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elementfrvr

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CATMANDUE said:
… life hurts. Busted the headstock on my sg specials for
Click to expand...

I sometimes have nightmares where I snap the headstock of mine off accidentally. I know it’ll probably happen eventually though. Was it at least a fairly clean break?
 
Maguchi

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CATMANDUE said:
… life hurts. Busted the headstock on my sg specials for
Click to expand...

LogicprObe said:
(as I posted in another thread, I've busted mine three times)
Commiserations........
Click to expand...
Wow sincerely sorry that happened to you. I've heard about apparently fragile Gibson headstocks on forums like this. However I been owning and playing Gibsons and talking to other guitar players about guitars for probly close to 40 years. Fortunately never busted one yet or met anyone that mentioned that they busted a Gibson or any other guitar's headstock. So far been lucky that way I guess, knock on wood.
 
Col Mustard

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first things first:

DON'T TRY AND STICK IT BACK TOGETHER
TAKE IT TO THE BEST LUTHIER YOU CAN FIND/AFFORD...
LET THE LUTHIER DO THE FIRST JOIN (WITH GLUE)

if you've already done this, don't do it again.
Repairing broken Gibson headstocks is on of the mainstays of every
luthier's business. It's how they put their kids through college.

Repaired headstocks are common on Gibsons. Good music can be
played on a Gibson with a repaired headstock. But it takes the
monetary value of the guitar down, so you won't be able to sell it.
It's worth more to you for the music it can make than it is in money.

Take it to an excellent luthier, and pay the man for his work.
He'll save your prized SG.

It's not only SGs that are fragile in the headstock area. It's every Gibson
guitar with a mahogany neck and a 17 degree back angle to the
headstock. Les Pauls, ES series guitars, maybe some acoustics...
The Acoustics are lighter, so they might not fall hard enough to break
the headstock. Then again...

It's a weak point, but not a design flaw IMHO...
The grain of the mahogany causes the wood to be weak there
because of the 17 degree back angle and because of the cutting
of the wood. But all of that is how we get the awesome tone we
expect from our Gibsons.

Gibson is trapped by their own excellence. Customers won't let them
alter the design. When they do, guitarists post scathing comments on
fora like this one and like MLP. In the '70s, Norlin Gibson attempted to
protect guitars from breakage by carving a "volute" on the back of the headstock joint. Guitarists panned this move, and ridiculed '70s Gibsons
for decades. It was unjust, but it happened.

The solution of course is to build guitars with necks made of hard rock maple. Leo Fender spotted that right away in 1948 about the time I was born, and designed his guitars so that they wouldn't break, and they still give awesome tone. Clever Leo... he made millions on this idea. Rightly so.

You can deck a deranged fan who leaps onstage by using your Telecaster, and get back into the song without missing a beat. Keith Richards is on video doing just that. His Tele didn't even go out of tune. Pete Townshend couldn't
break them. He threw them into the audience.

I own an Epiphone ES-339 and the neck is mahogany, but the Chinese
engineers built the neck with a "scarf joint" and a 14 degree back angle
in order to solve this problem. It works perfectly, and my Epi sounds
great. So there is a way around this weak point, but it isn't the Gibson way.

So the price we pay for the awesome tone we get from our Gibsons is:
"CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" ...just like Prof. Moody said.
Don't lean your prized Gibson against brick tavern walls... don't lean it on
your amp. Don't leave your prized Gibson where someone might trip on it...
get the best guitar stand you can find/afford and put your Gibson on it in
an out of the way corner of the stage. Don't let friends or fans play your
prized Gibson while drunk. Don't let anyone demonstrate the flip the guitar
around your back stunt...using your guitar. Leave them to show that trick
using their own guitar. Good luck with all this...
 
CATMANDUE

CATMANDUE

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I took it in yesterday to someone who has fixed these before. He said it will be ready in about a week. I tried to post photo, it is giving me busted nards however.
 
Zenit

Zenit

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Send it to luthier, not a pleasant, but it's fixable. Now no excuses just use it all the time, don't be sorry about scratches/dents etc, use this guitar everywhere. Good guitar shouldn't live all her life inside case or to be on a wall. Oh, nitro lacquer, oh, fragile - no! Good guitar should be used all the time.
 
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George Monaco

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Col Mustard said:
first things first:

DON'T TRY AND STICK IT BACK TOGETHER
TAKE IT TO THE BEST LUTHIER YOU CAN FIND/AFFORD...
LET THE LUTHIER DO THE FIRST JOIN (WITH GLUE)

if you've already done this, don't do it again.
Repairing broken Gibson headstocks is on of the mainstays of every
luthier's business. It's how they put their kids through college.

Repaired headstocks are common on Gibsons. Good music can be
played on a Gibson with a repaired headstock. But it takes the
monetary value of the guitar down, so you won't be able to sell it.
It's worth more to you for the music it can make than it is in money.

