I have a great video about our FRCH. It's the wrong format to post here, though. But, you'd love it!
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Scary Repairs: Two Pedullas With Broken Truss Rods
- Thread starter Bruce Johnson
- Start date
Funny, I have been contemplating a Pedulla as my next purchase and a friend warned me about the TRs.
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jdthebassman
play to live live to play
Unfortunately, no.
These two Pedullas are sitting here in my shop, waiting for me to get to them.
I am going through radiation treatment for prostate cancer right now. Five days a week for 8 weeks; I'm in week 7. I'm feeling pretty good, and the treatment is going well. But it's a hectic schedule, consuming so much of my time. I'm only able to get 2-4 hours a day in real shop work. It'll be over soon. Hopefully, in May I'll be back to full time.
Alex has had to back off the Luthier training for now, while he takes of some family problems. Hopefully, he'll be back eventually. Another promising young Luthier trainee, Gabe, has turned up. He also lives right nearby here in Fillmore. Jonathan, across the hall, has already had him doing some work.
Best of luck Bruce. My dad tackled that last year. He came out the other side fine and is doing very well now. We’ll pray for you.
jdthebassman
play to live live to play
sorry to hear that, you will be in my prayers. I tried to reach out to pedulla no luck we are on our own.
Bruce,
Just came across this update. Hoping for a speedy recovery for you, good sir.
Lon
Best of luck. My father went through that at 60, and I get monitored twice yearly to catch whenever I go from enlarged to cancerous. (Family history plus I’m a thyroid cancer survivor so it’s guaranteed.)
These projects and especially the Specter repair amaze me. I love to see old instruments brought back.
jdthebassman
play to live live to play
Actually, there is an update. If you've followed the other threads that I usually write on, my life has been a mess for the past year. Medical problems and business problems that have greatly reduced my shop time. Things are clearing up, but not over yet. I'm going to be going in for heart surgery in a few weeks. I'm feeling okay now, and getting some work done in the shop. But I'm way behind schedule on everything. I haven't gotten anything done on these two poor Pedullas.
My young apprentice Alex has moved on. The realities of life have forced him to get a real job. He's doing well, but doesn't have the spare time to mess around with this Luthier stuff. But he wants to get back to it eventually.
In the meantime, another Luthier, Randy Robinson, moved into the shop where Alex was, about 50 feet down the hall from my shop. Randy specializes in instrument repair, with about 25 years in the business. He's a good guy, a lot of skill and experience.
This week, I've turned the two Pedulla jobs over to him. He'll be doing the truss rod replacements and all the fingerboard and fret work, and finishing the jobs up. I'm right down the hall, so I'll help with any machined parts that he needs. Like me, he's done many truss rod replacements, but hasn't ever opened up a Pedulla. We'll figure out what to do, and I'll document it on here for everyone's information.
He's going to get working on them right away.
My young apprentice Alex has moved on. The realities of life have forced him to get a real job. He's doing well, but doesn't have the spare time to mess around with this Luthier stuff. But he wants to get back to it eventually.
In the meantime, another Luthier, Randy Robinson, moved into the shop where Alex was, about 50 feet down the hall from my shop. Randy specializes in instrument repair, with about 25 years in the business. He's a good guy, a lot of skill and experience.
This week, I've turned the two Pedulla jobs over to him. He'll be doing the truss rod replacements and all the fingerboard and fret work, and finishing the jobs up. I'm right down the hall, so I'll help with any machined parts that he needs. Like me, he's done many truss rod replacements, but hasn't ever opened up a Pedulla. We'll figure out what to do, and I'll document it on here for everyone's information.
He's going to get working on them right away.
I've traded emails with Randy, and he's already started work on this project. Thanks for finding a skilled artisan to hand this off to, Bruce, and as I said in PM, all the best to you.
Turnaround
Commercial User
Good Luck Bruce. Keep us posted on your recovery progress. We'll be thinking of you.
