Come Together
As Alex Bishop begins the restoration of an iconic piece of bass guitar history, getting to the root of the problem is as important as the repair
When I’m not building guitars on commission and teaching lutherie, I take great pleasure in restoring and repairing stringed instruments for my customers. Most frequently this takes the form of straightforward setup work; I might be tweaking action or truss rods, perhaps levelling and replacing frets. However, every so often a more extensive project lands on my bench and this month it was an all-original mid-60s Hofner violin bass, a tantalising and beautiful instrument albeit in need of some love and attention.
The body of the instrument was in good condition given its age, but the old lacquer finish had checked so badly it was peeling away from the wood in several places, particularly at the headstock. The heel of the neck was detaching from the body, and had pulled away some of the binding from the body at a point where a brass hook had been installed as a crude strap button. Most importantly, the neck join had collapsed completely, with the cantilevered portion of the fretboard actually making contact with the body, the only thing preventing it from popping out altogether. With the strings sitting far too high along the fingerboard, the instrument was totally unplayable. Given the heavily corroded condition of its three remaining strings, no doubt the bass had been in this sorry state for some time.
Any restoration project can be a daunting task, especially for the uninitiated. Normally, when appraising an instrument, I try to figure out the root of any particular problem, and this is the key to understanding the process required to repair it – it is all too easy to ‘fix’ a problem by doing the wrong (yet often easiest) repair. Clearly, in this instance, a neck reset was required, but what had caused it to fail in the first place?
Before addressing the problem of the neck, the very first thing to do was to stabilise the finish to avoid further damage to the peeling flakes of lacquer. Unlike many modern finishes, nitrocellulose has the ability to be reactivated using various chemicals. With careful application by a paintbrush, I was able to reattach the finish to the wood at its vulnerable edges, preserving the patination of the original finish.
Pain In The Neck
Then it was time to remove the neck. The purpose of a neck reset is to restore the correct geometry of the strings, resulting in the perfect action when the bridge is set at the middle of its adjustable height. Part of the challenge is being able to take the neck out in the first place, and with the plethora of guitar and bass designs out there one has to tread carefully.
This time, a quick search on the internet showed me that the neck itself simply slots directly into a mortise (or slot) in the body. No fancy dovetails or complicated joinery here, thankfully. Also with such a small amount of surface area to hold the neck in place, it is perhaps no surprise that the join failed, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a lot of similar violin basses out there that met this same fate.
My preferred approach was to gently warm up the neck join area with a heat gun (taking care not to blister the finish), injecting water into the join and inserting a sharpened pallet knife between the neck and the body, levering the neck from beneath the heel. Thankfully, the join had been considerately fixed into place with an animal glue, which surrenders to this approach with relative ease. After quite a bit of jostling there is a certain satisfaction that comes from finally releasing the neck from the body and seeing inside the join for the first time. The next step will be to reinstall the neck at the correct angle, undoubtedly the most crucial stage in any restoration or guitar build. I can only hope that it will all ‘come together’ in the end.
“The challenge is being able to take the neck out in the first place, and with all the guitar and bass designs out there one has to tread carefully”