Les Paul broken headstock
Discussion
Unfortunately my Son has managed to break his Les Paul, snapped the head clean off.
I understand this is quite common as the angled head is prone and very thin in that area and also that replacing the neck is not particularly easy due to it being glued into the body.
Anyone got any recommendations for a quality repair that won't break the bank too much, ideally East Midlands area though will travel for the right job?
Here's the offending break;
I understand this is quite common as the angled head is prone and very thin in that area and also that replacing the neck is not particularly easy due to it being glued into the body.
Anyone got any recommendations for a quality repair that won't break the bank too much, ideally East Midlands area though will travel for the right job?
Here's the offending break;
Don Roque said:
This is probably the most common guitar related damage event. Gibson have resisted calls to strengthen the design for years.
One of several reasons why I'd never buy one, even if I wanted to remortgage the house to finance it. "Play Authentic" has a role to play in that decision too.Don Roque said:
This is probably the most common guitar related damage event. Gibson have resisted calls to strengthen the design for years.
The Epiphone copy has a reduced angle head. The wood grain is therefore longer going from the neck to the head. I doubt many people would notice if Gibson themselves started doing this... well, not until YouTubers started pointing it out anyway.
singlecoil said:
The repair is easy (PVA glue and some careful clamping), the difficult part is making it look good, and that's the part that is going to be expensive. So if cost of repair is an issue you might as well simply glue it back on and bring it back into service.
I'd be concerned that gluing alone wouldn't be strong enough? with the string tension etc. and that there's not a lot of surface area to glue. Not sure if it would be possible to drill and dowel through the join?I recall seeing on TV a while back a valuable '59 model with rock provenance (Bad Company?) was auctioned for big money and that it had suffered a similar break in the past. The repairer had spliced a part new neck with the diagonal (for length) join part way down the neck where there's no bend, of course this requires another neck to sacrifice.
Ideally, I would think a complete new neck would be the best solution but not sure how easy/expensive that is to do?
As for looks, when held back together it doesn't look too bad as it is a very clean break with no missing bits so would only look like a crack and shouldn't be much of a problem but would like it to last (at least until the next 'incident').
With regards to rock and roll antics, would that there was a tale to tell, alas it simply fell off a stand and landed face down on a wooden floor...
The glue would be strong enough, that's enough surface area. The key is minimising the gaps. If that can't be done then some warmed epoxy resin would be better.
As pointed out, it's a s
t design and there really isn't much anything that can be done about it barring very major work. Dowels etc aren't going to help because there's not enough gluing surface available for that and the stresses are in the wrong direction. Don't worry about the value, it didn't have an awful lot to start with and regardless of how much you spend on the repair it will never be invisible so it's sort of a Cat C situation.
As pointed out, it's a s
t design and there really isn't much anything that can be done about it barring very major work. Dowels etc aren't going to help because there's not enough gluing surface available for that and the stresses are in the wrong direction. Don't worry about the value, it didn't have an awful lot to start with and regardless of how much you spend on the repair it will never be invisible so it's sort of a Cat C situation.Here's one that broke maybe ten or so years ago. The break is slightly different to the OP's in that although the neck broke clean through, there is a sort of trim plate on the front of the headstock that was flexible enough to bend without breaking too. You can see the stress marks on the plate though in the photos I've attached.
I had it fixed by Charlie Chandler - If the guitar were mine I'd give it to a pro. There's no way I'd fix it myself. ISTR that CC has a jig that is used to keep the thing in alignment whilst the glue sets. Mine is just glued as far as I remember.
Factoid - CC used to look after the Peter Green > Gary Moore Les Paul that also had a neck break. Or three..
I have no idea why these images are being shown at 90º to the way I shot them.
I had it fixed by Charlie Chandler - If the guitar were mine I'd give it to a pro. There's no way I'd fix it myself. ISTR that CC has a jig that is used to keep the thing in alignment whilst the glue sets. Mine is just glued as far as I remember.
