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Posted

I'm trying to fix up a borrowed guitar right now (LTD FX400) which has the basic Gibson style stop tailpiece. It was sitting around in a storage unit our band shares and being the guitarist/fixer upper guy I told my buddy I would go through the guitar and get it up and running again - it's been neglected/unstrung and missing parts for awhile.

Anyways the first major problem I noticed is that one of the anchors where the stud mounts for the stop tailpiece is really out of whack. You can only thread the stud down about 1/4 of the way before the stud itself sits at an angle toward the headstock end of the guitar (basically it is far from being totally perpendicular to the body of the guitar) and you cannot drive it any further. My guess would be that there is some horrible cross threading in the anchor, because the stud appears to be pretty straight.

Not sure how to go about fixing this, would it be better to attempt to pull the anchor out of the body, trying to bore it out to replace it with a new one? Or are they typically glued in pretty good. Any ideas or advice would be hugely appreciated thank you!

Posted

All good advices here. If the re-.threading don't work you will need to pull the bushing. They are typically never glued, just pressed down. You can make a simple jig from an appropriate threaded rod, a few nuts, a stack of small pieces of mdf or similar or get a bushing puller. I pulled the first few bushings without one and now that I have a puller I'm not very satisfied with the action of that one either.

http://www.stewmac.com/Luthier_Tools/Tools_by_Job/Maintenance/Knob_and_Bushing_Puller.html

Posted

Well, I don't have a tap and die set or the bushing puller so I think I might invest in the bushing puller, because down the road I could probably get more use out of it maybe during a refinish or something. A nice tap and die set looks more expensive than the puller and I wouldn't want to spend money on a tool like that unless I'm ready to spring for one of the nice high quality sets. Anyways thank you for the pointers, much appreciated!

Posted

Any decent auto workshop will have a tap'n'die set you could ask to do the job. Or alternatively you could just buy the size you need at a much cheaper cost. Honestly ive been an engineer for over twenty years and seen some cheap taps in my time but a stoptail insert isn't the hardest of materials so a cheap tap and die from your local hardware store will be more than up for the task. Again any local engineering place or good mechanic would be able to retap this in a couple of minutes.. My advice would be buy a cheap set yourself, they come in handy for all sorts of stuff.

  • 4 weeks later...

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