Believe it or not, there is progress on the repair of these two Pedullas!
The original plan was to build up a fixture with twin guide rails, and use a hand router to do the trimming. But we realized that this was a great job for my big green monster pin router, because of its huge flat table and the precision height adjustment. The pin router is a story in itself, which I cover in this thread:
Pin Routers: The Old-School Production Workhorses
Randy rigged up a sliding sled fixture to hold the Pedullas securely, and brought it down the hall to my shop. He mounted Inara's 4-string on there first, strapping it down securely and adjusting it to make the glue line level.
We set the cutting height using the precision vertical adjustment of the table. It raises about 0.040" per crank revolution. During the cutting, Randy and I held the fixture at opposite ends and gently slid it side to side across the table, under the cutter.
We trimmed away the fingerboard in several cuts, watching the thickness of the remaining ebony, and making slight shim adjustments to keep it level and even. We routed away almost all of the ebony, leaving just a paper-thin layer on the neck. A precise flat surface. And a mess of black dust!
Next up is Mike's 5-string. Same drill: strap it down to the fixture, leveling it carefully with shims. No, he's not running the pin router here, just checking the cutter height!
In the first pass on Mike's bass, we found a surprise! We hit steel and got some sparks. On this apparently later Pedulla, they used two 1/4" steel dowel pins to locate the fingerboard to the neck. They are directly below the pearl dots at the 3rd and 21st positions; same diameter as the dots.
A big warning to any of you out there trying to remove a Pedulla fingerboard. Not staples or little nails; big steel pins. Don't go hitting them with your router. Once we saw where they were, I lightly chiseled the ebony around them, and pulled them out with pliers.
With those out, we continued routing off the ebony, down to paper thin. Here's Randy vacuuming up the ebony dust.
Next up, he'll chisel the thin layer of ebony off of the truss rods, and we'll see what we have inside there. A successful operation, and some educational use of the big green machine.
The original plan was to build up a fixture with twin guide rails, and use a hand router to do the trimming. But we realized that this was a great job for my big green monster pin router, because of its huge flat table and the precision height adjustment. The pin router is a story in itself, which I cover in this thread:
Pin Routers: The Old-School Production Workhorses
Randy rigged up a sliding sled fixture to hold the Pedullas securely, and brought it down the hall to my shop. He mounted Inara's 4-string on there first, strapping it down securely and adjusting it to make the glue line level.
We set the cutting height using the precision vertical adjustment of the table. It raises about 0.040" per crank revolution. During the cutting, Randy and I held the fixture at opposite ends and gently slid it side to side across the table, under the cutter.
We trimmed away the fingerboard in several cuts, watching the thickness of the remaining ebony, and making slight shim adjustments to keep it level and even. We routed away almost all of the ebony, leaving just a paper-thin layer on the neck. A precise flat surface. And a mess of black dust!
Next up is Mike's 5-string. Same drill: strap it down to the fixture, leveling it carefully with shims. No, he's not running the pin router here, just checking the cutter height!
In the first pass on Mike's bass, we found a surprise! We hit steel and got some sparks. On this apparently later Pedulla, they used two 1/4" steel dowel pins to locate the fingerboard to the neck. They are directly below the pearl dots at the 3rd and 21st positions; same diameter as the dots.
A big warning to any of you out there trying to remove a Pedulla fingerboard. Not staples or little nails; big steel pins. Don't go hitting them with your router. Once we saw where they were, I lightly chiseled the ebony around them, and pulled them out with pliers.
With those out, we continued routing off the ebony, down to paper thin. Here's Randy vacuuming up the ebony dust.
Next up, he'll chisel the thin layer of ebony off of the truss rods, and we'll see what we have inside there. A successful operation, and some educational use of the big green machine.
I can't tell you how excited I am to see this! I'm not sure what year Mike's is, but mine is definitely an older one, 1986. Thanks for the update, Bruce.
