Official Luthiers Forum!

I have a 60s era Teisco with a severely out of whack neck. Owner is ok with the work and to get the neck angle correct I needed to raise the neck angle by nearly 1/8"

I've seen the business card thing alot but that wasn't going to work. So I cut a shim that tapers from .125" down to .015" at the edge. Curious if this is a decent way to correct severe neck angle issues? I used maple for the shim, I don't know if I need to make it take up the entire neck pocket or not. Any other shim I've seen is usually just stuck at the deepest part of the pocket and doesn't taper at all, instead letting the screws pull the neck down to where it needs to be.

I believe that is the correct repair. I've done it that way on 5 or 6, but I usually glue the shim to the neck, it's easier to remove.

_________________
A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

Drive on, Dan - you got this one licked.

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

You're good.

What amazes me and we see these Teisco guitars too is as a little kid in a small town with a 3,000 patient mental hospital where I grew up.... the 5 and dime store (anyone remember those...) sold Teisco guitars. They were considerably cheaper than the "real" guitars that one could purchase down the street at the Music Mart.

The Music Mart sold G*bson, Kay, Fender, Martin etc. A 2 pup Kay back then like a 175 would cost you $125 and include a case. Back at Murphy's the 5 and dime store the three pup Teisco was displayed over the stairs leading down to the basement and marked at $49.

I have a bit of a photographic memory for numbers....

Anyway these things, Teisco guitars were junk back then and no one played out with them that I was aware of. Instead Les Pauls and SG's though a twin or a bandmaster were the rage.

Move forward 50 years and this junk can sell on eBay for $800 at times.... Amazing....

I get-it that they are cool looking and have a sound that can be.... unique.... and I like some of the things such as the switches, etc. but one has to wonder if today's toy guitars will bring big bucks someday when we are all living on the moon or space station. I can see it now a First Act for 8,000 credits on galactic eBay.... George Jetson would have heart burn....

Anyway sorry for the slight high-jack, good going Dan. My only suggestion is that it would be unusual for the geometry on a solid body to change that radically so perhaps something else such as the configuration of the trem has changed necessitating a mismatch of the neck angle? We frequently see these eBay instruments not being complete in needed, vintage parts and/or some one has cobbled it together with non-original stuff that does not work together.

Hey Hesh, no problem on the hijack, I enjoy your stories.

You do bring up a good point. When the guitar first came in the bridge was as low as it could possibly go and the action at the 12th fret was still a miserable .120" It had also been strung with medium acoustic strings tuned high while it lay in the closet, my thought is that this was responsible for the extreme neck angle.

Interesting point, Hesh. The popularity of Teiscos in the modern era strikes me as more evidence that what is considered "good" or "desirable" in a guitar is very much a fluid cultural question of aesthetics rather than an absolute when it comes to tone and appearance. Will a First Act ever achieve similar popularity? It seems to me it only takes a popular artist or two to release a popular album or two featuring a First Act and then the First Acts too will have the "it" factor.

It happened with the oddball Teiscos and similar during the late 80s-mid90s. Silvertones and Airlines made a comeback and became more desirable than they were when new.

I recall it happened with some guy called Jimmy Page and them budget-focused masonite Danelectro things.

So an 8000-galactic credit First Act? Anything is possible...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Good points Josh.

Thursday I did a restoration job on a Silvertone electric that was in pretty rough shape. One of the things that I did was a new bone nut and then after setting up the completely cleaned... thing, properly setting action, relief, nut slots and intonation it actually sounded pretty cool. The electronics cleaned up nicely too and were quiet.

That got me thinking... that my memories of these things, Silvertones, Teiscos, etc. the crap of my day... were of instruments that had never been set-up. The Teiscos were sold at 5 and dime stores and of course Sears was not exactly a music store.

We see lots of relics from the past that are somehow cool today at least to someone. We currently are refretting an Ov*tion Bread Winner of all things for a superb player. Unique, old, different all seem to be in vogue these days.

I think that it's cool too I just have trouble getting past an $800 eBay price for something that I can clearly see in my mind's eye a yellow tag with a red string on it around the strap button that read $49.95.....

It's all good though.

Hesh, I think what you speak of is the relation between intrinsic value and culturally applied value. It's too bad that we can't see the future on these things but at the same time I'm glad we can't.

I recall reading an article in a magazine a few years back and the author was discussing the value of anything pre-war by Martin regardless of quality. He told the story of coming to a music shop and playing a 1942 D18 that had had many repairs done to it over the years (poorly done repairs as well) and he commented that the tone and playability was extremely sub par. Yet the instrument still sold for several thousand regardless of the poor tone and poor condition. So is the value in the instrument itself (intrinsic) or is the value applied by a cultural expectation/desire for the instrument? Hard to say, but it is interesting to see what people will pay for things that I may not see value in, but if they see it, and they have the wallet to back it up, then more power to them.

I think all the time that in 30-35 years all the instruments that are new now will be considered vintage, will they carry the same value as a 42 D18? No way to know, but it's fun to guess.

All it takes is for someone like Jack White to like old vintage junk and all a sudden it becomes awesome vintage gear.

I have a rare Esteban guitar for $2500 if anyone is interested....

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I've an affinity for cheap guitars (as long as they aren't crap), and have owned and serviced many of them. One of my faves was a red double cutaway hollowbody Western Auto Truetone (made by Harmony) with a cheapo Bigsby-like whammy on it. I tossed it immediately and installed a simple harp-style tailpiece. A little tweaking, a new nut - and it played like a champ! Had a decent sound, and a huge neck, which I liked immensely.

Eventually got around to installing some old Gibson PAF's and a tune-o-matic style bridge which really woke up the sound through an amp. My oldest friend borrowed it for 6 years while he played in the college jazz band. He just couldn't bring himself to take his L-5 to school. I very nearly didn't get it back from him. Some collector finally made me an offer I couldn't refuse, and it headed to Japan. I wonder if it's still there.

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

I just did a set up and installed pickups on this guys old Hofner arch top. Certainly not the cheapest guitar probably back then but none the less a pretty cheap guitar. But it plays great and sounds awesome. And I love the big fat U-shaped chunky neck that is thin by the nut and baseball bat thick by the heal. The fretboard radius on it is insanely huge too.

So yeah sometimes there really is something special about those instruments.