Johnny GUitar

I'm sorry, I can't vouch for the sustain of through body versus, stop tailpiece, versus trapeeze. I might however give you a little comfort in that I had a lot of (bad) experince with the rather spartan (as you implied) 52 Les Paul trapeeze bridge. But the tuning problem (that is the big problem IMHO) with it is due to it not merely being a trapeeze tailpiece, but a combination trapeeze tailpice/bridge which is floating. I've seen Justin Adams with Jah Wobble and Robert Plant play one which is anchored and works very well. If you stay clear of a floating bridge (depending on your style, but then again you "bend" your guitars as do I ) and anchor it (the bridge), I wouldn't worry too much about that aspect of a trapeeze tailpiece. I'm sure you really knew that but it wasn't clear in your post. John

Yes, this actually helps a lot (the first sentance that is), in that it gives me a third alternative which I hadn't been aware of before. My previous choices were: oven (which I've done and has worked), buy a neck jig for far more than the cost of the guitar. Extrapolating, there may be a slightly less primative way of applying regulated heat to the fingerboard than heat lamps, but less expensive than buying an expensive tool that I will only use once.

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A HA! Finally! Someone with experince other than me! Do you know what the temperature of the heating mechaism is to straighten a neck? Can you tell me how far back you reverse the bow in order to make it straight under string tension? And please tell me what the "face" of the heating clamp is like (I assume it is a nicely machined flat piece of metal. Does it have indentations where the frets are? Do you need to use different "face" plates for basses and guitars or instruments of differing scale length?). I'm starting to think it might not be that difficult to make one of these kinds of heating jigs. Now, the important stuff! PIZZA! Unfortunately, while I have successfuly straightened a 1968 Fender precision Bass neck (at a low temp of around 140 degrees or so), I have it on very good authority that a standard kitchen gas fired oven IS COMPLETELY INAPPROPRIATE for COOKING PIZZA! I am not kidding! As I understand it, you need a coal or wood fired oven which can reach teperatures of about 1000 degrees F (a gas stove won't go much above 550). That is the temperature which the real piazzarias use! So tonight for dinner... I'm going to throw a frozen Trader joes pizza in a 475 oven and hope for the best! BTW, there must have been a method for straightening necks before these neck heating jigs became somewhat common (I bet they were hard to come by before the 60s/70s), I wonder what they did in those days, eh? John

If the idea of heating the neck is so bad and will damage the finish on the neck, why didn't it do that on my P-bass neck? Why did it fix my P-bass neck that otherwise needed replacement and now plays so well twenty years after the fact?

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Well, the more I look at it the more I agree that even when the neck is "straightened" out (which I still contend is an absolute necessity), it's very unlikely to cure all of the neck's ills. It is unlikely that the "hump" in the last five frets of the fingerboard (the only straight part of the neck) will remain straight, and the rest of the neck will magically unbend to it's original straight shape. (By projecting out with a long straightedge from the "hump" area to see how the neck has warped over the years, I believe it has moved about 1/4" upward; and this bowing appears to be a bit greater right before the 12th fret.) Once the neck is straightend, I might be able to get away with a radical fret dressing above the 12th fret to make it somewhat playable, but either way I address this I will immediately run into a bridge problem (the wooden floating flat top type bridge is all the way down and the tumbscrews are gone, so if I have to raise it, I will have to do some minor surgery to the bridge). So if I were to only look at this as a "hump" problem, I would need to remove I guess about 3/16" of material from the fingerboard in those last five frets (which seems like a lot) and refret and then do a lot of work on the bridge (probably make another one). If I tend to go with the "bake and shake" straightening method, I might be able to get some milage out ot it by shimming the neck away from the body. When I got the guitar and first took the neck off I found a small shim close to the body which probably made the action better in the lower registers but clearly exacerbated the problem above the 12th fret. But as I said above, I agree that it is unlikely that the resulting straightness of the neck would line up with the straightness above the 12th fret. Anyway, I need to continue reading the articles people have made reference to. Keep the ideas coming, and if anyone can tell me what the basic temperature is on those electric neck straightening clamps that would give me a start to my original question. Thanks, John

I have an ancient (30s or 40s) junker lap steel which was given to me a long time ago. It appears to have a 23" scale. I'm sure I've seen ones with a rather long scale (I think longer than a standard guitar; was it John Paul Jones who I saw playing it?). My initial thought with your project is just build a standard Telecaster and get one of those appliances for the nut which raises the height for lap steel use. Maybe you can build a bridge appliance which accomplishes the same thing at the bridge since the inotantion adjustment becomes unecessary when used as a lap steel. If you were building it for me, I'd just ask you to build two seperate guitars since a lap steel is little more than a plank with a PU on it.

