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Double Bass Neck Heel Repair

Quap

Quap

Oct 14, 2008
302
193
44
Lubbock, Texas
#1
I’ve been talking with Steve at String Emporium about a bass that he’s offering a discount on due to a repair he’s planning.

The photo shows what he calls slight fissures and the planned repair is to remove the fingerboard counter sink a lag bolt through the area and replace the board

Is this repair common? Is it something to stay away from? I wish I knew more about the DB repairs.

Thanks!!
 

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#2
When I was in school we had about 6 basses, inexpensive and from various makers. All had breaks like what we see here.

I vowed then that I would never buy a bass with a repair at the heel. I never have. There are a lot of great basses out there. Prices in general will probably be coming down.

Each to their own and someone will buy it.
 
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#3
CaseyVancouver said:
When I was in school we had about 6 basses, inexpensive and from various makers. All had breaks like what we see here.

I vowed then that I would never buy a bass with a repair at the heel. I never have. There are a lot of great basses out there. Prices in general will probably be coming down.

Each to their own and someone will buy it.
Click to expand...

I am not wanting to disparage his shop and was reticent about asking this question.

It's not that it's a bad repair, but there's no need to settle?
 
#4
Steve is a great guy in the bass community. We all know him here.

A repair like that would bug me as long as I owned the bass. That’s just me.

It’s an awesome time to be in the market for a bass, inexpensive or expensive. Imho.

Good luck bass shopping. ‘New Bass Day’, when it happens, is better than Christmas!
 
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#7
CaseyVancouver said:
Steve is a great guy in the bass community. We all know him here.

A repair like that would bug me as long as I owned the bass. That’s just me.

It’s an awesome time to be in the market for a bass, inexpensive or expensive. Imho.

Good luck bass shopping. ‘New Bass Day’, when it happens, is better than Christmas!
Click to expand...


I have been looking stay at home orders make it difficult. Not sure how many are hitting the shops.
 
#8
In my school district, we have a music resource center that rents out student model instruments. Of the many basses in the stable, the biggest, most expensive pains in the @$$ were the ones with neck heel cracks.

The vast majority of these repairs did not hold, despite the best efforts of a skilled, yet reluctant repairman. Most of the time, the wood is gonna move and the repair will fail.

I would also be inclined to pass.
 
#11
Would it be more effective to use stacked Belleville washers under the bolt head or the nut, with a locking nut or an acorn nut run all the way down? This would give constant tension rather than the constant length of a single bolt, which as noted will crush wood fibers when they swell, leaving them loose when they shrink. Alternately, maybe a die spring.

It does seem like there ought to be by now a standard effective repair for this common break. It looks to me like the fundamental design of the joint is weak, relying on the cross-grain strength of the neck heel. Is there by now a standard design modification that prevents this (for example, cross-grain laminations)?

(I have numerous places around my house where metal hardware is used to secure wood parts - for example, garage doors and fence gates - and every one of them requires periodic re-tightening.)
 

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