Official Luthiers Forum!

I have a late 60s (68 I believe from the zero fret) Gretsch double Anniversary
I bought it sight unseen about 15 years ago and of course it came with a fatal flaw!!
I believe it would greatly benefit from a neck reset.
With the bigsby the break angle over the bridge is almost non existent and the action gets pretty high much past the 10th fret
Still playable but more difficult and there is a noticeable ski jump(fretboard extension) where the neck joins the body
By averaging out the bridge the truss etc. I've used it as a second guitar for years but it would be nice to have it playing as nice as my first guitar. More break over the bridge and nicer action all the way up the neck.
It was originally sunburst I think and refinished black sometime long before me owning it. The finish shows lots of checking (nice!) and there's black overspray in the F-holes and you can see where the factory label was(the non over-sprayed square part(haha) I bound the F-holes(which disappeared in the black body) , build a custom one piece ebony and bone bridge and built an ebony truss rod cover and put the wire chet arm on it.
I don't know if it has the bolt and polly filla arrangement that so many of these guitars had in the heel.I'm a little wary to start digging
I'm thinking make sure the laquer around the joint is cut, remove 15th fret drill 2 small holes into the dovetail and the use my wall paper steamer (small unit) and a luthiers syringe in lieu of a basketball pin, to put steam in one hole and hope for the best.
Sounds good?

I'd have to see it in person before I proceeded on any path. Advising someone to do their own neck reset when they are not experienced with same is also not something that I would advise either. No offense intended, I want you to have a great outcome and have no idea what your abilities are. Some instruments are a PITA as well regardless of your abilities.

What I did want to offer though is an alternative that's less invasive, may get you where you want to go, and only will take around several hours tops, likely less.

It's possible for those of us who do lots of fret work to change the neck angle or more specifically the angle of the fret plane in either direction for lower or higher action with a precision fret dress. If the neck is conducive to this, a skilled Luthier would be capable of determining this with an in person look, the fret dress can concentrate material removal in the region of the first several frets.

This combined with nixing the ski-ramp of the over body frets can at times belay the need for a neck reset for years and possibly eliminate it entirely.

An easy way to think of the process is milling down height on the frets near the nut, preserving height of the frets at the 12th, killing the ski ramp, etc. Although the neck remains at the very same angle the fret plane as the string see the frets changes angle. This also increases break angle over the bridge without raising the bridge or changing the position of the Bigsby.

We do this technique often and it often saves the day for folks on a budget or an instrument that invasive work is not desirable unless it's a last resort.

I understand what you are saying and appreciate the insight and idea.
As to where I'm coming from I did take a guitar building course many years ago and worked at Larrivee for a bit. I've worked as a carpenter and I'm a hobbyist bowyer. I like working on fine stuff, finishes etc.
I've done a couple refrets successfully and lots of my own fretwork and work on my own guitars in general. I helped a luthier friend reset the neck on a little guild acoustic once and I understand the process well.

With the truss rod adjusted so the neck (from the body) is pretty well perfectly flat
(not an ideal condition I know) and the bridge is as low as can be I have about 3mm between the E string and the 12th fret
My 1st fret is about 1 mm high or just over. So at this point I don't know how much positive change I can effect. after one dresses the first few frets down one gets one lower action/slightly better angle by adjusting the nut(or in this case the zero fret is already adjusted) The guitar is almost in need of a refret and I guess one could sand the nut end of the board down in the process, but if I look at the neck binding it looks like it's tapering down towards the nut anyway. So that might already have been done. hmm

Found the heel screw

You sound like you could pull this off to me and have some experience as well.

I also think that you are right, a neck reset is needed and anything short of that won't get you where you want to go.

Hmmm what have we here a suspiciously shiny bolt with the head ground down
Could this be the proverbial can of worms?

That does indeed look like a can of worms.

I have not done a neck reset on this type of guitar, however screws are not a good sign, in alot of cases that usually means that a reset or a repair has been attempted before, interested to see where this one goes.

In this instance a screw is expected as all the 50s and 60s Gretsch's had them. However they usually weren't this shiny and none of the pictures showed one wit the head ground down.

