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1960’s Hofner 500/1

Tuesday, June 11th, 2019
This mid-60's Hofner 500/1 was brought to us in need of a neck reset and refret.
The neck had been removed and reglued in a previous repair but, over time, that has failed and the neck has begun to lift out of the joint, which you can see here.
This was causing the bass to be unplayable. We typically aim for the action on the low E string to be 3/32" measured at the 17th fret. Here you can see it is a full quarter of an inch, almost triple what we aim for!
With the truss rod maxed out, the neck was still bowing significantly. We also found that the neck had a twist in it so a refret was in order to combat both of these issues
We first remove the neck heel cover and find a where someone in the past had drilled a hole. This hole would have been used to steam the joint and loosen the glue.
We do the same thing and wrap a towel around the body to help contain and pick up excess moisture.
Here, we have the neck and body separated. The neck pickup has been removed from the body and wrapped in cloth to prevent any damage.
We then prep the neck joint by removing the old glue residue. You can see that the neck pocket here is not as deep as on other instruments so, we will be using epoxy for a stronger bond when we glue the neck back in.
Once the neck is rettached, we remove the old frets and nut and begin sanding. Here, you can still see the twist in the neck, as well as a hook in the board on the left towards the headstock. We can effectively sand out the twist but, there isn't much we can do about the hook.
Once the new frets have been installed, we go through our usual process of leveling, dressing and polishing them.
Now that the instrument has been repaired, you can see that the neck is sitting much straighter with strings on it.
The neck is also sitting properly in the neck pocket and should hold much better for the foreseeable future.
Measuring the action now provides a result much closer to what we like to see.
This old Beatle bass is now ready for another 60 years of playing and we hope the owner enjoys it as much as we enjoyed working on it!

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