Broken Guitar Neck on a
Gretsch White Falcon
Fixing a broken guitar neck with a long trailing break is not a
hard task, but when the break is clean, there needs to be some
specialized work, or else it will not withstand the string
tension. This break had very little area left to connect
anything to, leading us to come up with a very solid solution
Our specialty is surgically repairing broken guitar necks and
broken guitar headstocks when there is not much area to be
reconnected. This is where we kick butt and other shops end up
telling you to toss it, or leave you with a literal screw job
holding your parts together.
Take a look at this broken headstock on a reissue Gretsch
(not spelled Gretch) White Falcon. |
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| There she sits, as it came in.
Ouch! |
A closer look at the remaining
piece of the fracture we had to work with |
A good look at the back. There was
about 1.5 inches of break area to attach. |
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| The truss rod nut was exposed from
the back. |
Here we melted wax and protected
the truss rod nut, the threads, as well as stopped any glue from
getting into the truss rod channel. Later with modest hear, the
wax will easily fall out |
We setup a clamp system to hold
the neck and headstock together and get us something to start
from. |
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| Here is the front of the headstock
after being first glued. At this point, the surface area of the
joint alone would not have enough strength to withstand the
string pull. |
A look at the back of the joint
after initial gluing. |
To make the joint stringer, we
decided to drill two 1/4 inch round channels. one on each side
of the truss rod. We would then insert two 1/4 inch maple
dowels in these channels to add strength. |
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| Here you can see the rods after
they have been inserted |
The back of the neck, after the
rods were inserted. As you can see, one of the rods actually
came out of the back of the neck, about 1" past the break. |
No problem! After sanding,
filling, and sealing the area, the break is starting to
disappear. |
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| Here's the headstock, after
sanding and filling. We strung the guitar and subjected it to
quite a few stress tests, that I'm sure it did not appreciate. |
Before we spray the white, we
needed to repair the missing binding. The White Falcon has a
gold glitter binding, and it was not available. |
Actually, the binding is silver
glitter, with a yellow transparent top coat. We went through
about 10 different methods trying to match this, and were
finally successful. If you contact us, we will tell you! |
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Here we are after our first few coats of white
on the back |
And here is the front after a few coats of white. Note that the
decal area has remained intact, and is masked off. |
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Completed, Put Together..
Looks Good, |
