Setup advice

MaximusVolumus · January 2014

Thank you for all your help Bob. I really appreciate it. Best wishes

MaximusVolumus · April 2014

Hey everyone,

I thought I'd post an update. I ended up taking my guitar to Allen Watsky.
He was able to diagnose the problem(s) and got them all straightened out.
It plays like an absolute dream now!

For anyone in the northeast (or anywhere else, for that matter) who needs guitar repair/setup work, Al is your man. After having gone to him this once, I'd do it a hundred times over.

There's something extremely comforting in leaving your guitar in the hands of someone who's so passionate about what they do.

Thanks again for all your advice and guidance. Without it, I might not have taken the guitar to him!
-Max

Joli Gadjo · April 2014

So what was Allen's diagnosis?

Al Watsky · April 2014

Thanks for the compliments Max , hope you continue to enjoy that guitar for decades to come ! You make it sound great !
As far as the "diagnosis" ?
Wow !
I guess it would be pretty accurate to say that there was almost nothing right about the fingerboard . Nothing was right. Luckily Mr. Hodson left us with plenty of ebony to work with .
To start with , how do you like the thought of .043 wide fret slots ? Sounds like fun ?
Tomorrow morning after a cup of strong coffee I might find the energy to relate that guitars tale of woe .
The good news is it plays and sound right with the action set at 2mm - 2.8mm with the 11's and a set of EVO 55090.
It should stay that way for a long time.

richter4208 · April 2014

I'd be really curious to hear this Al when you get a chance. I'm especially curious what goes on with a guitar with a neck hump at the body joint, not saying that was the issue of course.

Does neck hump syndrome occur due to dryness or something else?

Al Watsky · April 2014

Morning !
Its hard to know what it was that "happened" to this guitar.
I own 2 DJ Hodson instruments , a Tenor and a Djangolin.
Both are stable cleanly crafted instruments with no neck problems of any sort and nothing about Max's instrument led me to believe that D. Hodson was the author of this nightmare.
I think the instrument owned by Max was a custom order and was quite Deluxe .
The highly figured top is fully bound in shell , and the instrument sports a unique tailpiece and in general seems to be an early "presentation quality" Hodson. Its a good sounding instrument after the work.
What I needed to do was simple enough on the surface.
Its just a "pull and plane" . You remove the frets prepare the board for new wire and install.
In this case the board had ,words fail me, a gully or trench between the third and thirteenth fret that seemed to have been gnawed into that shape by a bark eating animal and then finish sanded. So there was over a sixteenth of an inch or more of relief and a precipitous "fall away" . It looked like a cartoon rendering of a fingerboard profile.
The frets that had been installed were the largest I have ever seen used in a guitar. About 110x57 or more I would guess, not the sort of thing I would ever use.
They were sitting in puddles of glue , epoxy and cyano. There was a huge hump at the neck body joint and the neck angle was so acute that the bridge which is as high as any late model Favino #10 was sitting on 3 or 4 shims, teetering really. I think the huge fret was an attempt by the "repair person" to hopefully avoid actually doing the job. Overcompensating for the malformation with the fret wire and milling after the fact. It did not work.
The fret slots were randomly sized from around .025 in some of the centers , which is about right to as much as .043 on the fret ends. So I guess this was intended to be an epoxy glue in job that went bad.
We had a "radius" that seems to have been intended to be 16" but in fact in the deformed area there was no actual radius. There was radius in the first 3 frets and in the fingerboard extension but the rest of the board was ?, what to say randomly formed in around 70% of the playing surface.
I removed the fret in the usual manner and began to re surface the board which was very thick , which was good.
I removed the hump, and proceeded to re radius to 16" and continued tword the nut. My goal was to change the angle of the fingerboard so I worked mainly on the frets between 8 and the sound hole. I wanted to lower the bridge and get it off those shims. When It was more or less where I wanted it to be I decided to re radius to 20" .
All of this was preceded by a heat treatment which involves a heating element housed in a rectangle of steel and some clamps. Its an old school method used for decades which is effective and permanent. You can do all sorts of stuff with a neck heater. Any way. I digress.
Then I crimped each fret to match the shot width and hammered in using hot hide glue , a very heavy mixture and then moved forward with the "finals" which are the grind polish and set up. The biggest bother was sizing the tang. Happily it intonates perfectly so we got lucky .
The result is as it should be with a low action and medium relief. There were some limitations due to the previous work and I have to say this relief profile is more the average , which is to say its not my usual profile but as some may know there are at *least* several ways to skin a cat.
Oh an it is cosmetically as perfect as possible 'cause thats how I roll.
The good news is that Max now has a guitar he can really use and in fact this guitar sounds good ! Its a good guitar. So it was worth the effort.
I could have replaced the fingerboard, but that would have been more costly and because the fret placement was good seemed to be unnecessary.
Took a minute to examine my Hodson tenor and behold ! , Hodson is the author of the .043 fret slots, guess he was a glue in guy. Folks don't do that epoxy set up anymore, that was a fad for a minute. Guess the guy who did the second set of frets didn't know how to deal with it and mucked it up ? Who knows ?
Alls well that ends well.
Thanks coffee !
:shock: