Simple poll. Have you ever had a Gibson headstock snap off?

[Dismalhead]

Hey everyone,

Lots of people say they snap off on the forum, I see the comments at least once a week - but I've owned half a dozen Gibsons over my life (3 SGs and 3 LPs) and I've never broken or cracked a headstock on one. I used to lean my guitars on whatever was convenient, and I've had them fall over many, many times and never had one break. So, simple question: Have you ever had one break off or crack on one you owned? Or maybe you personally know someone it's happened to. I guess I'm trying to determine if it's actually common or a somewhat rare occurance.

Pics and comments from the peanut gallery welcome.

 

[kuch]

I've owned over a dozen Gibbys in my life and never had any even come close to breaking. I personally don't know anyone who has either.

edit: I do see them on sale locally sometimes though.

 

[Peegoo]

I've owned and played Gibsons for many years and never broke one...but I've repaired more broken headstocks (Gibson, Epiphone, Ibanez, Washburn, Gretsch, Martin, Guild, and other brands) than I can remember.

I certainly don't baby them, but I also don't bash on 'em like disposable toys. I treat them the same way as my Fenders and others.

 

[Jakedog]

I have never broken one. I have toured extensively with Gibsons. In gig bags.

I did see one break once. It was on a stand back stage, and got tagged by a speeding golf cart. It sailed several feet through the air, landed face down on a concrete floor. That didn’t break it. What broke it was that it continued traveling at a high rate of speed and slid head first into a cinder block wall.

I don’t think any guitar would have been in great shape after that. Worthy of note- even in that situation, the headstock did not come completely off. It just broke.

I did break an SG bass once. I was tightening the truss rod. Gave it about a quarter turn, and heard a sick cracking/popping sound. The truss rod split the wood on the back of the neck at right about the first fret/nut area.

 

[Dismalhead]

I've owned and played Gibsons for many years and never broke one...but I've repaired more broken headstocks (Gibson, Epiphone, Ibanez, Washburn, Gretsch, Martin, Guild, and other brands) than I can remember.

I certainly don't baby them, but I also don't bash on 'em like disposable toys. I treat them the same way as my Fenders and others.

Ah, I forgot the luthier viewpoint; of course you've seen a bunch. Do bolt-on necks break often? Or do people just go out and get a new neck?

 

[Musekatcher]

I hadn't, been then i haven't let a guitar fall over in a stand, havnt smacked the neck walking thru a doorway, or walked away still tethered by an amp and guitar cable...

 

[Bendyha]

YES, LP Epiphone. Bumped the guitar-stand with my foot, it fell sidewards/forwards, head snapped off.
It was not mine, it belonged to a friend. I had just finished changing a pickup. I found an almost identical one for sale, 18yo, and bought it for him, it was in fact a bit nicer than his, stronger flamed top, and with the frets in better condition. He was good about it, and very sorry for me.

 

[Swirling Snow]

I was in the room when a friend's strap let loose and the '57 goldtop he was playing took a nosedive and hit the floor. It was on sale at Elderly a few years ago. $85,000. Ugliest repair I've ever seen (which is how I recognized it).

Yeah, I worked in a store with one of the best luthiers around. He played banjo (recorded, toured Eruope and stuff). We saw quite a few headstock breaks, and five of them were on his Gibson long-necked banjo! Les Paul players are just grumpy whiners.


On the other hand, I've owned a 62 SG and a 75 LPC all these years and both are intact.

 

[memorex]

I've never owned the models this frequently happens to, like SG's, but I've fixed at least a half dozen snapped off headstocks or cracked neck joints on SG's and LP Junior and Special Double Cuts. I glued the headstock back onto one SG that got broken while the guitar was in it's case because the case was standing up and fell over.

 

[Peegoo]

@Dismalhead

"Do bolt-on necks break often?"

No, they are generally very sturdy because they contain continuous straight grain that runs from the neck heel to the top of the headstock. This is how Fender necks (and their clones) are made.

Other makers like Ibanez and Charvel sometimes have a tilt-back headstock on their screw-on necks, and these are two pieces glued together with a scarf joint, sometimes called the Spanish luthier's joint.

Most set-neck guitar makers these days use a similar scarf joint, e.g., PRS, etc., because it is less wasteful of materials to do it this way and it's a whole lot stronger.

Gibson continues to hold onto the traditional way of making the angled headstock by carving the entire neck from a single piece of wood. The difference between theirs and Fender's approach is the tilted headstock creates very short continuous grain in the area just behind the nut, and this weakens the wood. Carve out about 20 percent of that weak wood for the truss rod adjustment nut and it becomes weaker still.

 

[clydethecat]

I've not suffered a Gibson headstock failure myself, but I've seen it happen to others at least twice that I can recall. One was on a burst LP belonging to Jeff Cease (formerly of the Black Crowes) when he was re-stringing it and it fell, and the other was an EB-3 that fell off its strap on stage.

 

[Dismalhead]

@Dismalhead

"Do bolt-on necks break often?"

No, they are generally very sturdy because they contain continuous straight grain that runs from the neck heel to the top of the headstock. This is how Fender necks (and their clones) are made.

Other makers like Ibanez and Charvel sometimes have a tilt-back headstock on their screw-on necks, and these are two pieces glued together with a scarf joint, sometimes called the Spanish luthier's joint.

Most set-neck guitar makers these days use a similar scarf joint, e.g., PRS, etc., because it is less wasteful of materials to do it this way and it's a whole lot stronger.

Gibson continues to hold onto the traditional way of making the angled headstock by carving the entire neck from a single piece of wood. The difference between theirs and Fender's approach is the tilted headstock creates very short continuous grain in the area just behind the nut, and this weakens the wood. Carve out about 20 percent of that weak wood for the truss rod adjustment nut and it becomes weaker still.

Thanks for this post. So it is structurally weaker. Interesting; glad I take better care of my guitars now.

Are the fixed neck PRS SEs done with the scarf joint too?

 

[Stubee]

Yes, but it was hardly the guitars fault. I bumped it while it was leaning against a couch, and I’d set it at such an angle that it fell forward and snapped its headstock off on a coffee table. It was my only guitar, I loved it and I was just sick. If I’d known better I would have just had it glued and I’d probably still be lovin’ it, but I had Gibson put a new neck on it and, through no fault of theirs, its downfall began.

I still miss it.

 

[HaWE]

I own 3 Les Paul Guitars (2 are Gibson, 1 is a Hohner LP copy ) and used them for playing gigs.
I am very careful with my instruments and always put them on a stand.
But I know bad things can happen , fortunately I never had a headstock break.
And I don't know anyone else that this has ever happened to

 

[Deeve]

Not my LP, but my Harmony Sovereign - owwww

Restored by a dear friend and builder Stephen Godbe

 

[brookdalebill]

Yes.
I was 19, in 1976.
I had a beautiful, unique Gibson ES-335 (perhaps a special order).
I bought it from Guitar Rez.
It was probably a 1965, with chrome hardware, narrow nut width, cherry red finish, factory Vibrola, and parallelogram inlay (like a 345).
I was playing it in my new-to-me groovy little hippie bachelor pad living room, through my BF Super.
I was trying to learn the Brothers Johnson’s I’ll Be Good To You.
I stopped playing for a minute, and put it in a (stupid) rickety Hamilton folding stand.
It fell forward, I reached for it, my then girlfriend reached for it, neither of us caught it.
CRACK!
It was a simple, pretty clean break.
It didn’t look horrible, and the repair job I had done was great!
Doh!

P.S.
I’ve owned a crazy number of Gibson guitars since, and never had a repeat performance.
I also never, ever put them in a stand.
They live in my hands, on my bed (probably not too smart), or their cases.

 

[Dostradamas]

Never had any brand break the headstock off

Never owned a Gibson

 

[King Fan]

I've never dropped a Gibson, but my buddy had had his SG about a week when someone knocked over the guitar stand on stage and snapped off the headstock....

An old saying in aviation: "There are two kinds of pilots, those who've made a gear-up landing, and those who will." It's not a question of how often it's happened to any single player -- it's about how often it happens across all owners over time, and how that rate compares to other builds. Let's say the risk is 5%. Hardly a safe bet, but 95% of guitars out there won't have done it.

 

[TigerG]

One day probably in late 1978 or early 1979, my brother was playing my ES-335 when he started looking at the back of the headstock with a funny look on his face. He said "Did you know you have a crack here?" Until he said that, I did not know. Sure enough, it was cracked right there where the neck becomes the headstock. The guitar hadn't taken any falls that I was aware of. It was wintertime so the only thing I could come up with for a reason was temperature changes, moving it back and forth between warm and cold places like from the house to a car etc.
Took it to a local repairman, who assured me it was a common problem with an easy fix: snap the whole headstock clean off and glue it back on. "The glue joint will be stronger than the wood itself."
So I left it with him to do the repair. It never did look like he went the full distance of the complete snap off, seemed more like he just injected some glue into the break and clamped it together.
In any case, the guitar was fine. For awhile.
So far, nothing in my story fulfills the called-for criteria of a headstock snapping off. That part is coming.
Later on in 1979, I was a freshman at UNM, living in a small dorm room with a roommate. Somewhat foolishly, I had the ES-335 set on a guitar stand near the middle of the room. My roommate, standing next to it, did a stretch by bringing his arms up over his head. When he was done, he let his arms just swing down and the guitar was in the path of his right arm. He knocked the guitar over backwards and of course it landed back-of-the-headstock first. This time the headstock did break off.
And rather than just get the break fixed, I took the guitar to a luthier and had the whole neck replaced with one made of maple (I figured that would more resistant to breakage) with an ebony fretboard.
Now for the bonus headstock snap:
A couple years later, my brother had his own ES-335, which at one point he sent off to some guy somewhere to have a maple fretboard put on it. The guitar was gone for months and months, but he finally got it back--with the maple fretboard-- maybe after even a year or longer. He and I were housemates at the time. One night shortly after he got it back, I was awakened by the sound of him bawling and bawling like he hadn't done since he was a baby. Crying at all was very out of character for him, so it was strange. I was wondering if maybe his girlfriend had gotten killed.
In the morning I found out what it was: he had knocked his 335 over and broke the headstock. By that time he had recovered from his upset and was excited about an idea he had to make a Firebird headstock to put on the guitar. He even had it drawn up already.
In the end though, he went the break-clean-off-glue-back-on route with the original headstock.
The repair held up fine until the guitar was stolen about a dozen years later. So if you ever see a late 60's/early 70's lefty walnut 335 with a maple fretboard and a headstock repair, let me know!

 

[telemnemonics]

Never broke a Gibson headstock and never had a bad accident or got arrested drunk driving.
It happens though!