G & L ASAT Semi-Hollow, and a Gretsch with a broken neck

Broken! BluesBoy ASAT The Honey Dipper saga.

Hi'lo humans. If you are reading this, you must have nothing better to do and that makes me sympathize with you. That also helps me try harder, believe it or not. Last week, Jon brought me 2 guitars to fix. The first is his personal teaching guitar, a 2006 semi-hollow G&L Bluesboy ASAT with a white finish, and tortoise shell pickguard. A beautiful guitar that also plays perfectly when under the correct action and the buzzing removed.

Picture from the previous service

This was a very simple service, raising the action a bit, get rid of the buzzing on the strings, and replace the 1/4in jack. After adjusting the truss rod, taking tension off the strings, and putting on a tuner, I began string by string to raise the action. Once that was finished, I noticed a buzz will not go away on the 5th string, and traced it to the saddle spring. The string touches the spring, and thus a buzz will inevitably develop. I let Jon know of this, and maybe a saddle upgrade will be in his future. After the action was raised by .25 - .50, I tried to remove the 1/4in jack nut and ran into the issue of it being stripped by someone overtightening it. Jon told me the guitar jack would loosen up, so I assume he took a socket and a ratchet wrench, and gave it some torque. Well, now I have to figure out how to remove it later because at this point, I wanted to get the guitar playing again.

New string height

Jon has picked up the guitar and seems happy with the new adjustment and jack. I did have to bust out a new ALL PARTS football jack plate because of the above issue. So, to recap:

1. Adjusted height of action .25 - .50mm and reduced/eliminated the buzzing

2. Adjusted truss rod slightly to compensate.

3. Unsoldered old jack, replaced with new jack. Replaced jack plate with ALL PARTS chrome football jack plate.

Now, for the real drama.

Oh hey, that's not so bad

Ohhhh.

So this poor guy. This is a $999.00 Gretsch Honey Dipper with a CAXRxxxxx serial number. Made in China, these were developed in the 1920's during the pre-amplification era when players needed to be louder when playing in Jazz clubs of the time. This has a biscuit cone, and something called a "pump house roof" finish on it. In any case, it is a beautiful instrument, until you take into account the owners sister gave it a little bump on the stand, and it came barreling over striking whatever it hit perfectly to cause this angled snapping off of the headstock. I need to think this one out a little bit as just a epoxy resin fill and clamp is probably not going to keep it from snapping under incredible tension from the 13-52 gauge strings, or the twisting of a truss rod inside the neck.