Factoid - CC used to look after the Peter Green > Gary Moore Les Paul that also had a neck break. Or three..
I have no idea why these images are being shown at 90º to the way I shot them.
Riff Raff said:
Here's one that broke maybe ten or so years ago. The break is slightly different to the OP's in that although the neck broke clean through, there is a sort of trim plate on the front of the headstock that was flexible enough to bend without breaking too. You can see the stress marks on the plate though in the photos I've attached.
I had it fixed by Charlie Chandler - If the guitar were mine I'd give it to a pro. There's no way I'd fix it myself. ISTR that CC has a jig that is used to keep the thing in alignment whilst the glue sets. Mine is just glued as far as I remember.
Factoid - CC used to look after the Peter Green > Gary Moore Les Paul that also had a neck break. Or three..
Interesting, the trim plate was holding ours together too but it did crack around one of the screw holes, no biggie and I don't suppose they're expensive anyway.I had it fixed by Charlie Chandler - If the guitar were mine I'd give it to a pro. There's no way I'd fix it myself. ISTR that CC has a jig that is used to keep the thing in alignment whilst the glue sets. Mine is just glued as far as I remember.
Factoid - CC used to look after the Peter Green > Gary Moore Les Paul that also had a neck break. Or three..
I'll contact Charlie Chandler, London based (assuming I've found the right website) so not ideal but would like to get the strongest repair possible and it seems he knows his stuff.
Looks bad, but that common repair is meat and spuds to any luthier, synthetic and animal glues these days are fantastic,
and with a touch up paint job the repair will be practically invisible.
We demand photos of the one piece headstock when done.
PS. Gibson did try to offset the neck weakness with the volute, it was common on many models.
and with a touch up paint job the repair will be practically invisible.
We demand photos of the one piece headstock when done.
PS. Gibson did try to offset the neck weakness with the volute, it was common on many models.
Edited by coppernorks on Sunday 9th August 15:23
catso said:
Interesting, the trim plate was holding ours together too but it did crack around one of the screw holes, no biggie and I don't suppose they're expensive anyway.
I'll contact Charlie Chandler, London based (assuming I've found the right website) so not ideal but would like to get the strongest repair possible and it seems he knows his stuff.
I used Charlie C's because at the time I lived in Hampton Wick and his place was just round the corner. The fact that he's a bit famous was just a bonus.I'll contact Charlie Chandler, London based (assuming I've found the right website) so not ideal but would like to get the strongest repair possible and it seems he knows his stuff.
As others have said any pro luthier will be able to fix this for not a huge amount of money. Better to let someone who's been trained to do this do this, rather than someone who's experience of woodworking is limited to screwing together IKEA wardrobes. But then again, you might have more woodworking experience than me
Riff Raff said:
As others have said any pro luthier will be able to fix this for not a huge amount of money. Better to let someone who's been trained to do this do this, rather than someone who's experience of woodworking is limited to screwing together IKEA wardrobes. But then again, you might have more woodworking experience than me
Good to know, I've found a couple of local Luthiers so will have a word tomorrow.I did glue a loose kitchen chair back together the other day and, surprisingly it's still holding up OK but otherwise it sounds like our woodworking experiences are similar...
singlecoil said:
The repair is easy (PVA glue and some careful clamping), the difficult part is making it look good, and that's the part that is going to be expensive. So if cost of repair is an issue you might as well simply glue it back on and bring it back into service.
Its a one-shot deal as well. You shouldn't try and dry fit the parts together as you can do more damage to the wood along the break. I'm not sure I would fix a Gibson as my first headstock break, but I would give it a bash on a cheaper guitar (only they tend to not break their headstocks as frequently!). This picture shows the scale of the issue:
There isn't a whole lot of meat in the breaky area once you factor in the routing for the trussrod access. The grain of the wood is aligned with the fretboard and neck, so again this encourages the headstock to split away at this point.
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