Vintage archtop questions, currently a restore / ruin thread!

Sassafras

I'd keep it. It was only 20 quid. You're not going to get much else for that. Either keep it for slide or work out how to lower the action.

ESBlonde

Professional way to fix would possibly be a neck reset, then have the PU rewound and maybe re-gaused to perk it up a little. Neck reset is a skilled operation and involves steam and precision woodworking. Someone like Ash at Oil City would be a useful person to have a conversation with re the PU. If the neck is bowed and there is no truss rod adjuster, then taking off the fingerboard whilst doing the neck reset and then planing it before refitting is the way to go.
At £20 thats a great investment if you want to learn those skills. Otherwise it tells you why it's cheap. There are various other fixes that might solve the neck angle/action issue but they are possibly not guaranteed.
Lots of Mojo there though, wall art for sure and a bit of slide every now and then.

p90fool

I bought one of those 10 quid Chinese acoustic soundhole pickups from eBay, cut one "ear" off and just slide it onto the pickguard on my archtop. It's only 10mm thick so might work on yours.

Its construction is not dissimilar to cheap vintage pickups and sounds really rowdy through a good amp, great for raucous Jack White type sounds.

Skodadad

I have managed to remove the fretboard without damaging anything by using an iron and a guitar string, followed by a small wooden wedge. Would it now be sensible to remove the steel reinforcing bar and fit a truss rod?

paulnb57

Just a thought, are you absolutely sure there is no adjustable trussrod, theres a gap for an adjuster at the headstock end and the white truss rod adjuster cover, not sure they would be there if there was just a steel rod buried in the neck....

Skodadad

Yes afraid so, It certainly does look like there is one but it just has two blunt square ends.

paulnb57

Fairynuff, it seemed a bit odd.....,

WezV

Its easier to do a channel that extends off the headstock like that, not too difficult to fill either, but they obviously decided it was easier to just put a cover on.

What are the dimensions of the channel?

Skodadad

375mm x 7mm @Wezv give or take a mm on length as my vernier won't open that far

ICBM

Skodadad said:

Yes afraid so, It certainly does look like there is one but it just has two blunt square ends.

If you can see both ends, can you push it out? It might be possible to replace it with a double-acting 'box' rod if so, without removing the infill strip…

If not, since you've already taken the fingerboard off I would go the whole way and fit a standard rod.

Skodadad

Just tried @ICBM, no movement at all I guess as the neck is pressing against it

Skodadad

How would I go about planing the neck now the fret board is off? Is there a trick to making sure it's perfectly flat. Also looking at it now the forward bow may have been in the fretboard itself. The neck itself looks pretty close to straight to me.

paulnb57

Something like a long spirit level will have a known flat surface that you could check the current state of the neck bow.....

Skodadad

So anyway after talking to a luthier and deciding this wasn't worth spending what it would cost to put right I planed the neck myself. I then re-glued the original fretboard and took to it with an electric sander. The frets had been pulled to remove the board so wasn't too hard. I measured constantly for the planing and sanding but its still a bit best guess. I then did a ghetto re-fret and am pleased to say I now have a playable guitar. Its by no means perfect, the underside of the fret board wasn't level so left a few gaps. I dripped in superglue and mixed it with fine dust from sanding the neck and fretboard. The fretboard  is slightly short not too, around 1mm. I guess it shrunk when off the guitar.there is a tiny lip at the body end now. Also frustrated by the original pickup height I got rid and fitted a cheap humbucker more centrally than the original. I really wanted a P90 but we are skint and the humbucker was all I had around. New open back tuners fitted then new pots and some wiring also done. I heard it was a pain to get the socket and pots refitted but I used an acoustic low e string pushed through the relevant hole. For the jack socked inserted into the socket and bent to a right angle. Jack came straight through and once the nut was on just pulled the string out. For the pots I wedged it in the splits in the posts and same result less than 10 mins to get them all back.and it was ready to go. I will buy a decent humbucker if the next stage goes well which is of course stripping it and dyeing it. 

You can see the mess at the side of fretboard here, will likely just paint it all black including the headstock. Still quite a bit of work to do on the frets too

bingefeller

Skodadad said:

It is a rather beautiful guitar but the high action makes it a little unplayable for me.
It all works though and actually sounds old through an amp. I don't think I want to chop it though so will likely swap it for something when I finish looking at it.

I cleaned it up today and made up a scratchplate from a tiny bit of old scratchplate I had. Not perfect as the size of the original was larger (shape is visible in laquer) but it covers the pickup wire a bit.

It looks like a completely different guitar.

Skodadad

Its just not in the sun I guess, its had a briwax too but that wouldn't change much. New knobs but it is still the same guitar.

Sarge

So did the planing sort out the high action?

Skodadad

@sarge Yes it's much more playable now though I messed up a bit where it meets the body it's a little too high there so if I take the action as low as I'd like I get some string buzz I'm thinking I could run a hacksaw between the fret board and the wooden slip that was glued to the body. Then re-glue and clamp essentially tapering it off towards body. I don't play that high up anyway as I want it as a sofa guitar. For the record it sounds amazing as an acoustic. A very different sound to my electro acoustic. It really projects a lovely tone, I'm glad I did it as I would never have been able to justify a proper restoration. To get it playable is good enough though I know it would have been lovely if done correctly.

Sarge

A hacksaw seems a bit drastic, how about tapering the frets from say fret14 onwards?

Skodadad

I think it would need a lot taking off them. I may get an iron on it and heat up the glue to try and scrape some out. I don't think I clamped it body side tight enough as I was worried about crushing the body. The last clamp was at the heel with a packer extending over the last bit of the fretboard.