Official Luthiers Forum!

Years ago (circa 2002) I bought a guitar body and neck from a fellow in Iowa who said they were from a defunct factory ( can remember the name.) These images show the parts: https://www.dropbox.com/s/13va256dlrwtx ... .jpeg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/85qiqh7cbmb4e ... .jpeg?dl=0 . I shelved the project and never got around to messing with it; I prefer building from scratch. Recently a friend showed interest in completing this project. When I looked at the parts, however, I am concerned about the neck joint; the small tenon seems inadequate to me. I wonder if anyone has run into this type of construction? Also, inspecting the inside with a mirror reveals a rather small block to receive the neck. Before investing much of his time, I want to make sure its not a doomed venture. If nothing else we could pull the back off and install a proper head block and build up the neck tenon. Could even build up the heel. Your thoughts are appreciated. -- Jack

If you glued on a heel you could add a couple of dowels or do a backwards bolt on using a cap head screw. If you don't want to see the bolt you could hide it under a pearl dot.

Do you have any reason to believe it will sound good when it is done? Usually those old very simple archtops are made with thumpy dead wood glued together with too much stress. I've resurrected a few of these and it has never been worth it. They just don't end up sounding like a carved spruce top archtop, or a real gibson maple ply archtop.

With a good glue joint that neck will be fine. Gluing a heel onto it would be prudent.

Building a new top for the thing would give you a good shot at making an amazingly wonderful guitar. Those old cheap archtops always sound cheap for a reason.

If you add some pickups and electrocute it it will probably sound fine. The deader the soundboard the better they are when electrofried.

I had a cheap Epiphone flat top, circa 1975, for 30 years, that had a bolt on neck just like that. 4 long wood screws thru from the back just like an electric guitar. A plastic plate covered the screw heads. No heel block. It never saw the inside of a case and banged around in closets, lockers and car trunks. Eventually, several years after , and probably because, I retopped the plywood for solid spruce (my first luthier endeavor) the head block did fail... first cracks developed down to the sound hole and then the headblock itself along side of the mortice pocket split... it was only about 3/8" thick. Yours won't have the sound hole and the plywood won't split. Most important, your friend will have a lot of fun with the project.
Gerry

The neck tenon on a Les Paul is approximately 1-1/2 by 1-1/2 by 4 inches long and they are seldom a problem. My ES-335 plans show a 3 inch tenon. I would think that if you felt there was an adequate block inside the guitar that you could make that joint work just fine.

As far as the sound, laminated archtops probably are not the best sounding guitars in the world but remember that all the ES models from Gibson (and all the copies from other companies) are laminated. They were never intended to be played unplugged, they sound great with the right pickups and wiring.