Repair work is where having a work holding and positioning tool like Don Parker recently showed comes into its own, but for this repair a leg vise should suffice.

Trust me - resonator guitars are the weirdest stringed beasties since who flung the chunk. You don't wanna open them up unless you know all the arcane ways it's supposed to be held together. The Dopyera Brothers were literally auto body shop guys who decided to build guitars, but only after looking at a banjo. The neck attach method they came up with makes very little rhyme or reason.

Those feet under the wooden bar are usually just sitting in there under pressure without any kind of glue--of course, this one could be different. Typically to pull the neck on a metal bodied reso, you have to drill out the inlays covering the screws on the fingerboard extension, remove those screws, remove the screws going through the soundwell into the wooden bar and remove the tailpiece. It could still be tight at that point, but it should give. Removing that little piece of plywood that the soundwell screw goes through would probably do it.

Dave

This will end up being way easier than scabbing on a peghead (actually, that really was not possible).

Until I see detailed photos of the neck and peghead, I will say your assessment is untrue. Difficult? Probably. Impossible? I doubt it.

reso steinberger time