Double Bass Neck Depth Extender?

[nachodaddy]

What the heck do you call this? It's on a 39 Kay Orchestra Model. Maybe they put in a truss rod?

 

[Ben Mitchell]

Just looks like a little chipping to me.

 

[colliningram]

It's hard to tell from the picture but I suspect that was installed to get a bigger angle on the neck. The idea is that the top of the bridge should be 6 1/2 to 7 inches (correct me if my numbers are off) above body. I have seen insturments where they added wood under the fingerboard to ensure that the angle of the neck makes this possible without absurdly high action.

 

[nachodaddy]

It's hard to tell from the picture but I suspect that was installed to get a bigger angle on the neck. The idea is that the top of the bridge should be 6 1/2 to 7 inches (correct me if my numbers are off) above body. I have seen insturments where they added wood under the fingerboard to ensure that the angle of the neck makes this possible without absurdly high action.

Gotcha, raising the neck angle higher to lower the string action. This Kay has actually not had a broken neck before or a busted button,lol. The neck has been off the body before(for whatever reason, maybe to put in this slab of neck wood in question)) and was not put back on particularly well. Although the button & heel seem to match up pretty well, you can see from the top that the neck was glued back in about a 1/4 inch shy of flush. It seems to be solid, though. I detuned it a bit & wrung its neck with no movement.
I kinda like the deeper neck that resulted, though. It is a train wreck cosmetically, which kinda adds to its charm. It has been laid on its side in gravel what appears to be about 30, 000 or more times. No, I wasn't exaggerating, it is, after all, 72 years old & lookin' every bit of it. No open seams, but, it looks like there could be some at any moment. I think you can kinda tell from the photo that the E string has lower action than the other three. I'm not sure if this was done intentionally or not,lol. What do you think it's worth?

 

[Eric Hochberg]

Is there an angle to the added shim? If not, then the angle hasn't changed, just the height to raise the bridge height. This may have been done to make the bass more playable. It's cheaper to do it this way than reset the neck out farther. Or the owner didn't like the skinny Kay neck.

It is ugly, a good luthier may be able to clean that up if you like the feel of the neck as is. What is the depth of the neck/fingerboard, back to front, say around an A on the E string?

 

[gbaker]

What the heck do you call this? It's on a 39 Kay Orchestra Model. Maybe they put in a truss rod?

Hard to tell w/o measuring but the original neck looks thinner than normal. Just a guess but the neck may have been damaged with a bad job of fingerboard removal or such and this is a repair as well as a thickening.

 

[nachodaddy]

Oh well, I'm over this,lol. Every repair that's been done is of the shade tree mechanic type. I don't care if it was made in 1492 & presented to Columbus upon his arrival, it's still just a trashed, plywood bass. It was worth a few hundred to me and hopefully the absolutely spooky dovetail joint would stay put for awhile. The proprietor is a jerk who thinks that humbucking pickups are the ones that make the "humming noise", even after I've explained to him three times about this. So, that was the kind of foolishness I was dealing with. It is for sale at $1,700, at a firm $1.600 low. If anyone is interested, send me pm & I can give you their number.

 

[nachodaddy]

Is there an angle to the added shim? If not, then the angle hasn't changed, just the height to raise the bridge height. This may have been done to make the bass more playable. It's cheaper to do it this way than reset the neck out farther. Or the owner didn't like the skinny Kay neck.

It is ugly, a good luthier may be able to clean that up if you like the feel of the neck as is. What is the depth of the neck/fingerboard, back to front, say around an A on the E string?

The shim is uniform depth from one end to the other. When we couldn't get remotely close on a selling price, I didn't measure the depth. It just felt better to me than the usual shallow depth Kay or Engelhardt neck. And, it may have felt better, in part, because all of the finish is gone from the neck. The fingerboard is purty thin, maybe that's a partial reason the shim was added, as well. And, another cheap fix instead of springin' for a new ebony board.

 

[nachodaddy]

Hard to tell w/o measuring but the original neck looks thinner than normal. Just a guess but the neck may have been damaged with a bad job of fingerboard removal or such and this is a repair as well as a thickening.

Most all Kay & Engelhardt necks I've ever seen are pretty shallow depth compared to most others. I don't know whether this was supposed to be the case in '39 or not, but, without measuring, it looks to be virtually the same depth as my '92 ES-9 neck. She's 19 years old, I hear McKinley Morganfield singin'...