Pain in the Neck
This happens more often than we’d like but properly repaired, a headstock break can make a perfectly good player at a reasonable price. The tricky part is knowing how well it has been repaired. Take it to your luthier and get his opinion before your approval period runs out.
Nothing will send your buyer rushing for the exits faster than a neck issue. It almost doesn’t matter which neck issue it is (and there are lots of them), you can bet it’s going to impact the price. But neck issues come in many flavors. Some might drop a few hundred off the price while a major headstock break, poorly repaired or not repaired at all, will knock 40% to 60% off the value. The problem is figuring out how fixable it is and how much will it affect the playability, the investment value and the ease of selling when it’s time.
HEADSTOCK BREAK
I’m not a luthier so figuring out how fixable a neck issue is going to come from my own experiences with old guitars. Any luthier who is reading this is welcome to disagree and help us all understand the problem better. Let’s start with what most folks think is the biggest dealbreaker…a headstock break. Properly repaired, it can be stable and never be a problem going forward. The problem is how do you know how well repaired it is? Ask how long it has been since the repair. Play the guitar and pay attention to intonation and play issues like string buzz or high action. A well repaired, stable headstock break can take 40% or more off the price and you can end up with a wonderful guitar that plays and sounds as good as a museum piece. But you can bet that it won’t be easy to sell when it’s time to do so. It might appreciate at the same rate as a collector grade guitar but if you can’t sell it, it doesn’t matter how much it appreciates.
The bottom diagram (from the Fender site) shows a backbow. They call it a convex bow and it’s a very common issue.
BACKBOW
This is much harder to quantify and my experience will be the driving force here. Backbows aren’t hard to fix but they don’t always stay fixed. They also don’t always show. I know of a few ways to fix a backbow when there’s no more to be done with the truss rod (when it’s all the way loose). Heat treating, compression re-frets (look it up) and shaving the fingerboard can make a back bow go away. The problem is how long the repair is going to last. Let’s say you are listing your guitar for sale and the neck is perfect (or close to it). Are you going to disclose that it once had a problem? Probably not (especially if you don’t know). The problem is that wood isn’t predictable. Shaving the neck is almost always visible and is an effective way to compensate for a backbow. It’s expensive but it works.
Heat treating can fix it but it doesn’t always stay fixed and that is a big problem. Read this again…wood isn’t predictable. It might be perfect the day you get it back from the luthier but it could come back at any time. You paid for a no neck issue guitar but you’re getting one that is prone to neck issues. Slim necks are more likely to have a backbow but there is no foolproof way to know whether it has been properly addressed. There is no visible evidence that there has been a problem but it’s a potential time bomb.
Compression re-fretting is when you refret using larger fret tangs which force the neck to bow inward, compensating for the backbow. I’ve had this done and it worked. It might be worth trying this before you go for planing the board but it’s an awfully expensive experiment. If it doesn’t work, you are out the cost of a re-fret (I’ve been paying $800-$1000 lately for refrets on bound necks). I think it’s another time bomb.
TRUSS ROD CRACK
See that little vertical line that is lighter than the rest of the neck. The seller is going to call it a scratch or a capo mark and it could be that but it usually isn’t especially if the guitar has a very slim neck profile. It can be two inches long or 14″ long. Look closely (with a magnifier or loup) and you’ll see that the finish has jagged edges where the crack is. It’s fixable but not always disclosed.
ES Guitars with a slim neck (from front to back) are prone to what I refer to as a truss rod crack. It is usually down the middle of the back of the neck between the third fret and some fret down the fingerboard-could be the fifth or any other fret all the way to the 14th. That can be a 2″ crack or a 12″ crack. It is the result of too little wood between the truss rod and the back of the neck and too much pressure on the neck caused by tightening the truss rod. Late 60 to mid 62 ES guitars are most likely to have this issue and it’s very common. Folks will call it a scratch, a check or any number of other things because the word “crack” sends the buyers fleeing. It’s a crack. Period. The good news is that it isn’t structural. Once the problem is addressed by loosening the truss rod, the crack won’t get any worse. I have had my luthier glue it (making sure not to glue the truss rod at the same time) and it seems to stay fixed as long as pressure is kept to a minimum. That means you may not be able to get the backbow to go away without cracking it again. I haven’t had that happen and I’ve had this repair done at least a dozen times. It’s going to affect the value of the guitar and it has to be disclosed. This is something most folks didn’t know about until I started bringing it up on a fairly regular basis. I never used to see it disclosed (it’s a scratch…) but now I see it frequently (thanks for reading my stuff). It will knock a few thousand off the value depending on how long the crack is but I have found it to be something you can live with.
There are other neck issues like twists, warping, humps and dips because-I’ll say it again-wood isn’t predictable. Most are addressed by shaving the fingerboard and will affect the value of the guitar. So, strike a balance between your budget and your tolerance for issues. Any neck issue is going to affect the value and the ease of selling when it’s time to sell. The key is knowing the extent of the problem and the manner of repair. I will make one further point…I avoid guitars with neck issues most of the time. As a dealer, I don’t want to sell a guitar with a problem I can’t see or a guitar that is going to be trouble in a year or two.
Compression fretting fixes bowing (i.e. concave bowing), not backbow (i.e. convex bowing).
The oversize width of the fret tangs, essentially force the fretboard to curve backward. In other words, compression fretting intentionally causes backbow.
The only treatments for straightening a backbowed neck are heat/pressure or planing the fretboard, as you describe above.
Another related issue — and sometimes combined with concave bowing or back bowing — is a twist in the neck, causing either the treble or bass side to bow to a different and less optimum degree. I had this issue with a 1965 ES-335 I once owned. I think twists can sometimes be fixed effectively with heat (though not sure if that solution holds long term). One trick I used at the recommendation of a tech that worked was to “unbalance” the string gauge and tension – such as a bottom heavy/top light set to compensate for a twist toward the low E. Not sure if others have encountered this issue and what solutions may have been deployed.