Gibson neck breaks

Elwood

After discussing this with a member on here I was surprised at relative ease of neck breaks on Gibsons. This is nothing to do with QC etc but the overall design and planned construction.

Has this design been updated or improved to reduce the likelihood of neck breaks - have any other makers of LP/SGs taken it upon themselves to strengthen/improve the design without compromising the overall look of the guitar?

I'm not interested in slagging Gibson but interested in the improvements that can be made and have been made. Similar to the Porsche 911 being rear engined. It's not ideal, but they've made it work.

xmrchi

I believe they did with the maple necks and volutes in the 70s, not sure why they stopped doing that to be honest! I loved my old 77 maple voluted necked custom!

ICBM

Feline Guitars did on the Judas Priest Les Paul they repaired, check out the thread.

It's not the same as the 911 - altering that would change the basic character and to many people, the point of the original design.

Improving the Gibson neck in the way Feline did wouldn't change anything at all about the instrument except the tendency of the headstock to come off, so it is a basic design fault that they don't. It doesn't "work" any better with a basic woodworking flaw that any apprentice knows is bad design, leaving exposed short grain.

I own two Gibsons, by the way - I'm not a hater as such.

But both of mine have maple necks.

jd0272

It's not a 'biggy' in any event. if it breaks, get it fixed. It'll be unlikely to do so again unless you're equally as hamfisted with a delicate instrument.

Elwood

jd0272 said:

It's not a 'biggy' in any event. if it breaks, get it fixed. It'll be unlikely to do so again unless you're equally as hamfisted with a delicate instrument.

I'm not sure i'd agree with that.

ICBM said:

Feline Guitars did on the Judas Priest Les Paul they repaired, check out the thread.

Will do

Pyroman

  I'm guessing the reasoning behind Gibson sticking with the original problematic design, is that when they do attempt to fix it, the vintage purists scream bloody murder.

  I own 2 Gibsons, and 2 Epiphones, all with Mahogany necks.  Love em, but esp in the case of my Firebird- I'm afraid to take it out of the house! 

ICBM

Pyroman said:

I'm guessing the reasoning behind Gibson sticking with the original problematic design, is that when they do attempt to fix it, the vintage purists scream bloody murder.

Except that they're quite happy to change almost every other aspect of the design, from chambering the bodies to using laminated and Richlite fingerboards and even Neutrik jack sockets - yes, all of which purists made a fuss about. (Not to mention Robot tuning!) Doing all those things but leaving the headstock unreinforced for 'tradition' is almost wilfully bad practice.

To be clear, I don't think they should reinforce the Historic reissues, necessarily - the point of those is that they're built like the originals as far as possible. If you own one you need to be aware of the headstock issue. But on all the more modern models, there's really no excuse.

Bear in mind that by inlaying reinforcement at manufacture, nothing - not the appearance, not the headstock angle, nothing that's detectable without an x-ray machine in fact, is changed at all from the point of view of a player.

strtdv

I love my SG but I don't see any reason at all why it shouldn't have a volute, it wouldn't affect playability at all and would make it much stronger.

koneguitarist

I have repaired loads of Gibson neck breaks, generally easy to repair, it's not just Gibson, lots of companies make their necks same way.

I don't see a problem, if I had a £1,000 plus guitar I would be careful with it. Accidents do happen, but look  how many gibbons are out there without being broken after decades of use. 

IvisonGuitars

For what it's worth, I have both an R8 (headstock break when I bought it) which is the best/easiest playing guitar I own and my J45 fell off it's stand last year and broke the headstock clean off, it's been repaired and hasn't affected the sound or playability in any way.

underdog

So can you take your Gibson and get it strengthened before it breaks ?

streethawk

underdog said:

So can you take your Gibson and get it strengthened before it breaks ?

I have the shop snap them before taking delivery, then glue them myself. 

Wolfetone

ICBM said:

Except that they're quite happy to change almost every other aspect of the design, from chambering the bodies to using laminated and Richlite fingerboards and even Neutrik jack sockets - yes, all of which purists made a fuss about. (Not to mention Robot tuning!) Doing all those things but leaving the headstock unreinforced for 'tradition' is almost wilfully bad practice.

You beat me to it! A volute isn't that intrusive on the appearance either. I would rather the appearance of a volute than that of a broken neck 

Moe_Zambeek

Remember the Alex Lifeson sig 335 debacle? Gibson put a volute on them, but in the wrong place good old custom shop luthiery...

Bogwhoppit

When 'some' issues occur on new cars, for example, the VW UP gearbox weekness, they call it a characteristic. Many car manufacturers cite it in their handbook and warranty information - almost as if its a get out clause. At least Gibson haven't gone that far - yet !

 

Although the only neck break I've suffered was with an SG copy, and that was because I was being ham fisted with it.

ICBM

Wolfetone said:

You beat me to it! A volute isn't that intrusive on the appearance either. I would rather the appearance of a volute than that of a broken neck 

The volute doesn't make much difference, actually - not on a solid mahogany neck, anyway - I've seen plenty of broken ones. I actually like the volute from a pure aesthetic point of view too.

The big faults are the use of mahogany (quite brittle and not that strong, maple is much stronger and tougher), the steep neck angle (shortening the length of the grain line through the weakest point) and the size of the truss rod adjustment cavity (it's almost half the total cross-sectional area of the neck at that point). In the 70s they tried volutes, three-piece neck laminations and lowering the head angle by three degrees, but nothing really stopped them breaking until they switched to maple… which the purists wouldn't wear either.

If you want to keep the mahogany, the steep angle, the traditional truss rod access, and you don't want to scarf-joint it, the internal reinforcement method is by far the best. It doesn't have to be graphite either, which Feline used - even two maple insets would be a huge improvement and not expensive to do.

siraxeman

A volute plus a mmuch shallower truss rod channel.....2 small steps to aid strength?

jd0272

Ionian;436411" said:

jd0272 said:

It's not a 'biggy' in any event. if it breaks, get it fixed. It'll be unlikely to do so again unless you're equally as hamfisted with a delicate instrument.





I'm not sure i'd agree with that.




ICBM said:

Feline Guitars did on the Judas Priest Les Paul they repaired, check out the thread.










Will do

Horses for courses! Neck breaks bother me not. As long as it's fixed properly and the guitar performs as it should.

Neil

siraxeman said:

A volute plus a mmuch shallower truss rod channel.....2 small steps to aid strength?

I think a change to a maple neck would be stronger but overall we are talking about a musical instrument here and not something you would use on a building site. 

Evilmags

The graphite inlays make sense. Even better stick it right down the neck as it kills dead spots.

richardhomer

In fairness a Martin acoustic would break in exactly the same way - back pitched headstocks are a very well established part of guitar design - it isn't a peculiarity of Gibson. Obviously Fender found a way round the issue (though their 'cure' which required the introduction of a different kind of problem - ie the string tree) and Taylor use their own take on scarf joining.

To me a pitched headstock is always going to be vulnerable if it's not scarfed - a maple neck is not something that was part of the golden era Gibsons - I can live with the risk.

My vintage 335 had a headstock repair before I bought it. It's presented no problems and in fact, it allowed me to buy a genuine vintage instrument for Historic money....