head breaks .Is it Gibson who mainly have the dreaded neck break.

rossi

Just wondering .I have a lovely Midtown but I really need to shove it into a gig bag for the final 1/4 mile to various venues and am getting old and grumpy .The case is  too heavy .Do Guild and similar have weak necks or is it just Gibson mainly .I do use a light Fender but its a bit too light .

thanks in advance

terada

The Gibson head break thing is due to the angle of the headstock, the grain of the bit of wood used for the neck, and the routing for the truss rod. All of which combined can make it very easy for a tap to remove the headstock.

I have had the headstock come off of other guitars that have a similar headstock angle. If you're gigging regularly, don't worry about it and if it happens, get it fixed and forget about it.

The audience won't be able to tell.

ICBM

Mainly Gibson - more than all other brands put together, although to be fair there are probably more Gibsons than most other brands with angled headstocks. But they do have a combination of features which makes them more than usually fragile.

You can get good gig bags with reinforcement and neck supports - Mono and Fusion, probably others. They’re not cheap, but they’re cheaper than a professional headstock repair...

There are also semi-hard cases which can be carried like a gig bag, which are quite cheap.

I use a Mono, it wouldn’t worry me carrying a Gibson in it at all.

Headphones

There's a chap by the name of "Blackmore" who might suggest that Strat's can fail too...

Strat54

Friend of mine posted a lovely 80's PRS Custom a few years back and that arrived with a broken headstock too just like a Les Paul. 

Winny_Pooh

Strat54 said:

Friend of mine posted a lovely 80's PRS Custom a few years back and that arrived with a broken headstock too just like a Les Paul. 

Ironically the cheaper US S2 models are less likely to have breaks than core models as they're scarf jointed. 

ICBM

Winny_Pooh said:

Ironically the cheaper US S2 models are less likely to have breaks than core models as they're scarf jointed. 

Likewise Epiphone vs. Gibson.