Leave those necks on!

[DJ Bebop]

I had a 2002 Precision for over 14 years and never removed the neck. Same with my 2010 Precision and 2014 Dimension. I have the receipts, tags, etc.

I have a ‘99 Stratocaster and I’ve not taken that apart. Did replace a faulty selector switch.

IF an instrument needs attention that requires removal, I’ll remove it for that reason.

Plus no one is gone to ask to prove it's '99, 2002, 2010, 2014 vintage if you decide to sell
Maybe 30 to 60 years from now.

 

[wraub]

Most bolt on instruments, and especially Fender's, were designed to be serviceable, and this included neck removal...
I recently got an Affinity P Bass and one of the first things I did to it was to remove almost everything (including the neck) and reassemble, seating all parts and screws "the correct way", tightly and solidly.

It's wood and screws, just be smart.

It may have not done anything, but, it sounds great, and I know why.

 

[Chasarms]

I agree and thank you very much

I’ve only been playing 33 years. I respect my elders!

 

[Koshchei]

And if you hadn't removed the neck you would never have known that yours was one of the red marked versions.

I take my Rickenbacker necks off to see if there's a lucky red mark on them as well.

 

[Turnaround]

Well okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

First of all, the best way to prevent pickguard mojo leaks is to never, ever loosen a pickguard screw for any reason. However, what if your adopted daughter sneaks into your music room at night with a jeweler’s screwdriver that she stole from your brother-in-law who sells fake Rolex watches on the side, and unscrews the pickguard screws on your 1969 Precision bass? What do you do then?

The first thing to understand is that the mojo released by unscrewing pickguard screws will be much more diffuse than the mojo released by unscrewing neck screws. Obviously, this is because it’s distributed over so many different screws. Think of it – thirteen screws for a standard Precision pickguard, as opposed to only four for the neck mounting plate! If you also have the tug bar and the pickup cover screws, you might as well just shoot yourself in the head. Let’s not think about such things. We’ll just pretend, for the sake of sanity, that there was no tug bar and your pickguard only had thirteen screws, or fewer.

Still, your adopted daughter, who let’s face it isn’t really related to you and shouldn’t have free run of the house, at least until she reaches the age of reason, which might be never, has now released thirteen separate portions of mojo, which means each discrete piece of mojo is much smaller than if you had only released four separate portions. Are you following this? And being so small, there’s no way you’re going to keep them in the house. They’ll get out. They can slip through the smallest cracks and crevices. And once they’re out, they might go in different directions. Imagine, there are now thirteen little clouds of mojo wandering lost through the world, instead of just four (or five, if you’re one of those people who favor unbalanced neck plates which lead to neck dive and bald spots but that’s another story altogether). How to get them back?

To put it bluntly – you’re going to need supernatural assistance. Which means you’re going to need a chicken.

Not one of those $4.99 Costco rotisserie chickens. Don’t be a putz. You need a real, live chicken (well, it won’t be live for long, but it has to start out that way). And it should be a stolen chicken. The best thing is to steal a chicken from a bad man. The worse, the better, if you get my meaning. If you can arrange to steal a chicken from a horse thief, that’s ideal. Or a grave robber. Stealing a live chicken from a grave robber will practically guarantee the return of all your lost pickguard mojo. If you can’t find a horse thief or a grave robber, then someone in advertising. Try to be creative.

Now, take the chicken and your pickguard and one of the strings off your bass – I recommend the G string – and go out to the graveyard. You do this at night, of course. About 1:00 a.m. You’re going to kill the chicken (the easiest way to do this is just grab it by the neck and crank it around over your head a couple or three times) and send its spirit to recover your lost pickguard mojo. But first, you need to build a fire. Find a flat gravestone under a tree, and make a small pile of plastic shavings from the edge of your pickguard (you’ll need a knife or a vegetable peeler for this). Light the plastic shavings on fire. Now, while the fire is burning, quickly kill the chicken and hang it from a branch of the tree using the G string. Hang it by the feet, and then slice open its neck so the chicken’s blood drips down onto the plastic fire. The smoke from the burning plastic pickguard shavings will mingle with the steam from the chicken’s blood, and this is when you have to forcefully say these words: “Spirit of this bad man’s chick, go get my pickguard mojo, quick!” Say it thirteen times (or however many pickguard screws have been removed) and then throw graveyard dirt on the fire to extinguish it. Go home and eat the chicken.

The next day, reinstall your pickguard screws, making sure to put each screw back into the same hole it was removed from (God help you if you don’t know which one was in which hole). You should also use a new pickguard, the old one is no longer any good and should be disposed of. Actually you should have buried it in the graveyard, but you didn’t, and it's too late now. But not to worry, you can always leave it on the doorstep of the bad man you stole the chicken from.

