Quote:
Originally Posted by teesquared  I recently picked up an Aria Pro ll MAB for pennies in the Yahoo auctions here in Japan where I live.
The neck has cracked about 3 inches in from the machine heads. Probably due to incompetent truss rod adjustment by the previous owner would be my guess. I do not have the skills or a workshop to attempt a repair here.
Anyway, I was looking through the auction for a similar model to swap the necks over and got to thinking, are there any aftermarket necks that could turn this into a fretless bass?
Also does anyone know the approximate year of manufacture of this model?
Best regards
Tee |
The scarf joint failed. The joint was probably glue starved when it was clamped together. The guitar probably fell from a stand flat onto the floor or otherwise took a shot that caused the joint to burst.
Mini-rant: It is pure myth that adjusting the truss rod will break a neck or cause a scarf joint to fail. The truss rod nut will strip or the end of the truss rod will twist off first. It will not damage the wood. Not never. Not no how. End rant.
The repair is relatively straight forward.
- Clamp off fingerboard below split
- Open splits and clean old glue.
- Insert wax paper between fingerboard and neck
- Apply glue to scarf joint.
- Carefully align and clamp scarf joint.*
- Remove clamps and wax paper on day two.
- Apply glue to neck/fingerboard area.
- Apply clamps.**
- Remove clamps on day 3.
- Set up and play.***
*Clamping forces should be applied perpendicular to all surfaces. Special cauls will have to be created to compensate for the angle of the headstock, the curve of the neck, and the frets in the fingerboard.
**Care must be taken not to starve the glue joint. Too much clamping pressure will cause too much glue to squeeze out and starve the joint. The result is a weak joint. Which was the problem in the first place.
***Repairs of this sort almost always require a bit of fret work. It could be as simple as touching up a high fret to a partial refret. There is no way to tell until the work is completed.
There are more steps to the repair than are listed. An experienced woodworker will be able to fill in the smaller, but very important details. This is an advanced repair that should be attempted only by the seriously handy. As always, if you have to look in kitchen drawers to find your tools, think a scraper is only used to remove ice from a windshield, or that a sixteenth of an inch is awfully darn small, please take the instrument to a pro.
