Epiphone Zephyr reset failed

[Brian Evans]

Hi guys. I have a 1942-ish Epiphone Zephyr archtop. The neck joint, the original joint, was moving a bit, opening at the bottom of the heel, and the bridge height was getting low. I took it to a recommended luthier, as I've never done a neck reset and didn't want to learn how on this guitar. Job done last November, but the joint is failing fairly badly, heel is pulling out a lot worse than before the neck reset. What I want to try to understand is that, assuming a general level of competence on the part of the luthier, what are the likely things to have gone wrong? He mentioned that it was hard to pull out, could the heel block have cracked and not noticed? could the block have cracked when it was being pressed back in? He wants to fix it for me, says it's under warranty, so I am going to let him have another go at it, maybe ask him to document with pictures.

Any thoughts?

Brian

[Mark Swanson]

We could only guess at the reasons, but if I had to guess I'd say that he just did not have the fit right. It has to be tight all the way down the joint. It is tricky, and you might think you have it tight but don't. Let him fix it for you.

[Michael Lewis]

Mark is right, the tenon has to fit snugly into the mortise all the way down it's mating surfaces. You can't depend on filling up gaps with glue, the wood must fit well. I usually glue thick shims to the tenon of the dovetail and re-cut (fit) the tenon by hand. I tried using thin shims but they can get wrinkled or slip out of place during the gluing process, so I made it a two step system: (1) get the neck out and cleaned up, glue the new shims on and let them dry, (2) fit the neck and glue it in. With the shims firmly glued to the tenon it is like fitting a new joint, all solid.