I hope this is helpful. By no means will this work twice for the same bass, so make sure you kick your no-good brother-in-law’s butt and inform your adopted daughter that if she keeps playing with screwdrivers, her ears will fall off.

This is a whole lot of trouble to undergo to replace lost mojo. Just call me - I have a collection of pickguard screws that still have their mojo and I keep them in a sealed foodsaver bag in the freezer. They will keep that way literally forever. I'll send you a full set of 13 for $120 plus shipping. They come complete with instllation instructions.

Alternatively you might try the old-timer's fix - snake oil.

 

[BakedMaple]

This is a whole lot of trouble to undergo to replace lost mojo. Just call me - I have a collection of pickguard screws that still have their mojo and I keep them in a sealed foodsaver bag in the freezer. They will keep that way literally forever. I'll send you a full set of 13 for $120 plus shipping. They come complete with instllation instructions.

Alternatively you might try the old-timer's fix - snake oil.

Send me your PayPal address...

 

[juancaminos]

Looking around on Reverb and other (local) used stuff sites, i see a lot of basses with the necks removed to show whats underneath.

I'm a technician and also a pretty curious guy... but this always rustles my jimmies. A lot of basses have what is called a "bolt-on" construction. In fact no bolt ever comes near it (wish they did). It is "screwed on" and everyone who ever used screws knows that it's in some way a destructive process. As a screw is turned in, the "thread" is being cut. This is not neat and nice thread like when a bolt is used, but crude and actually different for each screw. It's a very secure connection and solid and ridgid etc, but when you loosen the screws to remove the neck, you can, in some cases, see wood come out of the hole. meaning, the next time you reinstall it, the screws will have lost some power, tightening wise. worst thing that can happen is not the same screw in the same hole. No screw is exactly the same as an other one.

I know i'm a Nitpick right now, but i've been thinking about this for quite a while and find myself looking at awesome J-Basses that are and look great, but i hit the little cross as soon as i see a picture with the neck removed or a clearly damaged neck-joint.

Am i alone in this? am i going too far with it? Should i go to therapy?

I Couldn't agree more

 

[SamanthaCay]

Ya ever find yourself wanting to take your neck off just to see what's in there? Like what if fender stuck a little voodoo doll in there or something?You could be cursed and not know it!!

Anyway if ya ain't got a proper number 2 Phillips a lot of stuff will make do, a small slot head, properly ground kitchen utensils, all kinds of stuff will get ya in there. Just remember when ya put them back to make sure and get all four back in there! I left two out once and got to a gig and hide to hide it with duct tape! Also when you screw 'em in remember to go just until you hear a crack and then back one half turn.

Seriously I've been at this for 20 years and have literally fixed basses smashed into 20 or more pieces. Tooth pick and wood glue or a dowl if you're really bored. It makes no difference and does not effect tone, value, nata. And I'd say forget the conventional therapy, at least for this issue just go find a legit repair shop that'll let you hang for a few.

 

[mdogs]

Came home tonight and removed the necks from all my Basses. I now realize I should have taken a picture of it, not sure why I didn’t think of it at the time. When I put them back together, I took great care to make sure that I DID NOT put the screws back in the same holes that they came from. So satisfying knowing there are people out there that are going crazy over this, glad I could help.

 

[logdrum]

If you could helicoil an oil pan or an engine block of an internal combustion engine, you could redo even a messed up neck re-screw. You could start a Neck-Fax (like a Carfax) to record every neck removal ever done. Maybe we should write an app for that.

 

[logdrum]

As an owner of carved upright bass that is almost 100 years old this makes me scratch my head. The repairs on my bass are beyond invasive and held together by boiled animal hide and bones with string tensions ~4 times a slab bass.

 

[2BitHack]

the placebo effect a figment of your imagination

 

[bassfran]

Looking around on Reverb and other (local) used stuff sites, i see a lot of basses with the necks removed to show whats underneath.

I'm a technician and also a pretty curious guy... but this always rustles my jimmies. A lot of basses have what is called a "bolt-on" construction. In fact no bolt ever comes near it (wish they did). It is "screwed on" and everyone who ever used screws knows that it's in some way a destructive process. As a screw is turned in, the "thread" is being cut. This is not neat and nice thread like when a bolt is used, but crude and actually different for each screw. It's a very secure connection and solid and ridgid etc, but when you loosen the screws to remove the neck, you can, in some cases, see wood come out of the hole. meaning, the next time you reinstall it, the screws will have lost some power, tightening wise. worst thing that can happen is not the same screw in the same hole. No screw is exactly the same as an other one.

