Official Luthiers Forum!

Hey folks, lovely forum you have over here.

I'm half way through, well, maybe a quarter way through, a neck reset on a Chinese made Washburn J28SCEDL. The board is free to the join, 15th fret popped, all easy going thus far, so time for the steam, but just before I drilled the access hole it hit me..

It's a flashy thing with curly maple back and sides, real nice figure, binding everywhere, 7 ply on the body! Looks fab, sexy looking thing, so I assumed it's a dovetail. Silly! It's china made, and relatively cheap, especially compared to how it looks, so bloody anything could be hiding under that fretboard. I'm praying it's something normal, but my gut is telling me it will be dowels and epoxy or something else equally horrible.

Any ideas? What's the neck join on these things? Any tricks so suss it out before I go steaming and sawing like a madman?

Cheers,
Fret

You haven't even started yet.

A friend at another shop tried this on a Chinese Washburn a year or two ago. Took a few weeks to get through the work, which did not go as planned, then a few months and a few thousand dollars to get through the court system when the emotionally attached owner wasn't happy with the results. No joke.

It's not a serviceable neck joint. Best option with these is to burn them. Not worth the work to repair, and does not provide any useful experience to improve skills in relation to guitars that are worth working on if your main goal is to learn.

If it's just a spare time project that you're doing for fun, you can saw off the neck and convert it to a bolt on. Nothing under the 15th fret to steam but a chunk of wood.

_________________
Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

Thanks for the reply David . That sounds like a complete and utter nightmare! Fortunately (?), it's my guitar, so on my head be it.

Not long after I posted, curiosity got the best of me and I sawed the board at the 14th, revealing this..







I think I may have found the reason that they started using dowels and epoxy ! No room behind the joint, I was just about able to squeeze a razor blade in there, and just look at that hole on the treble side, that goes all the way down to the heel! Shimmed to buggery from the factory and off centre by a country mile. No wonder the neck angle is off! Really, I'm amazed it's lasted as long as it has.

Edit: Don't suppose you can remember what type of joint you're friend found on the one he was working on can you David? As much of a mess as this one looks, I'm thinking it's a salvageable mess, with some diligent shimming and shaving.