Take it to an excellent luthier, and pay the man for his work.
He'll save your prized SG.

It's not only SGs that are fragile in the headstock area. It's every Gibson
guitar with a mahogany neck and a 17 degree back angle to the
headstock. Les Pauls, ES series guitars, maybe some acoustics...
The Acoustics are lighter, so they might not fall hard enough to break
the headstock. Then again...

It's a weak point, but not a design flaw IMHO...
The grain of the mahogany causes the wood to be weak there
because of the 17 degree back angle and because of the cutting
of the wood. But all of that is how we get the awesome tone we
expect from our Gibsons.

Gibson is trapped by their own excellence. Customers won't let them
alter the design. When they do, guitarists post scathing comments on
fora like this one and like MLP. In the '70s, Norlin Gibson attempted to
protect guitars from breakage by carving a "volute" on the back of the headstock joint. Guitarists panned this move, and ridiculed '70s Gibsons
for decades. It was unjust, but it happened.

The solution of course is to build guitars with necks made of hard rock maple. Leo Fender spotted that right away in 1948 about the time I was born, and designed his guitars so that they wouldn't break, and they still give awesome tone. Clever Leo... he made millions on this idea. Rightly so.

You can deck a deranged fan who leaps onstage by using your Telecaster, and get back into the song without missing a beat. Keith Richards is on video doing just that. His Tele didn't even go out of tune. Pete Townshend couldn't
break them. He threw them into the audience.

I own an Epiphone ES-339 and the neck is mahogany, but the Chinese
engineers built the neck with a "scarf joint" and a 14 degree back angle
in order to solve this problem. It works perfectly, and my Epi sounds
great. So there is a way around this weak point, but it isn't the Gibson way.

So the price we pay for the awesome tone we get from our Gibsons is:
"CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" ...just like Prof. Moody said.
Don't lean your prized Gibson against brick tavern walls... don't lean it on
your amp. Don't leave your prized Gibson where someone might trip on it...
get the best guitar stand you can find/afford and put your Gibson on it in
an out of the way corner of the stage. Don't let friends or fans play your
prized Gibson while drunk. Don't let anyone demonstrate the flip the guitar
around your back stunt...using your guitar. Leave them to show that trick
using their own guitar. Good luck with all this...
Click to expand...
CATMANDUE said:
I took it in yesterday to someone who has fixed these before. He said it will be ready in about a week. I tried to post photo, it is giving me busted nards however.
Click to expand...

Dweezil Zappa's SG Repair

www.everythingsg.com www.everythingsg.com

Col. Mustard is 100% correct.

Dweezil Zappas headstock was broken off the neck of his prized SG. This is what a real pro's work looks like. The luthier has to know guitars and know what they are doing. Most people think they are luthiers but are only techs with limited knowledge. Anyone will charge $500 to repair a headstock break doesn't mean they are a real pro and know what they are doing. I have seen passable to downright garbage repairs but nothing that is perfect which is what it should be.
 
LeoFGibson

LeoFGibson

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Thankfully the neck on my 2016 SG Special HP is made of maple. Slightly less chance of a similar fate, but that doesn't make me any less uptight about where I put it down! (Brought it on a plane in it's original gig bag and was checking the overhead compartment every time the seatbelt sign was off to make sure it was okay!!) Good luck with the repair!
 
Zenit

Zenit

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When some ppl in internet saying, oh, SG (or any Gibson) is so fragile... guys, any Acoustic guitar is more fragile. Just pay more attention, even if it happened - luthiers basically can fix everything. This is not a fatal problem. Especially in Black color, they can paint it, that no one will know about a crack. Sadness, time, money, nerves, but nothing critical.
 
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LogicprObe

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I wanted to kill my sister when she knocked it over...................the first time it broke............I've almost forgiven her........40 odd years later.
Maguchi said:
Wow sincerely sorry that happened to you. I've heard about apparently fragile Gibson headstocks on forums like this. However I been owning and playing Gibsons and talking to other guitar players about guitars for probly close to 40 years. Fortunately never busted one yet or met anyone that mentioned that they busted a Gibson or any other guitar's headstock. So far been lucky that way I guess, knock on wood.
Click to expand...
 
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Roger Phillips

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I don't see any reference to Gibson guitar cases, i.e. back in the day I don't think any cases had any support built in them to cushion the guitar necks in the region of the nut. If, for instance, a loaded case had something else put on top like another guitar the top of the case could deform and press down onto the instrument inside. Especially if the guitar had a 17 degree break-angle the top end would bottom out on the case floor and break. Years ago this nearly happened to one of my SGs, and I've noticed my Thunderbird "76"s machine-heads bottoming out in their original cases.
Subsequently, I've shaped large pieces of recovered expanded foam or what-other resilient stuff for neck-at-the-nut support in all my Gibson's cases.
Roger
 
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