I’m brainstorming an attempt to work out some issues on an ailing Ric that I recently adopted, and was hoping to get feedback on some aspects of the repair – and if nothing else share some pics of bass guts!
This bass has an issue that some of these seem to exhibit, where the neck bows inward and breaks away from the body wings, leaving cracks in the finish and a neck like a whammy-bar!
The cracks on this one extend roughly 5cm into the body on the bass side (and 4cm on the treble), and this butts right up against that long, narrow pole-piece route seen in the pic below. That is the deepest part of the neck pickup’s swimming pool, and leaves only 1cm thick of wood remaining in the neck structure there:
This is the place where the bass wants to fold in on itself under tension, and I’m planning to reinforce this whole area in an effort to get it useable. A member on RR forum had shared a photo of how he usually fills this swimming pool route with a maple insert, makes a more deliberate route for the pickup, and a couple channels for the truss rods. This seems like a good idea, and I’ve bought some maple in order to attempt it. The pickup doesn’t need a very big route afterall, and that deep pole-piece route could be roughly 6mm more shallow (and quite a bit narrower):
My questions have less to do with that, and more with finding a tactic to use in repairing the neck and body seams.
Is there any good way to work some glue into those seams without completely removing the body wings? I’d like to do that when that swimming-pool insert gets glued in. That way the body+neck pieces will be properly aligned again and the glue will set and bond those cracked areas back together.
I was thinking that maybe a syringe could be used to inject glue into the seams from the top/inside(?) The problem is that the seams are tight and I’m not sure how I’d pull that off. Just wondering if anyone here has advice?