Repair And Restoration
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How would you approach a neck reset where the heel has already cracked?
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How would you approach a neck reset where the heel has already cracked?
I have a red-label Yamaha FG-180 that’s in overall nice condition, but the neck angle is poor and the heel is already cracked. I’d like to attempt a neck reset, but I’m unsure how to proceed given the existing crack. Should I approach the reset as usual, or plan an alternate method because of the damage?
Has anyone here tackled a reset on a guitar with a pre-existing heel crack? I know a crack can develop during the reset process, but I haven’t seen guidance on handling it when it’s already there.
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4 Replies
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Just did neck removal on a ’74 FG75 with a crack in the heel (although it looks like the crack is possibly a lamination joint due to straight and clean line, but not sure if they laminated heels on this model). At any rate, I used a neck jig so as to push the whole heel up and out instead of trying to finagle the top half out seperately from the bottom half. You probably know better then I that Yamaha ‘s from the 70’s on can be tough. I’ve done three now (two 70’s red labels and this one) and I used four probes (removed the 14th and 15th frets and applied two probes per fret) to get as much heat to the heel as possible. On this last one, I let it heat up for an hour. I got the outside of the heal up to about 140 and I believe the inside around the probes got up to about 150. I applied water sparingly to the holes with a pipette. After the hour, I finagled the neck by hand and got the top half loose, and then weasled the bottom half for a while until movement. Then applied upward pressure with the jig. It came up and out easily. I had some tear out on the fingerboard extension (once again, can be tough as glue is unknown) even after taking time and being careful. Will easily be repaired. The dovetail joint came out super clean. One thing I’ve been doing is re-enforcing around where the truss rod square end is. I’ve noticed that on every neck, the end has twisted a bit into the groove designed to keep the end from moving. I straighten out the end and add mahogany above and below into the groove and tight to the truss rod end to secure and lock it into place. For the heating process, I use a soldering pen set up which has been working quite well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjcX1MZUzYI&list=PLonJmw_G_nrfLTfFG2mRtM7yM3NtDTGX6&index=49
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Oh wow, I saw your soldering iron heating stick on another forum (maybe the Yamaha one?) and I thought it was really cool. If my heat probes don’t pan out, I might build one myself. Thanks for the advice! I definitely know these are a bear to work on.
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Hi Nathan. Here are the dovetail measurements from the FG75. Don’t know if they’re the same but may get you in the ballpark.
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Thanks! That’s a huge help. I’ll post my results in the Neck Reset forum when I get it off.
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