Thanks guys. First, there really is no truss rod adjustment. That was the first thing I was going to try when I saw the problem. I took the neck off....no adjustment (maybe no truss rod). Hoser Rob is right, there is some sort of hump above the 12th fret (IIRC) but by putting straight edges against the frets I could see that the bow became more pronounced as it neared the upper frets (9th and 10th IIRC) and straightend out very quickly above that area. (I believe the neck straightens out there because two things happen: 1) The neck gets very thick, massive and squared off, because. 2) The neck bolts to the guitar at this point.) So it acts like a hump but it's not in the fingerboard it's the way the neck bows and straightens out. I know there are specialized tools for heating and clmaping necks to do this procedure, but, since I've done it in an oven before, I know it can be done without hurting the finish. (I willl note that I did actually pay more for my Silvertone Kay than I paid for my 68 Precision Bass, but I bet the P-bass is more valuable than the Kay and I intend to do all the work on this guitar myself). I do have a concern about the oven temperature since it has to be hot enough to soften the glue sufficently, but not so hot as to damge the finish as you guys have suggested. I have to imagine 120 degrees would not be hot enough since there are deserts which have that as a day time temperature. I would think that 180 would be too hot and might damage the finish. Just a note regarding the steam suggestion. I did a procedure like this years ago (without know what I was doing) on an old junker guitar. I used a kettle. The neck moved WAY more than I expected under clamping. I just want to add that steam has much more heat energy than water of the same temperature (physics: it takes a lot of energy to change water of 210 degrees F to a steam -- a gas -- of 210 degress) so it doesn't surprise me that using steam to do this would result in damage to the finish. I will defintely look at the pages that Hoser Rob mentioned. Still hoping that someone will have have experience with this procedure. John

Hello, I'm new here though I've been to the Project Guitar pages a few times and have been very intimadated by the quality of work I've seen. So this is a reapir question and not a building question (I hope that's OK here -- I couldn't find a guitar repair forum like this). I did try the search function here and didn't find anything involving my question (but I did find a few rather humorous exchanges involving truss rods ). I have recently acquired an old Silvertone Kay. I believe it's a Value Leader model guitar from the late 50s or early 60s. I intend to use it for slide so I'll probably use medium to heavy gauge strings and I'll be changing the tuning a lot. I immediately noticed a fairly bad bow in the neck such that it frets out above the 12th fret entirely. There is no truss rod adjustment (is it possible that there is no truss rod?). I have done a procedure where the neck is heated and clamped to remove a bow to an old P-bass neck (I did this twenty years ago, this procedure was rather easy and worked perfectly and still holds up today). Unfortunately, I can't remember the specifics of how its done and since there is no truss rod adjustment, I want to get it right the first time. Here's what I would do (as close as I can remember) if no one can help me: 1) remove the neck from the body and place in an oven heated to about 150 degrees F for about 20 minutes (this heats up the glue between the fingerboard and neck and gets it soft). 2) Immediately remove it from the oven and put it into a clamping mechansim (two small wood blocks, one at the nut and one at the highest frets against a piece of angle iron parallel to the fingerboard, with a "C" clamp at the apex of the bow on the back side of the neck clamping to the angle iron -- all protected with pieces of carpet as to not mar the wood). 3) After snugging up the clamp (so the neck has not moved) tighten up the clamp until the neck is first straight, and then a bit (?) more (introducing a slight front bow) in order to counter act the string tension and over come the initial bow. (Since my neck under string tension appears to have a bow of about 3/32" I was thinking of going to at least 1/32" of front bow) 4) Leave in the clamping mechanism for several days. Then reattach the neck and restring the guitar. My main questions are about the oven time and temperature and how far to reverse bow the neck in the clamps. If anyone can give me any advice I'd really appreciate it. I will say that this procedure is not that rare (the one I did on my P-bass was under the guidance of a freind who was studying lutherie and he seemed pretty matter of fact about it). It is mentioned briefly in Dan Erlewine's Guitar Player Repair Guide. I would recommend people might want to learn this procedure as it can cure an otherwise seemingly unplayable instrument. Thanks, John B.