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Hello,

I got this Guild electric for a tune up.

On the back it has a hatch which I thought would yield a truss adjuster.

Which instead yielded this mess.

I'm assuming someone reset the neck as it has this damage

So with no truss adjuster (I need to add relief) I think there's not much I can do. I will be upping a guage which might help, but the angle is forward and the bridge adjustment is bottomed out and the action is already .100-.070. Too high still.

Any clever outs?

Thanks...

There's not a truss rod cover on the headstock?
The cover on the back looks like it is covering someone's mistake.
Seeing the heel separation makes me wonder what kind of joint is used on the neck.
It would be cool to get an X-ray to see what the heck is going on.
That's a weird one, Ed.
Let us know what you find out.
Dan

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

Nope, nothing on the cover. .

Typical weird Gretsch.... sorry, no answers for ya.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Fair enough. New strings and out the door...

That IS the truss rod adjust under that three screw plate on the neck heel. That's where Gretch puts them.... It also requires a special, Gretch proprietary truss rod wrench to adjust the stupid thing. We have em but that won't do you much good for now.

So knowing what it needs or will need is going to be a function of what you can do with the truss rod.

Notice the zero fret too?

When I get to the shop today I will take a pic of the Gretch rod adjustor or at least the one that Dave made and post it so you can get an idea how to do it.

I would appreciate that. There is one lumpy bit of metal sticking up,in one of the holes, looks like the worn off top off a nail.

surprise...I was expecting a Guild.

Here's a little info.
http://www.gretschslostweekend.com/?page_id=77

DOH!

The other G brand...

Thanks Michael, that's great!

You're quite welcome Ed.

Good to know the direction and especially since it takes so many turns to see action.

Just got home.

If there were 37 different types and implementations of truss rods Gretch at one time or another has used 36 of them....

For this one here is our tool that Dave Collins made as promised.

This guitar had problems far beyond a truss tweak sadly. I upped the guage per customer request to 11's, and it put the action a .110-.080, no good.

Without tweaking the t-rod, it plays more or less cleanly 1-5, but the zero fret is worn and a d g buzz open, but not horribly.

But the adjustable bridge is lowered as much as it can go without modification. The neck angle is forward.

Is it normal to modify a bridge to reduce action, or does one do resets on electrics?

It's frowned upon if there is vintage value. But in this case I think that it would be "appropriate for the instrument."

Action can further be improved AND that worn zero fret represents an opportunity of sorts in so much as a fret dress that favors the zero fret end and barely kisses the 12th fret would further improve neck angle. We do this all of the time and it works great. It won't get you much improvement but I'm thinking that in conjunction with lowering the bridge foot the combination might just get this ax playing the greatest tune of all time again - Smoke On The Water....

Resets are not common on electrics although they do get done at times.