Bass player and vocalist of repute!! Trevor Newnham has been a professional musician all of his adult life, we met him over  25 years ago when he was just out of music college, and playing in local bands, now he tours the country with the Illegal Eagles and somehow manages to fit in gigs recording and jam sessions on top of the grueling schedule The Illegal Eagles have, if your an Eagles fan and you haven’t seen them you really should, there are tribute bands that pay tribute, but this is a band that give the real ma coy a run for their money,  I’ve had the good fortune to work on a few of his basses, as you will see life on the road can be tough.

So Trevor phones me to say he’s had a bit of trouble with an acoustic bass neck! I can see how this could present a problem even to a player like Trev.

As you can see its had quite a whack, and ruined the finish to the front of the head stock.

 

So its a nice clean break with loads of gluing area and undulations perfect for this type of repair, a 2mm rosewood cap is added to cover the damage to the front.

 

The back of the headstock is blown in with nitrocellulose and the front with clear,

Trevor is happy and takes the bass for the unplugged gigs that are coming up, (see top photo) but then disaster strikes right before the “London Freezes Over” gig and Trev has to borrow a mates guitar to do the gig.

 

As you can see its had another whack, there’s an indentation under the top right tuner hole (A string), it appears to be in the exact same place, so I’m thinking Sh*t there’s a problem with the glue, and I’m thinking of the other repairs I’ve done with it, there are a couple of schools out there with acoustic bridges re attached, if they fly off they can have an eye out!!

Thankfully its not the glue (Titebond 2) Trevor reassures me there is no glue residue in the break, its a new break and he is aware that when it goes off it is stronger than the wood surrounding it, Phew! what a nice bloke he is, most artists would have been screaming down the phone assuming it was a bad repair. The new break is on the next run of grain, indicating a weakness in that area.

Once this has happened a different repair is required, you need to disrupt the “Grain Break Pattern” as one luthier describes it, in order to do this i need to rout two channels either side of the truss rod and insert wood with a different grain pattern, effectively making it a 5 piece ply laminate.

Ive chosen Rosewood to fill the routs as its one of the strongest woods on the planet, I have some off cuts from a bass fretboard, the grain on these is running in a totally different direction.

 

the routs run right through to the front of  headstock ruining the look of the rosewood cap which survived the break and was the only thing keeping the head on, so Ive added a birds eye maple laminate over the rosewood and made a 2mm rosewood truss rod cover (there’s no access this end the truss rod is adjusted from the sound hole) I came up with this idea when working on a similar break on another guitar, I noticed that the truss rod cover acted as stiffener to the headstock by pressing against the nut and in turn the fretboard when the string tension pulls the head stock forwards The birds eye maple looks gorgeous after a few coats of  Vintage Amber Nitro.

Here’s Trevor with his acoustic bass fixed for the second time (Trevor is the hairy one on the right) you might notice the black object in front of the bridge, when the guitar arrived it had a big green washing up sponge under the strings acting as a damper, I hoped that was for the recording studio and not the stage, so i made a little rosewood box with some nice black sponge which looks a lot neater, i don’t know if it has the same resonant quality as Mrs Newnhams Vileda sponge and hope i haven’t stepped on any sponsorship deal Trevs got going with them.