BAM!!!~ found this carnage.

He did mention he left it in a hot car once, so extreme heat could have helped pop the neck apart. It came in strung to pitch and when I went to slacken the strings the neck immediately fell backwards. The neck was only held to the body by a thin slice of wood. Yikes!

That thin slice of wood ran up the neck like a wave, so the trick was figuring out how to clamp this piece down. The heel itself was straight forward, but how to go about that piece running up into the neck ...

I ended up wrapping a large industrial rubber band around the crack running up the neck first and then the clamps. The rubber band worked out extremely well and saved me from fitting a time consuming caul. Rubber bands to the rescue!

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Headstock repair :: Fender Tim Armstrong Hellcat

June 23, 2016

A Fender acoustic in with a broken headstock. Part of the break follows the scarf joint and then on the bass side it goes vertical. Fortunately it was a nice clean break and hinged on the overlay (ie still attached).

My glue of choice on a clean headstock break is hot hide glue. It dries super hard and is not susceptible to creep like yellow or white glues. Creep is when the glue joint slowly deforms under load.

Check out the video below for the repair and subscribe to my Youtube channel.

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Soundhole damage :: Taylor 612-C

June 15, 2016

A common acoustic repair shown here is damage to the sound hole. This section was broken in two places and hinged at the rosette's inner ring. The fix is to fit and glue a supporting cleat inside the sound hole. Once I make the cleat, I like to glue the break and install the cleat in one shot. For bonus points, I also slightly age the new cleat so it looks like an older repair.

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Short circuit & loose frets :: Ibanez BTB775PB [9.8 lbs]

June 7, 2016

A beastly Ibanez 5 string bass in for an intermittent short circuit and fret buzz. I traced the output issue to a bad 25k volume pot that needed to be replaced (see video below for the replacement). As for the fret buzz, treble side fret ends 12-20 were playing it high and loose. The inexpensive fix was to glue and clamp them back down. Doing a fret level after they were locked back down would have further improved clean playing up the neck.