Harmony Sovereign with pegged dovetail

[Richard L Johnson]

This is an old Sovereign Jumbo I picked up on E-bay.  When it arrived and I looked it over I could see it had had some work - many crack repairs all nicely cleated and/or cloth patched.  But when I went to steam off the neck I had a devil of a time, and here's why: whoever worked on it last drilled a hole through the heel cap and ran a dowel through the dovetail and into the neck block.  For the life of me I can't understand the structural principle behind such a technique.  Have any of you encountered it before?  The neck block on this guitar has been cracked and reglued - could that be why the pegging technique was employed?  (Or was it just to expand my vocabulary?) How should I go about re-attaching this neck?  Thanks - Rick

 

PEGGED HARMONY NECK 013sm.jpg

 

pegged harmony neck 009sm.jpg

 

[FRANK]

You might try converting your Guitar to a Bolt on neck set ,If you can cut away the portion from the neck and fill the void in the body to leave you with two flush ends to join .Then run your two bolts through the neck block to anchors in the neck s heal , Finally gluing down the finger board to the guitars top for a sound joint at the heal/upper bout .

[Richard L Johnson]

Thanks Paul - you mean saw off the male side of the dovetail from the neck and set it into the body, so the heal just rests flush to the side of the guitar, then use the bolts? Like a modified Taylor neck joint? I was thinking of that - it's something I haven't tried before, but it will be a fun challenge. Thanks, Rick

[FRANK]

EXACTLY

[Jeffrey L. Suits]

Yup, ditto this!

(congrats--new keyboard!)

[Ted Kritikos]

I've run into this kind of repair before while preforming a neck reset, except in my case it was a drywall screw put through there at an angle, hidden underneath the heel cap. (That was a fun surprise.) I'm guessing the very bottom of the neck, down by the heel, came a little loose and rather than pull the whole neck off and re-fit it, the previous repairman just kinda toe-nailed it tighter.

Those kooky old-timey repairs!

[Richard L Johnson]

Thanks Ted - yeah, that's what I figured, this was an attempt to avoid a proper reset. But then the other work done on the guitar was nicely done - perhaps professionally - so I though maybe this was an old once-thouhgt-valid technique that (hopefully) no one is using anymore...Rick