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try heating your fretboard while the neck is under tension in your jig, this will allow all the movement on soft glue that you'd get removing and regluing and ought to cool and hold in that position. not saying this will correct the problem, but an easier way to see if it will.

I have done 5 guitars about 2 years ago and so far using steam they all came out just fine but I have not done an old Yamaha but I think it could be a problem and any guitar that uses expoxy will definatley be a problem ! I only steam the guitar once and I only wait a week and I have a jig that I made and i put and set everything where I want it to be without any compensation and when I am done and remove the main clamp at the heastock it will come loose right away and then I know I have done it right ! The main thing is to fix what caused the problem in the first place ! Look and then look again for loose or cracked braces or loose headstock ! Check the truss rod and the neck ! I start the steam process when the neck is perfectly flat ! I have watched John Milners videos and what I do is quite similar but I only have to do it once with the exception of the first one I did took 4 or 5 attempts but you learn from your mistakes !

I have that same model guitar I bought new in 1973. I own several guitars but because of the way this guitar sounds, it is one of my favorites. That said, the guitar needs a neck reset, the action is high. Will I spend any time on it to try these methods or have a reset done? No way! Monetarily it is not worth the time and effort. I tune the guitar down 2 steps, put a capo on the 2nd fret and string it with D'Addario phosphor bronze 12s. Works for me.

Hi Jeff! Do you sell these amazing tongue drums? I would love one!

Hi Jeff! Do you sell these amazing tongue drums? I would love one!

Just bought a 6 string and 12 String Texan for $500.00 total! Still can get great deals on these. Buy them up while you can!

My goodness talk

What size of clamps are those?

My parents got me a 1968 Texan 12 String for Christmas 1969. I am still playing it to this day. Plays beautifully and has an incredible sound. Framus guitars are very under rated on the vintage market. John Lennon and Keith Richards both played Framus 12 strings back in the day,

You need to watch John Miner's video again. You are cutting corners. Not enough steam getting inside guitar around the neck block, not clamping the fingerboard extension to the top, and not covering the sound hole to keep steam inside. If you don't floor his instructions you can't knock his procedure.

Yamaha neck resets are darn near impossible .. two reasons . 1. They used epoxy instead of glue on a lot of them ...2. Some of them are even pinned. They weren't made to be worked on .... don't have a clue why they are so collectible today.. So I wonder how that turned out .

Very generous and thoughtful video. I’ve always loved these instruments. Great work.

Hello Jeff, I have the exact same model of Guitar except its the japanese nippon gakki tan label. i bought mine about 3 years ago from, a man in England I'm Irish. The action was extremely high, I sanded the bridge down put new frets in adjusted truss etc and managed to get action down to about 3mm at the 12th fret, still a bit high for me. The thing is these guitars are so loud and resonant I just love it, so now i'm hoping to do the John Miner method. He has done updated videos on this and what i noticed is he ragged up the inside of the guitar to within an inch of either side of the fretboard that overlaps on to the soundboard. Yes they are laquered but I don't think they are on the soundboard side. I could be wrong but one could also sand the inside on the sound board side. He used a steamer with a hose nozzle, waited until the soundboard got fairly warm then plugged the sound hole for that steam to get in the wood. Did that every 3 or 4 days for 3 to 4 weeks. He apparently gets good results even with the Laminate Yamahas. I have now puchased clamps and a steam machine with a nozzle and will give it a try, I think it's worth it because these guitars sound amazing. I've played sessions in pubs with high end Taylors and Martins and it blows them away in my opinion. I will update you and your other followers ojn this process in a months time. Rosa Strings have done a vdeo on taking off the neck on these and its a nightmare and an expensive process and anyway it wouldn't be worth spending 3 or 400 euro to butcher the guitar and on such a cheap model. Also they used Epoxy glue instead of traditional glue on these Yamahas they are built like a tank. Well done on the video and I shall comment in a months time to see how I get on. There's nothing to loose really. Go raibh mile maith agat 🙂

You might try bracing the center portion after clampung it straight and steaming it. They would run parallel to the neck.

Looks like you gave the whole guitar a full rubdown!! 🙂Looks gorgeous 🙂 I'm thinking about doing the same to mine.... Removing all that lacker and letting the wood speak its own language 🙂

Where you located? I'm in Alabama...just wondering

Here are a couple of ideas 1. Can you reach in and send off some of the lacquer? Can you reach inside the guitar where the neck is and put in some sort of turnbuckle that you can used to jack up that part of the body in the neck? Would a bridge doctor work? Can you put it in a bigger neck block and put on bolt on neck. Fit in neck are problem on just about every guitar. They can’t handle the string tension. The Taylor big baby has a bolt on neck and those guitars play really good and they sound really good.

Jeff, do you sell your patterns. My husband would like to make one for our son for Christmas

so what is this all about I think it went into a talk show...

Thanks for the vid. It's always been my understanding that in the old Yamahas, the necks were epoxyed in, so that would make sense why it wouldn't work. Don't think steam would make the epoxy loosen to make this style of reset work. My repair guy won’t do neck sets on Yamahas due to the epoxy.

