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In all the years I've been doing repairs I've only ever seen one of these Beetle basses come through my shop. Cool little instruments. Anyway needles to say I am not familiar with the kind of neck joint it has. The joint is loose so it should be easy to remove. From my Internet research I can see what looks to be a dovetail but thought I'd ask here to see if anyone has some actual experience removing one of these necks.

Does this help?
http://www.customguitars.com/hofner.html

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Say what you do, Do what you say.

YEs and thank you. I actually came across that webpage last night. I have used the heal cap method before on guitars that had mystery joints to good success but I always prefer to go through a fret. I just can't really tell which one based on those images.

It's pretty funny what that guy said about the hot water though isn't it?

Here is a video Hofner put out showing the construction of one of these.

I didn't re-watch the whole thing, but they do some neck shaping around 10 min fit the neck around 11 min.

I just did a Hofner bass neck reset a few weeks ago. You will need to remove the heel cap. I drilled two steam holes, one on either side of the midline of the heel, I didn't want to run steam in through the joint in the center of the stacked heel. The joint has no head space so this is a tough one. I alternated steam in each hole and periodically reamed them with a drill bit to pull out some of the softening glue and make it so the steam could penetrate better. Took me a good 2 hours of steaming to get the neck off and the neck still separated a bit down the center of the heel where the joint is. Looked like this one had come loose like yours and someone pulled the heel cap and injected a bunch of glue and clamped it up at one time, they just got the angle wrong. The joint itself is a simple dovetail, not the compound dovetail usually seen in a Martin so fitting it is much easier but keeping correct angle when clamping can be a bit of a challenge.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

OK thanks B. Howard - Just what I was looking for! I hope this one will be easier as it's already quite loose.

Thanks for that video too that was fun to watch.

Thanks for posting that video John, I found it quite interesting because I use to have one back in the early 70's. Not quite sure why I got rid of it because it was a great playing guitar. Wish I still had it now...

Bob

Well, just for the record and in case anyone else searches for such a repair. Here is what the headstock looks like for reference:



And the neck joint. Not the most graceful way of pulling it off



It's pretty incredible what they used for a neck block. I really have no idea what it is. It's like total junk wood they found on the shop floor. The big hole you see in it was not a result of getting the neck off. It is in fact probably why it got loose because the one wood screw was 'screwed' into it, basically just screwed into the thin air of the whole. And the top is not even glued to the block, there is about 1mm space there.



It appears that they glued the neck right to the plastic face plate which was weakly glued to the head block. The neck started to pull away and cracked the plastic. So I had to cut the plastic out along the lines of the heal. At taht point the neck practically came right off, no heat required. I think what I am going to do is saw through the screws and remove all the plastic and fill the huge hole and the smaller wood screw hole with a dowel and then just glue the neck to the block. Epoxy will be my friend here. I may use one wood screw through the heal capped off with a dowel and finished off with black lacquer. I'm open to suggestions. What a mess!

Not what you would expect from German engineering. Were the screws installed at the factory?

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

I work for a German company - there are some fine German engineers and then are the others ........ Like most things good engineering is where you find it.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I'm pretty sure that was the original design. There is no dovetail nor even mortice and tenon so they must have drilled holes through the heal for the two screws and then filled them and painted the burst to hide it. That's easy enough to do over but I just can't believe that head block. It really looks like a scrap piece of junk wood that is barely held together.

Stuff like that makes me wonder if they are all assembled that poorly or if it was Friday afternoon and the guy doing the work just wanted to get out of there.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Completely different than the one made in the 60's that i did last month. Thanks for the heads up on this.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Which was one that probably was actually made in Germany. The 'designed in...' typically means export (not necessarily a bad thing in many cases) but the money goes back to Germany. It's still a cool bass but geesh how hard is it to even just do a simple M&T. An M&T with one screw would be perfectly acceptable.

Just thought I'd follow up on this to show what worked for me in hopes that perhaps some one else will find this thread when needed. BTW it's funny I've been on the OLF for many years but I just noticed a few weeks ago that there is a Restoration and Repair sub forum. All I ever do is come here and classified and just glazed over all the others So if a moderator would want to move this thread to that forum that might be a better idea.

So I just sawed off the junk screws and set the proper angle on the face of the heal


Then I filled in those gaping holes with maple dowels. Also glued in a veneer to fill in the gap over the head block


Then I drilled one counter sunk hole for a wood screw to not only help hold the neck in place in the future but also to clamp it. I used Smiths epoxy.


I filled the screw with epoxy. Refinishing was a bit of a pain since the finish was burst and polyester so I used Stew Mac dyes and shellac and just kept blending and sanding till it was close enough

That'll work.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Nicely done!