Article: How is this neck attached?
This guitar was built in the twenties. It's a good quality,
solid mahogany grand concert. The outward appearance is very Martin-like.
It needs a neck reset, but the question is, what kind of joint am I going
to encounter? Is it a tapered dovetail, ala Martin, or some whacky doweled
puzzle that's going to be a nightmare to work on?
Luckily, we have a friend who's a radiologist at a large local hospital which
should remain nameless, so we were able to x-ray the neck joint and see what's
in there! The x-ray reveals a dovetail neck block (whew!) and very Martinesque
construction.
If you look carefully at the first fret over the body, the 15th, you can see
a very small pocket. That's where I'll have to inject steam. We'll proceed
just like working on a Martin of this vintage- remove the 15th fret, inject
steam in there, and wiggle the neck free.
Was it really practical to do this x-ray analysis? Well, no,
not from a purely economic stanpoint, but it made a nice little presentation
to show you how a neck is attached, and besides, it's more trick than anything
Frank Ford has on his site!