Slight head stock crack crack#
If the crack ever extends beyond that, it's likely to keep getting worse, and a trip to the luthier will be inevitable, and sooner will be better than later. Put some kind of mark at the end of the crack. If the instrument is not particularly valuable or critically important to you, I'd say that it would not be unreasonable to wait and see what happens. But the latter seems less likely, I still think that some kind of impact is the most likely cause.īecause of the size and position of the cracks, and because they seem to be relatively superficial, looking from a distance, I'd say there is a 60/40 chance that nothing else will happen vs the chance that the crack will expand. Another possibility is that the wood has always been weak along the grain in those places, and has finally come apart after a long time, perhaps after an otherwise unremarkable impact, or perhaps even because of the continuous pull of the strings in the opposite direction. I was smart enough not to disable the PAF, but I was dumb in selling that guitar with the PAF in it but in those days a PAF was a used pickup that could maybe get $100 dollars on the open market.Looking at the grain and wood fiber relative to the line of the neck, I would conclude that the cracks have been probably caused by a significant impact, such as the instrument falling backwards, perhaps a foot or two. I even had an Aria 335 copy which I outfitted with an original PAF from an old Les Paul a friend sold to me and a stock humbucker which I disabled a coil in to sound like, well, a Fender. That being said, set-neck humbucker equipped electric guitars have their pluses too but have never been as cool to me as any Fender or Fender type guitar with bolt-on necks and single coil pickups.Įven though I have had Les Pauls and many different guitars with humbuckers, my favorite sounding Gibson was a pretty low cost Gibson Sonex with humbuckers that had coil tap switches which I preferred. Playing two guitars of the Gibson design makes me really miss teles and strats which have fewer structural issues as Leo Fender probably figured out, and fewer tuning issues due to a more straight angle from nut to tuner.
Slight head stock crack full#
The Gibsons I have owned were mostly new and I think they had ditched nitro finishes in those years, only to go full nitro in some later reissues and much newer models. That of course makes sense because there's so much movement on a neck from 1st fret to body joint. The place I have seen this most on poly guitars is on set neck guitars where the neck meets the body as on my Les Pauls, Melody Makers, and copies of the standard Gibson design. I assume since the guitar is 4.5 years old, its about time some crack shows up somewhere. You have to look at it in the sunlight and move the neck back and forth to see it. It is long enough at 1/2" but it appears to be a stress crack in the finish. The crack is so shallow that it's pretty impossible to get on a digital camera. I have come to realize that's pretty normal of a nitro guitar of a certain age and it's usually finish cracks, not body cracks. That being said, I have had some older guitars with a nitro finish, and they crack all over the place, with the grain of the wood, and against it. I live in a temperate climate and I have never dropped the guitar (which I bought new) on the headstock like I have with some mahogany necked Gibson style instruments (where I know headstock injuries are common).ġ) Is the type of crack on the back of the headstock common right at the back screw hole of the tuner?Ģ) Is is a crack in the wood, due to where the screw hole is, or is that the type of crack that is common in a polyurethane finish. It's too small to show up on a photograph though and can only be seen in the sun.
I have an Ibanez Artcore AS-73 transparent cherry semi-hollowbody, or what is a pretty decent low cost copy of a Gibson or Epiphone 335.īehind the headstock are standard Gotoh type tuners, each held in my a small chrome screw.Īt one of the points of entry where the screw is, there's a small 1/2" inch crack going down the back of the headstock in line with the grain of the wood.
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