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I am proposing to do my first neck reset on my own guitar, a Charles Fox Sonoma SJ.

It would appear to be straightforward enough, it looks to be a bolt on neck, so if I loosen the fretboard tongue and undo the bolt, the neck should come off ok, am I right?

Or are there any hidden dangers of which I am unaware ?

TIA

If you contact Charles Fox directly, he will tell you.
http://www.charlesfoxguitars.com/

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

There are plenty of hidden dangers and lots of dangers out there in the open just waiting for you....

First... That's a $3K+ Hand made Guitar.... It's not a $99 Beater... It's not the place to start learning about neck resets...

A quick short list of the dangers....
1. It may not actually need a neck reset - there may be something else going on..... Resetting the neck won't fix that...
2. You could scratch up or chip the finish very badly.
3. You could induce some misalignment between the Neck and body that will be much harder to correct than it was to mess up in the first place.... Like say for example sanding a bit too much off one side of the neck and finding out that the strings no longer line up properly on the fretboard....
4. You could end up over-correcting the neck alignment and ruin the action - either too much or too little....
5. The Luthier who built it is still in business... If you work on it yourself (and mess it up) - you will certainly void any warranty...

Where would I start personally......
1. Take off the strings and tighten up the neck bolts.... Make sure they are good and snug.
2. If that doesn't do it... take a look at the nut, saddle, and neck relief
3. If it really does need a neck reset - Contact Charles Fox himself....
4. If you really want to try out a neck reset - buy yourself a $99.00 beater at the flea market and go to town..... It's a whole lot less expensive of a learning experience than on an actual Fox guitar...

Thanks

Charles is very good about answering his e-mails. I'm sure he will give you some good advice. Be sure to describe the problem completely in your e-mail including the action at the 12th, relief, saddle height, and where a straightedge on the frets hits the bridge under string tension. (Also as mentioned, make sure the bolts are tight) Good luck!

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

I will agree with all of the above posts. I took a class with Charles in June, he had a C. Fox guitar for us to play with, as well as a C Fox cut in half as a display/teaching tool. The design and construction elements that Charles put into these guitars is amazing, and short of being thoroughly baked at high temps, I have a hard time believing that a neck reset is in order. Charles does answer his emails, check the ASL site to see if there are any classes going on, that may delay his reply.
http://www.americanschooloflutherie.com/
Congrats on getting your hands on one of those guitars, one of the nicest sounding guitars I played, they were only in production for a short time. It is not an instrument to learn repairs on, but certainly something to use ideas from, there will be parts of that design in my next guitar.
I am pretty sure this is a pic of a C Fox heel, tall laminated lining, the top has extra structure for this area as well. Let us know how this turns out when you talk to Charles.
Rob

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Ok, thank you all for your input so far, I do appreciate it, and yes, Rob's picture is exactly what the headblock looks like.

And yes, I will take the advice of Laurent and others and contact Charles Fox.

I have to admit, I haven't so far taken the strings off and tested the tightness of the neck bolt, but I will do that too. So thanks again for that advice.

That said, my gut feeling is that it does require a neck reset, because I have in fact run an accurate 24" straightedge along the neck to the bridge (under string tension) and it contacts the bridge about 1/16" below the top of the bridge.

I like to see a clearance of 1/16" above the bridge on my guitars.

The action at present is low, and there is a lot of buzzing, but I have other guitars on which the action is as low without any buzzing (once I have done a fret dressing on them).

I am quietly confident in my ability to do the necessary woodwork on the guitar to the required standard. I have successfully restored a few pieces of Ruhlmann furniture in my previous cabinetmaking life, so I am not unduly concerned about doing a neck reset on a 3k guitar, especially since it is my own.

I suppose I may as well mention at this point the other modification which I will be doing to this instrument.

Now, I do realise that Charles Fox is something of a legend in guitar building circles, but can anybody explain why a legend like him would choose to locate the bridgepin hole centers a full inch behind the front edge of the saddle, resulting in a string breakover angle of something like 75° ?

Once the neck reset is accomplished (if in fact that is what I do), then I will most certainly be reshaping the bridge and drilling a fresh set of holes much closer to the saddle, so as to get my preferred 45° breakover angle.

Despite all that, I do love the guitar, I love the tone and I know I can improve the sustain and volume, I especially love the neck profile, and I love the aesthetics. Once it is to my satisfaction, I will have a wonderful guitar.

Being as how I am in the UK, sending it to Charles Fox to have the reset done isn't an option ...

It's been years since I spent time with Charles up in Vermont at the Earthworks school, and I won't speculate about his rationale about bridgepin location. But I will say that from what I saw back then, I don't think that Charles ever does anything without a specific purpose behind it. Probably the most important thing I learned from Charles was just that--think about what you're doing and why you're doing it before you do it.

In the Earthworks days, Charles made a pretty big point out of the physics of how a fixed, pin bridge differed from a tailpiece/bridge (like on an archtop or a banjo) from the physics perspective. An archtop bridge tended to move vertically like a piston while a pin bridge worked more like a teeter-totter, rocking the top with the fulcrum of the rock lying midway between the saddle and the pin. My guess would be that Charles decided that the longer distance between the saddle and the pins did something more to his liking in tone/sustain because of having a bit more lever arm on the teeter-totter arrangement. Same kind of thing that you see on a lot of Kasha inspired guitars. I think that changing this geometry could very likely change the qualities of the instrument that make it a C. Fox.

But, that's the opinion of a banjo guy whose credibility is understandably low (even though I have built and still build guitars too....).

Dave

Im wondering how old it is and if it has failed....
where?

What is the height of the underside of the strings to soundboard just in front of the bridge?
If you have low action to the point of buzzing, that is not an indication of the need for a reset.
How much relief do you have in the neck?

Love the Ruhlmann stuff !! I have that big book on his furniture. One of these days I am going to do a deco piece. Not my personal furniture building style but I really like it. The pinnacle at least technically. His cabinet makers where the cream of the crop.
L.

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