Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Mike,

My first 360/12 had this from day one...fast forward 11years and the guitar needs a neck reset

My 370/12v67 has the same finish cracks were the neck connects to the body, and the neck is fine after five years.

Where I live we sometimes get a bit of snow in winter and very dry heat at up to about 40 deg C in summer, ie pretty extreme for a guitar, that and several flights around the world have done my 360/12 no favours!

Do a search for Neck Reset or Neck Angle on this forum and you will find plenty of discussion about how to assess weather you have a problem or not with your guitar.

Hope this helps a little.

Si....

Sounds like a climate issue. These are glued with Titebond, which can (with a bit wider gap than usual) flex a bit, and if there is an uneven shrinkage/contraction situation, the joint can shift. You do not mention which guitar you are having issues with, but from your description it's a 330 or 360, correct? This neck-set is still a hand operation at the factory.

If you need a second bridge plate (a common temporary fix, as you know, and at least a reversible one!), then it's a candidate for a neck reset. Write me off-list and I'll see if I can help you or refer you.

A crack in the finish at the neck/body joint on a set-neck Rick is an indication of a shift, but this can be of varying degrees, and may not be serious yet, or ever. This is where the finish is generally thickest and often least flexible, so a finish crack does not have to mean serious trouble unless there are other signs, too--like the change in neck angle indicated by radical bridge adjustments and poor string action.

wooly wrote:I know the harder the finish, the higher the chance of cracking.
It seems that Ric has a very hard finish rather than a softer nitro finish.
I polished the guitar a year ago and the polish remained in the joint where the finish has flaked away.
What I understand about the 330 neck joint, is that the tenon is quite long and goes in deep into he body.
How can that much surface with Titebond give way?
SG's have the smallest surface for their tenons and they seem to crack only when they are much older.
How tight is the 330 joint to begin with?
I will email you.
It's easier for me to emil pictures than through this site.
Thanks,
Mike

Yep--the harder, etc. But let's fine-tune our language. Nitro is brittle, besides being unstable when applied thickly. (If you think that CV checks, well...nitro will go nuts if applied in anywhere near the thickness of a typical CV clear coat!). Conversion varnish, is, on the other hand, more resilient and less brittle. Nitro does have a softer surface, depending upon color, than CV, though.

Anytime you polish a wooden surface with a finish crack, the kaolin filler in the polish will remain in the crack. It's the typical whitish powder once the liquids in the polish have evaporated.

I've never actually measured the depth of a 330 tenon but I'd say it's in the 6" range, give or take an inch. SG necks are set with hide glue, which is less flexible than AR, but still heat-disassemblable. The neck joint of an SG is notoriously badly design-engineered.

The neck tenon joint is tricky, in terms of clearance. If it's fitted too tightly, the AR glue will mostly scrape off when the tenon is inserted into the pocket; if it's too loose, the normal wood expansion that occurs when water hits the wood fibers, will not be sufficient to fill the gap between the tenon and its socket. The glue will fill the gap instead, and its ductility means that the neck is susceptible to shifting. I'm not saying that this is what happened to your guitar; I don't know enough about its history to venture a guess about this. I'm just laying out some criteria.

The fit of the tenon into its socket needs to be accurate to a couple of thousandths of an inch. Not too hard to do in a hand-building situation. In even small series-production, however, this must be closely controlled and is the most critical joint in a set-neck guitar.

Miguel, put a big drop of Titebond onto a piece of glass. Let it dry and peel it off.

1. Can you bend the dried yellow drop in half?

2. Drop it into a glass of water. Leave it for a couple of days. What's left?

It's an adhesive. It can creep. It has little integrity on its own.

It's not likely that too little glue was used, though I suppose anything is possible.. Typically, the excess glue is wiped from the joint after the neck is slid into place.

How about neck relief--is the neck straight or does it have pronounced relief?

What strings have you favored on this instrument?

Back bow? Twenty questions, now, about truss rod adjustments...how many, how often, why, and who?

(I have a dinner engagement tonight, so won't be able to continue until tomorrow.)

Either you have a truss rod issue (too tight for too long), or the neck has shifted, althouh why it would shift in the wrong direction is beyond me right now.

If only I could see this thing in person...are you coming to the So Cal confluence, Mike?