Hi All,
I have a repair question and I would appreciate getting anyone's wisdom before I hand my guitar over to a luthier.
My Stringphonic Advanced model suffered a fall and now the seam between the headstock and neck has cracked/opened—though it snaps back into place.
What’s the best route for repair with breaks like this?
Comments
Note, I believe Elderly Instruments might be able to advise on this and repair it, but I want to hear from others first.
Elderly would be good. It's a somewhat serious injury and that joint is unfamiliar to like 99% of north american repairpeople, so you just want to find someone good. It's definitely repairable but someone who can think through a problem would be the best person.
I'd go with Elderly if they are close by.
Seems to be whenever you see a neck joint failure on these types of guitars its on that original selmer type neck joint. some interesting info on it on Frank Fords site http://www.frets.com/FretsPages/Musician/Guitar/JazzStyles/SelmerFix/selmerfix.html
Thanks for this! My local luthier--the only good one left--was not aware that the headstock is joined with a tendon joint.
Plans are easily looked up. Not a high res version but the headstock joint is visible
This is a totally weird Selmer specific joint. I'm not sure if any other type of guitars have it.
I also don't know if the stringphonics use the joint as pictured or in some other internal design.
Not sure if you've thought of it, but you might contact Stringphonic directly to get advice on what sort of joint is lurking underneath there. They might even have a tip or two for the luthier that gets the repair job.
And depending on how you feel about it, you may consider sending this to someone like Martin Tremblay in Montreal as he's repaired many of these types of guitars. If you find someone local, great! But just in case you don't, you might consider Martin instead.
This is all great advice. I sent an email to Martin and the Stringphonic folks. To Buco's earlier comments, it's disappointing that my local luthier was not aware of the tendon joint in the neck but not surprising.
My friend also has Stringphonic Advanced and the same thing happened to him. The guitar fell and the headstock came apart in a clean break. He brought it to a luthier who specializes on upright basses and got it fixed pretty quick. He said that it broke off cleanly and just had to be glued back and clamped. Very simple repair apparently and you would not know that it was repaired just by looking at it since it broke cleanly at that joint.
Apparently this is pretty common with that type of joint and have seen it happen to several guitars from different builders who use that method.