About 6 weeks ago, I had this 70's yamaha come in with a partially
shattered back, and in desperate need of a neck reset. It had all the
classic signs of needing the neck angle adjusted, almost no frets left,
saddle shaved down to almost nothing, nut shaved down, and still super
low action. The back was cracked horizontally across the tail block
area, and taped together with medical tape, so I recommended that the
back be replaced.
I forgot to take pics before removing the back...
Little did I know, this wasn't the entirety of its
problems. Once I got the back off, I discovered that it only had half
of a tailblock. Where it went? No idea.
After
getting it apart, I had to repair the tailblock, and then I went to work
on the neck. The neck was unlike anything I have seen before, I'm not
sure if this was a factory thing, or someone did a terrible job
resetting it before, but the neck was epoxied on with dowels and
biscuits. I managed to get it partially loose via steaming, but had to
cut through the dowels and splines that were in there to get it off all
the way. Once those were gotten rid of, I reattached the neck with a
tenon and bolt.
The
back was the easiest part, got a nice bookmatched mahogany set, and
matched the stain as best I could. I also went from 4 braces to 5 to
give it some extra protection from previous hulk smashes. Had to putty a
few areas where the old binding chipped the finish coming off and where
the neck removal pulled some finish chips with it, but while it isn't
the prettiest job i've done, its solid as hell. Strung it up this
morning, and god damn this fucker is loud and bright.
Overall, I'm very happy with my results. I wish the guitar would have cooperated a little more so I wouldn't have had to putty some things, and wish I could have gotten it done like a month ago, but we've had a family situation going on that took priority over work.