I know i'm a Nitpick right now, but i've been thinking about this for quite a while and find myself looking at awesome J-Basses that are and look great, but i hit the little cross as soon as i see a picture with the neck removed or a clearly damaged neck-joint.

Am i alone in this? am i going too far with it? Should i go to therapy?

I have a FrankenP that Hugh McFarland put together for me about 20 yrs. ago on which I've never allowed the neck to be removed. (Carl thinks I'm nuts, but...)
No matter. She starts up fine every season after a minor tweak and has been a consistent winner in my toolkit for years.

 

[JoePP]

Everyone knows the mojo leaks out when a screw gets loosened. But where does it go? This is the part most people fail to understand. If you have all the windows and doors shut tight, the mojo will generally stay in the room. You can sort of feel it sometimes, circling around up near the ceiling, looking for something to attach itself to. Now, the worst thing that can happen at that point is that someone walks in on you and lets the mojo escape from the room. Say your wife comes in while you are working on your bass, to bring you a sandwich or tell you your buddy called from jail to borrow $200 for bail. The mojo will fly right out of the room! Then you have to chase it down the hall. If you're lucky you might still be able to find it, but there are so many ways it can escape from the house that it's unlikely you will ever get it back. This is why there are so many lifeless, lackluster used basses on Ebay all the time - someone loosened a neck screw, the mojo escaped, and the bass was never the same after that, so they sold it on and bought a new one. Of course a new bass only has the factory-installed mojo, not the additional mojo that has built up over time, so a new bass will never sound as good as an old one that has all its original screws intact. Many a bassist has switched to clarinet in despair upon realizing this.

Now the good news: if you have locked the door and windows while performing your truss rod adjustment, and can ignore the pounding from people trying to get your attention, you have a decent chance at being able to recapture the escaped mojo. The procedure is relatively simple: holding the removed screw in your right hand and the bass body in your left hand, stand in the center of the room and repeat this chant three times: "Mojo, mojo, where did you go? Back into your hole you must flow! Hoedown, flowdown, mojo go down!" When you have completed this chant three times, immediately replace the removed screw and tighten. You must do this for each removed screw in order to ensure that the mojo from each screw hole comes back.

That's all there is to it! But please remember that this only works for neck mounting screws. The procedure for calling back escaped mojo after loosening pickguard screws is much more complicated, and not for the faint of heart.

Well okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

First of all, the best way to prevent pickguard mojo leaks is to never, ever loosen a pickguard screw for any reason. However, what if your adopted daughter sneaks into your music room at night with a jeweler’s screwdriver that she stole from your brother-in-law who sells fake Rolex watches on the side, and unscrews the pickguard screws on your 1969 Precision bass? What do you do then?

The first thing to understand is that the mojo released by unscrewing pickguard screws will be much more diffuse than the mojo released by unscrewing neck screws. Obviously, this is because it’s distributed over so many different screws. Think of it – thirteen screws for a standard Precision pickguard, as opposed to only four for the neck mounting plate! If you also have the tug bar and the pickup cover screws, you might as well just shoot yourself in the head. Let’s not think about such things. We’ll just pretend, for the sake of sanity, that there was no tug bar and your pickguard only had thirteen screws, or fewer.

Still, your adopted daughter, who let’s face it isn’t really related to you and shouldn’t have free run of the house, at least until she reaches the age of reason, which might be never, has now released thirteen separate portions of mojo, which means each discrete piece of mojo is much smaller than if you had only released four separate portions. Are you following this? And being so small, there’s no way you’re going to keep them in the house. They’ll get out. They can slip through the smallest cracks and crevices. And once they’re out, they might go in different directions. Imagine, there are now thirteen little clouds of mojo wandering lost through the world, instead of just four (or five, if you’re one of those people who favor unbalanced neck plates which lead to neck dive and bald spots but that’s another story altogether). How to get them back?

To put it bluntly – you’re going to need supernatural assistance. Which means you’re going to need a chicken.

Not one of those $4.99 Costco rotisserie chickens. Don’t be a putz. You need a real, live chicken (well, it won’t be live for long, but it has to start out that way). And it should be a stolen chicken. The best thing is to steal a chicken from a bad man. The worse, the better, if you get my meaning. If you can arrange to steal a chicken from a horse thief, that’s ideal. Or a grave robber. Stealing a live chicken from a grave robber will practically guarantee the return of all your lost pickguard mojo. If you can’t find a horse thief or a grave robber, then someone in advertising. Try to be creative.

