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Hello, hope everyone is fine and safe.

While sitting at home and going through this all madness for almost 2 months now I thought I need some thrill in my life and got into this trouble

I accidentally found this matsumoku LP from the around 80’s for a very reasonable price. It was sitting in some guys garage for around 30 years after a neck crack and thought I’d get it for the parts or so. After short inspection I thought this little peace of history will go as a wall hanger. But when I took it home and dropped on strings just to check if electronics are fine I was blown away how nice this guitar sounds even in this state of wreck. So I thought I’ll give it a shot to make it playable as I’ve got a little experience in wood working and small repairs.

Now the good news are that the state of this sad Paul is all original, the wood looks of a decent quality, it is heavy as hell (id say around 10kg’s), all of the electronics are working just fine. The finish is nitro and the sound is sweet.

The bad news is that it has this long crack running down the back of the neck. I suspect dry environment and overtightened trussrod, but might be a bad fall aswell. In this case if it was a gibson the headstock would of snapped emmediately however this Les Paul has a strengthened headstock which might had helpped. The fretboard got separated at first few frets.

The second bad thing is that from poor humidity the 3-block body has cracked at the bottom where the blocks were glued together.

So I know that this old fellow is in a poor shape but what do I have to loose.. My plan is firstly remove the nut, heat up the fretboard a little and remove it. Check the trussrod. Glue the neck crack using Titebond Hide glue. Only need to figure how do I clamp it well so the both sides would sit even. And glue back all together.

The next problem that I’ve never met before is those two cracks between body blocks. I do not think that there’s a way to glue ‘em back together. So I was thinking about filling the cracks with some epoxy maybe..

So this is an educational project for myself nothing to ambitious but I’d like to get this guitar playable again.

I’ll gladly take your advices guys

The pictures I’ve taken are just as it arrived and dust blown.

Cheers

And the body situation in the pics:

No advice from me right now, but I think it's worth saving. The Matsomoku plant built some good stuff. If you square away the neck, replace the electronics - they aren't worth much.

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

thank's for support I'll try to keep updating this thread. Advices welcomed

A little update as today I've done some work to find out how deep the problem lays.

So I happily removed the fretboard using Ironing and hot knife technique and it came out really clean.
took out truss rod which is working just fine and had a nice snug fit and found out where the crack sits.

To my surpise the crack went through all the way at the corner of a truss rod route. I've heard things like you can sand through the back of the neck while building it but this neck like this from a factory. I dont have a tool to measure exact thickness of the thinest part of the neck where the crack appears but by touching I'd say its about 2mm (at around first fret)
From what I've seen gibson LP neck at same spot has around 4 or 5mm and looks tougher than its japanese cousin.

The crack runs down the neck and stops where the thickness is around 5milimeters. It would be an easy access to fill the crack with most kinds of glue but I am worried that this problem might reappear once the neck will get tention. Maybe there's a way to reinforce the back of the neck? Or Just glue it with Hide glue or epoxy and dont worry about it?

The real difference is the japanese box type truss rod. They are huge! and take up more room in the neck in all directions making the edges of the channel vulnerable as you see.

You are this far so I would glue the crack and a filler strip to fill the entire channel and then rout it back out for a modern two way rod if it is deep enough or install a traditional Gibby type rod.

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Brian

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

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/