I guess this is when we separate the luthiers from the boys/wannabees (like me haha)
At this point I could sew it all back up and leave things as they were
Or I could go ahead, cut the lacquer around the neck join, and it's pretty good especially on the cutaway side and hope that nobody did something rash like goop a bunch of epoxy in there!!
I remember at Larivee if there was a bridge that was a problem sometimes they would epoxy it on..i remeber thinking oooo poor bastard that every has to fix this

Careful removal of the 15th fret shows no sign of previous drill holes...tempted to remove 14th and 16th to just to make sure. no previous reset sign is a good thing!

14th and 16th are clean too, bodes well

Espresso injection makes your gretsch play faster
Should've bought the 6" bolts!

haha i could use a little help here
My neck doesn't want to come off
I think I did everything procedurally right. My jig seemed to work well applying pressure to the heel
My holes were drilled in the right spots. I applied steam and NO movement
I tried a few times but didn't want to steam the whole guitar apart
It still seems solid as a rock and the finish is acquiring a little blush around the heel hole( I applied steam ther too for fun excitement and variety..also seemed like a good idea)
One thing I find worrisome is that one of the holes brought up a fine white nasty smelling powder that frankly smells kind of like epoxy. I'm wondering if a nice drying out period and a fretboard sanding Taking off wood mostly near the headstock would be a better approach. I don't want to kill the guitar trying to remove the neck. As it is I have some cosmetic stuff to fix up. i could use a refret regardless but the initial issue couldn't be fixed with a dressing. so HELP!!
I don;t even mind a few I told you sos etc. I can take it!

my girlfriend thought the powder smelled more like rotting meat than epoxy. It kind of reminds me some of the smells produced by old electronics cooking..in a bad way..(.I make my own tube amps) or a new bicycle tube which culd be partly from the new rubber hose used

Did you already separate the neck extension from the top? Hard for me to see from the photos. Haven't done one those so have no idea how they were built

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Have you considered removing the fretboard? Not too big a deal and you can see exactly what you have.

Interesting and thanks for the input!
I haven't considered removing the Fretboard but It certainly would let me know what's happening
I do have this cool mini iron made for such things
One fellow who does work on gretsch's just cutc off the fretboard extension and digs the glue out rather than using steam..though that gives me the willies
Nor did I separate the neck extension from the top per se
I did cut through the lacquer all around the neck join and the fret board extension .
I know the fretboard extension isn't supposed to be glued to the top but I have read that gretsch sometimes did so

Well. looking for some more advice here
It really seemed like this neck DIDN'T want come off short of some serious brutality, and it's still really solid so I'm going to remove the frets(it needed a refret anyway due to wear), do a little neck angle cheating by sanding the fretboard. and then refret etc. and maybe a lttle dressing cheating as suggested above if needed and hopefully between the two achieve the adjustment needed to achieve a little better playability with this guitar.

I've done a couple of refrets on my vintage guitars very successfully(a 70s Yamaha archtop and recently a 67 Gretsch Viking) Start big..haha
One thing I can't seem to find any info on is that if you want to tweak the angle a tiny bit how do you set the truss rod with the frets out.
My inclination would be perfectly flat and do sanding adjustments acoordingly

With no frets and the truss rod loosened this guitar has some slight forward bow(relief)
Should it be dead flat with the truss rod loosened? Does it have a forward because it has no frets?
Is that a good point to start to achieve some of the cheating I'm looking for?
As then I would be primarily sanding the nut end the most?

Sounds good!, carry on (self help!)

Anywho I refretted the guitar and got a bit of a better break over the bridge which allowed me to lower the action, particularly on the bass side, which is good and overall the guitar is getting a lot closer to what I'd like it to be
As it has a poor neck angle (there's two angles essentially. the proper one on the fretboard extension and the too flat one past the body) adjusting the truss rod past a point just creates a funky shaped neck
One thing I have noticed is that if you adjust the truss rod past the point of happiness it of course starts to develop a back bow and a hump in the middle of the neck,between the 3rd and 8th or 9th frets. This of course makes all the first positions bottom fret out against these frets quite dramtically
As the frets are nice new and quite high(they didn't need much leveling)

Could I give it a light dressing with the truss rod set to a slight back bow and take out a bit of the hump in the middle from the frets themselves enabling me to get a bit more usable truss rod adjustment?

I didn't want to attempt to take this out of the actual board as on this guitar you can see the the neck is visibly thinner in the middle than it is at the ends. I can only speculate it was a bad sanding job when refinishing or somebodies poor attempt to have a thinner neck.