Now, take the chicken and your pickguard and one of the strings off your bass – I recommend the G string – and go out to the graveyard. You do this at night, of course. About 1:00 a.m. You’re going to kill the chicken (the easiest way to do this is just grab it by the neck and crank it around over your head a couple or three times) and send its spirit to recover your lost pickguard mojo. But first, you need to build a fire. Find a flat gravestone under a tree, and make a small pile of plastic shavings from the edge of your pickguard (you’ll need a knife or a vegetable peeler for this). Light the plastic shavings on fire. Now, while the fire is burning, quickly kill the chicken and hang it from a branch of the tree using the G string. Hang it by the feet, and then slice open its neck so the chicken’s blood drips down onto the plastic fire. The smoke from the burning plastic pickguard shavings will mingle with the steam from the chicken’s blood, and this is when you have to forcefully say these words: “Spirit of this bad man’s chick, go get my pickguard mojo, quick!” Say it thirteen times (or however many pickguard screws have been removed) and then throw graveyard dirt on the fire to extinguish it. Go home and eat the chicken.

The next day, reinstall your pickguard screws, making sure to put each screw back into the same hole it was removed from (God help you if you don’t know which one was in which hole). You should also use a new pickguard, the old one is no longer any good and should be disposed of. Actually you should have buried it in the graveyard, but you didn’t, and it's too late now. But not to worry, you can always leave it on the doorstep of the bad man you stole the chicken from.

I hope this is helpful. By no means will this work twice for the same bass, so make sure you kick your no-good brother-in-law’s butt and inform your adopted daughter that if she keeps playing with screwdrivers, her ears will fall off.

I want to sit around a campfire and drink whiskey with this cat while listening to him making up bass mojo stories!!! LOL!

 

[Acoop]

I think, in the case of Fender basses, they were designed to be changed/swapped out and why many inconsistencies out of the factory. ... I have a Fender J-bass that came fretted and when I picked up a beautiful, custom, ebony fretless j-neck I swapped the two necks on the one body for years, till I picked up a 74 J-bass that has the original solder joints. ... But, I've never had an issue with removing any parts from my Fender basses and replacing them. ... But, I've been doing all my own mod and repair work for near 50-years.

 

[Wisebass]

Hi LowRick

i see a lot of basses with the necks removed to show whats underneath.

I see that mostly on "vintage" basses. (Fenders)

It’s absolutely necessary to remove the neck on a vintage Fender bass or guitar to verify the neck date stamp and also the “paint stick” mark in the neck pocket (of mid 1960s thru 1970s Fenders)

1+

A Fender can' t be dated with the serial number.

Without cross checking neck stamps, body stamps, pot codes, pup dates and a lot of other details,

it is impossible to tell when the bass was built!

A look into all cavities is mandatory!!!!

I would never spend big money on a vintage bass that I could not fully verify by seeing the neck removed (unless the seller guarantees it to be original with a return policy AND is a trusted seller with experience).

For me it is not so much a money question. I am not a collector.

But someone who buys a bass that has a "story" wants that story to be true!

When family members buy a '78 birth year bass for daddy,

they don' t want the guitar tech who does the setup find out that it was built in 1982!

(which happens! S8 serial numbers were used from late '77 to '82!)


greetings

Wise(b)ass

 

[Dynacord]

Why not just use threaded metal inserts, and then get smaller screws? Imo, the "problem" is now solved.

My Meazzi from 1965 has this - and inserts for many of the smaller screws as well.

 

[Watchootognbout]

Leave the neck on?
Oh....Ok.

 

[godofthunder59]

Many basses you have to remove the neck to adjust the truss rod. You are worried about nothing.

 

[glocke1]

Looking around on Reverb and other (local) used stuff sites, i see a lot of basses with the necks removed to show whats underneath.

I'm a technician and also a pretty curious guy... but this always rustles my jimmies. A lot of basses have what is called a "bolt-on" construction. In fact no bolt ever comes near it (wish they did). It is "screwed on" and everyone who ever used screws knows that it's in some way a destructive process. As a screw is turned in, the "thread" is being cut. This is not neat and nice thread like when a bolt is used, but crude and actually different for each screw. It's a very secure connection and solid and ridgid etc, but when you loosen the screws to remove the neck, you can, in some cases, see wood come out of the hole. meaning, the next time you reinstall it, the screws will have lost some power, tightening wise. worst thing that can happen is not the same screw in the same hole. No screw is exactly the same as an other one.

I know i'm a Nitpick right now, but i've been thinking about this for quite a while and find myself looking at awesome J-Basses that are and look great, but i hit the little cross as soon as i see a picture with the neck removed or a clearly damaged neck-joint.

Am i alone in this? am i going too far with it? Should i go to therapy?

Anyone buying a vintage instrument is going to want to see the neck stamp.

I do sort of agree with you though, I owned a 64 J bass at one time. The screw holes for the neck were somewhat loosey goosey from the neck being removed too often. At some point in time someone used woodfiller to tighten things up.