Gibson Ripper - Bent neck and experiments in Carbon Fibre.

I got lucky on Gumtree three years ago and managed to nab myself a Ripper with a snapped truss rod and a Grabber with a DiMarzio Mudbucker bolted to the body. Once getting the haul home i had hoped the rod had just snapped at the headstock and i could move the threads further down and add some washers. Sadly, no.

The neck also had a massive bow from years of string tension with no working rod. Just like the white LP this was back in it's case waiting for me to gather the courage to peel off the fretboard. I had stumbled across a great blog post from Strange Guitar Works where he had worked on a grabber with some similar problems minus the bowed neck.

The frets had to come out and the fretboard off. I always expect some resistance when doing invasive jobs like this and warping the board is always a real possibility. Luckily either by luck or Gibson terrible QC standards in the 70's the board came off with no real trouble and board was intact and useable.

The first step was remove old maple strip, the rod and assess how to best move forward in correcting the neck. I found the rod hadn't actually snapped anywhere but was spinning on the anchor so was effectively non-functioning. After a morning of driving around to RC shops to find carbon fibre and local steel suppliers to find a 5mm mild steel rod.

This was the first time using carbon fibre to correct a neck, i was unsure whether it would be strong enough to hold a neck that had settled into a bow. I rigged up a quick thing to hold the neck into a slight back bow so i could route the channels while in the position i hoped the neck would stay in. I had trouble finding rods of the right dimensions locally and have trouble paying the Stewmac Tax so i laminated two 3mm Rods veritcally and then a 1mm flat either side to make a rod that is 6x4mm. Routed the channels for a snug fit and glued them in with epoxy.

I made a new rod with a better threaded and peened anchor and set that in while the neck was straightened. After 24 hours i pulled the bass out of the jig and neck didn't move at all. Dead straight. Bingo! After that i flatten both surfaced and re-glued the board back on and refretted with some jumbo standard wire and a set of Labella flats. I plan to refinish the neck with the lovely amber tint somewhere down the track, but for the moment i'm going to play the shit out of it!

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