Thanks for sharing your trial and error findings. I paid for plans back in 2015 and the guy I bought it from showed all the tricks. You are 95% the way there. The only thing you're not doing in the addition he did to the middle. He glues and additional piece 3" wide x 5/8 directly in the middle before cutting the tongues. gives the big ones extra mass and a better ring. Working on a bass unit right now myself. Got a extra tricks for tuning the inside sides if you ever want to compare notes.😀

I built a jig to hold the guitar sucure, used several clamps, and a McCullac steamer. Stuffed the inside full of rags to the top of tge sound hole. Steamed tge neck joint until the outside was very warm to the touch. Blocked off the sound hole to hold the steam them cranked back on the neck until a straight edge set around 3/8" over the bridge, resteamed about every three days over a three week peroid. When i released it out of tge jig it came out great, the old FG 200 now has a tall bone saddle , low action and plays great

Hey Jeff, I had just looked at John Miner's introduction to this technique, and he said that he sets the guitar neck at "1 or 2cm" beyond the height of compensation desired. This way the neck has the "slack" to move back toward it's previous position but is far enough above resettling more than desired. You had mentioned that you set the neck at 1/8" beyond that desired. But 1/8" is only 0.3125cm. Had you worked with more tension to get to 1-2cm, the laminate wood and lacquer may have made no difference regarding Miner's technique. A guess, anyway. Thanks for the report.

you didn't put a clamp on the sound hole in the other video. That is the most important clamp.

I also tried the method of steaming and it did move the neck, not as much as I needed though. I was wondering if you put the cloth inside the guitar body AND in the top wings of the guitar. I did not put the cloth at the wings to keep the steam just at the neck block. This may have been why it did not keep the position after steaming. I had to move the neck at least an 8th of an inch and it did move the neck 1/16. I am going to try again with cloth inside everywhere other than the neck block. BTW I did do this on a cheap guitar, part of the fix is that the glue does soften and allow movement between neck extension and top of guitar. You mentioned to release the bottom of guitar at the neck joint and re gluing after you change the angle. On my guitar the glue did release on the bottom where the neck meets the guitar and I had to reglue that area.

I am in the process of restting a Sigma cutaway guitar. I set it up on my workbench the way John did. I have the neck when measured with a straight edge to the bridge set at 1/4 height above the bridge. I started it on May 26th 2023. I steamed it and check everyday the measurment and still sitting at 1/4. I made it at that distnce figuring if it will go back when everything is released. I may get at least 1/8 out of the reset. Will steam again June 02 and every friday for 3 weeks. Then when the process is finished. I will see what results i get. the action was much too high to play. The straight edge before I started this process was about 1/32 below the bridge. Wish me luck. So far so good..

Beautiful music.

This technique does work, and does it simply and cheaply. Definitely worth trying on an inexpensive guitar. I fixed an old Fairclough with a solid top and the same symptoms as your Yammy. You have got to heat the inside of the top and I needed steam from a wall paper stripper which worked really well. I don't think that just introducing steam and hoping it hydrates will work. You had a lot of clamps on the neck - I am envious, as I had to make mine out of coach bolts and a strip of stud wall timber! I didn't see that you clamped the top of the soundhole/fretboard to the straight edge. You might have done and not had it on the video. This is the point of maximum leverage, so its important to clamp this. Once the top is hot, the neck angle becomes really malleable and you can alter it with finger pressure. You just need the clamps to hold in place while it all dries out. Sorry that this didn't work for you, but thanks for putting the video up.

Hey Jeff I am a left handed player and I have been eyeing up a similar 1969 Framus Texan that is right handed. I want to convert it to left handed, but do you know if the saddle will need to be changed for reversing the order of the strings?

Thanks for sharing

WRONG only the inside back is laquered .. seems maybe you are all trying the easy route to neck resets but oh how youve yet to learn there are no shortcuts to a neck reset. Sorry to be blunt here but do it right or dont do it right but DO NOT SPREAD FALSE INFO Also they used epoxy in the neck joint on FG yamahas at that time ...Good luck buddy

With a less expensive instrument like this yamaha why not do the KungFu neck rest and turn it into a bolt on neck by cutting it off at the neck block inserting a threaded insert in the heel and bolt it on through the neck block?

I'm not going to read all the comments, so this may be redundant... I like your idea, although it is almost as much work as a true reset. When you do the refret, using frets with a slightly wider tang than the ones you're removing will also flatten out the neck, if relief is any part of your issue.

If you take the finger board off then you can see the dove tail and steam the neck off. They can be hard to get the neck off.

Jeff could you help me out ? I have a guitar that has had hairspray misted it over in over spray making the top feel rough and bumpy ! Is there anything I could use to take the hairspray off and not remove the original finish of the guitar ! Thank you !

