penndan - Posted - 08/18/2008:  07:04:47

I'm a banjo builder, but don't hold that against me. I have built guitars an the past, but now I make a lot of block banjo rims and a few complete banjos. It keeps me off the streets and provides a little pocket money for other fun stuff. Like this.
I recently bought a Gold Tone round neck steel body reso guitar on ebay. It was described as having heel joint separation but still playable. I had been lusting after one of the now discontinued StewMac reso guitar kits. But couldn't find any, either in kit form or already built. So, for $240 this Gold Tone became my kit reso guitar.
An hour after the UPS man handed it to me, I had it stripped down to a pile of parts. I had expected to find a bolt on neck, but instead there was a banjo dowel stick kind of set up. The joint for the stick in the neck heel was the problem. It was poorly designed and even more poorly executed. If all the Gold Tones are built this way, they can expect a lot of bad necks. One small knock on the far end of the neck is going to crack this joint easily. The stick was a raggedy hunk of mahogany with a smallish wedge shaped section of end grain glued and doweled into the neck. All the dowel did was further weaken the end grain of the stick.
So, I enlarged the cavity in the neck heel a bit and epoxied in two banjo neck screws. I shaped a hunk of maple to fit inside the body to be a neck block and epoxied that inside. Drilled two holes in the neck block for the screws to pass through, bolted the neck on, and no more loose neck. Now, it will stand up to being used as a weapon in a bar fight!

I used part of the old stick to provide support from the well to the block of wood under the fingerboard extension. All I have left to do is replace the MOP inlays that I drilled out to get at the screws through the fingerboard. Note that there are five screws holding the fingerboard down. Some makers use only four.
It sounds good and I've got the action set for decent finger style playing and good slide action if I'm light on the slide pressure. Now I can get back to learning some Robert Johnson stuff. See you at the crossroads.

Dan

Hooked on Resophonics - Posted - 08/18/2008:  11:50:24

I had one of those Gold Tones too, it had a bunch of epoxy holding the loose neck/joint in place.
Maybe the one I got from an 'ebay dealer' was really a B-stock as well...
Good job on gettin' your done!

Danny Clayburn
soundclick.com/dannyclayburn

penndan - Posted - 08/19/2008:  08:17:27

Danny
You might consider doing a bolt on neck. It's not a difficult job and it will be a lot stronger than a bit of epoxy trying to stand up to the leverage the neck can have on the joint.
I bought mine from Pick and Slide Music in Clarksville, TN on ebay. My shipping box said "B Stock" on the outside. He had a couple of other steel bodies that all had some sort of neck problem. The description said, "The neck/heel joint is separated, as shown in the pics. It would be best to fix it. However, it plays as is with action of 3/16” at the 12th fret, low E. It plays fair fingerstyle and really well with a slide. Otherwise it is in new condition." I interpreted that as the neck is about to fall out. Caveat Emptor! But for $240, I think I got a good deal. I would have paid that much for just a metal body. And then added a StewMac neck and other parts.

Dan

Hooked on Resophonics - Posted - 08/19/2008:  11:35:56

Already dumped that guitar a couple years back... I got mine from the same dealer...as I said, I think they were all B-Stock...although I paid full price...

Live & learn

Danny Clayburn
soundclick.com/dannyclayburn

penndan - Posted - 08/24/2008:  14:45:34

I had a couple of emails asking for more photos. So here are a couple more.
This was the problem with the neck being loose:

There was about 3/4 inch of the end of the triangle glued into the neck. And that part was weakened by drilling through it for a dowel.

Here's the neck block I glued inside the body:

It is about 6 inches wide by 2 1/2 in. high by about 2 in. thick, shaped roughly to the curve of the upper body, and epoxied in.

Here are the banjo neck bolts that are epoxied into the neck. Just like installing a bolt on banjo neck. Plus the fingerboard extension is screwed down thru the top into a block of wood glued inside. That's the wood showing thru the top of the neck hole in the photo above.



Dan

Edited by - penndan on 08/24/2008 14:47:41

penndan - Posted - 08/24/2008:  15:17:45

OK, one more thing and then I'm done. I was experimenting and managed to get a good shot of the neck block inside the body:

Ain't digital cameras wonderful?

Dan

fxhere - Posted - 08/26/2008:  08:56:31

Dan. I use a bolt on neck, but I use a threaded brass insert in the neck and put the brass screws in from the inside..Drill the holes in the neck block first then measure down from the top to the center of the holes and mark the neck to drill Or you can set the neck in place and mark through the holes with a brad point drill...I use two screws and a maple neck block and it works really well and very solid..Also if you make a three piece neck then you dont need a truss rod on the square neck..Good to see you over here...Doug

penndan - Posted - 08/26/2008:  11:03:28

I like the inserts, too. I've used them in guitars that I have built from scratch. I've done them the Cumpiano method with a barrel nut sideways thru a tenon in the neck and with the threaded insert screwed into the heel. Both methods worked just fine. I have some of both kinds of nuts and screws left over from my guitar building days and thought of using them. But, I thought that there was too big a hole in the neck heel already, so I went with this method.
Maybe, now my head is full of banjo stuff. But, there are a lot of similarities between reso guitars and banjos.

Dan

Darryl Hattenhauer - Posted - 08/29/2008:  10:21:47

As a noob, I'm surprised to see how the neck on a Gold Tone is joined. But then being a noob about resos means I'm surprised at learning a lot of new things.

How can you tell if a reso needs a neck reset?

penndan - Posted - 08/29/2008:  14:27:37

This one was easy to tell that it needed a neck reset. The bottom of the heel was pulling away from the body. You could slide a playing card between the heel and the body. And the action was high at the 12th fret. When I slacked off the strings, I could wiggle the neck up and down. The neck was almost being held on by the fingerboard extension.

Dan

Darryl Hattenhauer - Posted - 08/29/2008:  17:20:39

Penndan,

It sounds like you might have prevented the neck from breaking off entirely.

dh

Hooked on Resophonics - Posted - 08/31/2008:  21:57:57

Did you reinstall the neck stick?

Danny Clayburn
soundclick.com/dannyclayburn

penndan - Posted - 09/01/2008:  05:32:45

Yes, I did put the stick back in, just like it was originally. It's screwed to two places on the well shelf and the center screw of the fingerboard extension. But not contacting the neck.
And there are two wood posts that are wedged between the stick and the steel back. I didn't put the posts back in the first time I put it all together. But, they are in now and I think it sounds better. I think the posts get the back into vibrating with the cone and the top.

Dan

Tony Hatton - Posted - 11/04/2008:  07:40:13

This is in reference to Danny Clayburn's comment. He infers that he purchased a new Gold Tone GRS from Pick And Slide Music, that was really a B stock. If it was sold as new, it was new. If it was new, it had a full factory warranty. If he was not smart enough to use the warranty, he could have contacted me and I would have helped. I sell B stocks as B stocks and new as new. I have sold over 1,000 resonator guitars and have no reason to sell a B stock as a new instrument. Tony Hatton.

Tony Hatton