Highly skilled repair luthier

There was a thread where someone replaced the fender truss rod by drilling two holes in the heel of the neck. It was in the hardware forum, so you can find it there. Interesting read and should be applicable to your bass if it's a fender style neck.

 

What brand/model is the guitar. Is it a rear rout Fender?

 

That was my thread and repair. You can find it here:

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f18/my-truss-rod-repair-841172/

Doodaddy, if you think that this might be an option let me know and I'll give you a hand.

 

^^^^^^^ exactly the thread I was talking about.

 

Far from it. I've played the bass and am Doodaddy's friend. Otherwise, i wouldn't be answering.

The bass has fanned frets (multi-scale) and the trussrod nut is located at the top of the headstock. I believe the B is a 36 inch scale. It's not a Dingwall.

Not sure if the OP wants to reveal the brand or not.

 

Ohhhhhhhh, bolt on neck?? If so, it can probably be sort of managed by the repair stated above, but something tells me that the bass is a neck through. So you're probably screwed if that's the case. Get an ebony board so that there's no prominent grain to match

 

The bass is a bolt on. Doodaddy is adament about not replacing the fingerboard.

 

Well, going through that repair thread may offer a good option. Otherwise the OP is most likely gonna have to deal with replacing the fingerboard. Unless you wanna rout it out and put in a skunk stripe.

 

Lakland did a great job for me fast and effective!

 

I've done a couple finger board off and then back on operations on six string guitars. If the original luthier used alphatic resin or hide glue this should be a smooth, albeit major operation.

If you have to ship it to someone I would pick someone with a solid track record, Dan Erlewine in Ohio or Frank Ford in California come to mind.

 

Doodaddy;

I specialize in nasty truss rod repair jobs like that. I've lost count of how many truss rod replacements I've done over the years, but it's over 200.

But right now, I'm too swamped with my own instrument lines and Ampeg restorations to take on this job.

Generally on a bass neck like this, saving the fingerboard isn't worth the labor/money. If you have to save it, it an be done but it is a fair amount of extra work and will cost more. If I were doing it, it would be about a $600 job.

Talk to Dan Erlewine. He might take it on. If he's willing to do the fingerboard removal/replacement, he could send the neck to me for the actual truss rod repair if he wants. The extent of the truss repair depends on what's broken. Most likely, the joint between the rod and the anchor has failed.

 

I went to a luthier with the same question, and his answer was similar, it can be repaired, but the neck will get a new fretboard and binding. The price for this repair was higher than the estimated value of the bass.

So I had a look around for alternatives.

These: Replacing the guitar truss rod/Binding, Truss Rod Replacement (1 of 8) - YouTube videos cave me a clue,
I guessed that I might just as well give it a try, before making another second hand neck fit.










The main thing to get your fingerboard back, as close as possible to it former position, seemed to be the creation a mould of the complete neck. This is a lot of extra work.







The result is on the right.

 

Yep, the big problem is the thickness of the fingerboard. On acoustic guitars and old classic instruments like Stempelloos has shown above, the fingerboards are fairly thick, 1/4" to 5/16". With some heat and careful slicing with an artist's knife, they can be lifted off and will stay fairly straight and stable.

But on most modern basses the fingerboards are very thin, like 0.200" or less. The fret slots go most of the way through the fingerboard wood. When you try to remove them with the heated knife, they'll usually just snap at the fret slots. If you can get it off in one piece, it will twist and curl like crazy. And figured wood fingerboards are the worst ones. So then how do you get a clean flat surface on the back of a twisted, curled piece of thin wood, with a bunch of saw slots cut most of the way through it? That's where it gets tricky. You have to gently flatten it down and attach it to something, face down, so that you can hand sand or router cut the back surface. After it's glued back onto the neck, the fingerboard will still have to have its surface trued up, slots recut, and be refretted. And each of those steps takes longer to redo them on an existing fingerboard than it takes to do them fresh on a new fingerboard. That's where the extra labor goes. Like I said, the original fingerboard can be reused, but it's a lot of extra work. Using a new fingerboard will cut the repair cost by about $200.

Once the fingerboard is off, repairing or replacing the truss rod isn't that big of a deal for one of us who is set up for it. I have fixtures and special machines just for doing that. I also have my own machine shop, so I make up truss rods and parts as needed.

On this particular neck, there's a chance that the repair could be done without removing the fingerboard. It depends on how the builder did the truss rod and anchor, and where it broke. The approach would be to set the neck up in the milling machine with the heel surface up, and carefully mill out some wood around the existing anchor. Then, a new anchor would be attached in place, and the wood would be replaced by fitting in matching blocks to hide the repair. Whether this will work will depend on where the anchor is and how it's installed.

I'm just trying to offer my advice from my experience, and give you some insight into how repairs like this are done. Every Luthier will have his own methods.

 

If a well qualified Luthier accepted the repair and guaranteed that the original fretboard would be saved and reinstalled, and then the unforseen happened, and the original fretboard broke and had to be replaced, what liability would the Luthier be held to. This risk/cost must be figured into the quote before accepting the job. I don't think you will find any qualified Luthier that will guarantee the repairs.
Rocky

 

If the repair is not super vital and the rod doesn't constantly rattle, can adjustments in string gauge and therefore tension make up the action difference? Also, if the neck is very stable seasonally as described, don't leave out the option of compression/decompression fretting. ie: change the tang size to flex the neck in the desired direction. Prob. not a permanent fix now that I think about it. Try to very closely control the environment where the instrument is stored. Will adjusting the humidity consciously a few degrees this way or that return the neck to it's birth geometry? I don't know but its Worth a try. Hygrometers are cheap compared to a rod fix/ replace.

 

I suspected that was one of Bud LeCompte's basses, just from your description. I've never met Bud in person, but he and I converse regularly about technical stuff over on another private luthiers forum. He builds some very cool instruments.

That fingerboard is fairly thick, which increases the probability that it can be removed and replaced successfully. Or, as I described above, it may be able to be fixed with some surgery from the heel side. It depends on what type of truss rod he used.