Interesting technique. Dont know if you heard of randy shchartiger, but he's a pretty big guitar tech youtuber. He has one video where he does something like this to a guitar, but I can't find it at the moment. But I think it is a guitar with a steel reinforced neck, so there's no truss rod to adjust, but I think the customer didn't want to spend the money on a neck reset, and doing this was a bit cheaper. From what I remember he uses a heat lamp to heat the neck, and humidifies the neck massively, to make it more plyable. And he puts two wood blocks on either end of the neck with leather under the blocks to protect the neck, and a 2x4 across the blocks, and he puts two clamps around the middle of the neck, and this way it forced more backbow into the neck. Very slow process. Takes a couple of weeks. Started out with the clams not very tight, and slowly tightened them over that period. He said that doing this will force a new memory into the wood, so that it will take on the new shape (in this case, more back bow)

I didn't figure that would work. It just seems too easy. I always thought a regular neck reset might be avoided however. I wonder if you could drill your 2 holes and put heat sticks in that dovetail while under tension for a good long while to heat up that end to go along some steam. I just made me some heat sticks to fit both my solder irons and will be trying them on my next reset.

Here is what I did- my son brought over a nicely made old classical guitar that the neck was pulled up badly he got it somewhere cheap. I took off the finger board and pulled down the neck (don't remember how much - maybe 3/8" at the head) with some heat and left it for a couple days. With it pulled down I glued the finger board back on. Figuring that the strong and hard fingerboard would resist compression. It did work, the action was down to usable. I just sent my son a email asking how it held up in the studio for these 3 or 4 years. Mike

Have you watched a bunch of twoodfrd videos? You could consider converting it to a bolt-on at this point if removing the glue in the neck mortise is too hard. If it's a plywood guitar, you have to balance its monetary value versus its value to you. Lots of good quality guitars (Taylor) have bolt-on necks. Nevermind. I just saw the trailer to the video. :)

I think I'm going to try something like this on an FG180J of mine... the problem though seems to be the top has bulged upwards at the bridge. a straight edge across the back of the bridge reveals between 3/16" and 1/4" air space... almost the entire back is bowed outwards to where a straight edge along the back perpendicular to the neck is about the same gap.... I think if i bring both sides down that will do something... i don't really know the best way though because I'm not a luthier... I've thought about laying a damp cloth across the bottom and also across about 4 inches either side of the bridge and let it soak for a while to soften the fibers then try to clamp the bridge down against the same backing I'll use against the back to pressure it... i don't know if that makes sense to you or not?... but i'd like your opinion if you have time...

Look, my man, just bite the bullet and do a traditional neck reset.

Just an opinion, but the way that procedure works is with heat. The stream is just the heat source. So having a finish on the inside shouldn't have an effect. I have no clue if this works because I've not tried it, but the theory behind it is valid. The steam heats the neck block and fret board extension to the point where the glue is soft and pliable again. This should allow the neck to be pulled back, along with the fret board extension. After the guitar cools/dries the neck and fret board extension should, in theory, stay where it was forced. So having a finish on the inside of the guitar shouldn't stop this procedure from working. I just have issues believing this will work. If it does work, no guitar luthier would want to do another neck re-set again. It's a very destructive process, some times, and just something they would rather avoid if at all possible. They can make money doing much easier, less stressful, procedures. Again, this is just my thoughts and I am in no way a guitar repair expert. I was a carpenter for over 30 years where custom cabinets were just one of the jobs I did. But not making or repairing guitars.

I am thinking that the challenge is where the dovetail lines up, so if you were going to pull the fretboard, then taking the neck off would be a lot easier. I have an 70s Gibson, which, like an idiot, I broke the truss rod. The fretboard is similarly gouged, needs regretting, and because Gibsons are more difficult to locate the dovetail, and since the fretboard has to come off anyway, I am going to pull the neck.

Vintage Harmony's are so easy to get apart, there's no reason why not to do a conventional neck reset. Vintage FG's are plywood, not laminate. Plywood has the plies at 90 degrees, and laminates have the grain parallel. The "slipping the block" type neck reset is way too much work, with too much of a chance of damage to the finish and internal kerfing. You'll have to remove the binding and recut the channel. Way too much work. Taller frets aren't going to fix the neck angle, unless you dress them on an angle, with the first few frets being very low. Loosening the fretboard extension isn't going to let the neck move. The neck block is still solid, held in place by the top. Sanding too much off the top of the bridge ruins the guitar for the next guy. Then the saddle slot is too shallow to support a taller saddle. Then it will need a new bridge and a neck reset. Removing the fretboard will make a mess on the sides of the neck. If you remove the frets you can sand much of the divots out, but that is going to increase the action. The divots are signs the guitar was loved. I would leave them, unless they bother you playing them. They can also be filled with rosewood dust & thin superglue, then scrape & sand smooth, although the patch will be darker that the real wood. I'd post some links to my forum, but TH-cam tends to delete posts with links.

All that time and effort. Surely just a straightfoward neck reset and have done! The cost wont be far off the time its already taken you.

All that time and effort. Surely just a straightfoward neck reset and have done! The cost wont be far off the time its already taken you.

I agree, this process will probably work OK for an all solid wood guitar. The advantage of the all plywood guitar is its stability in changes in temp & humidity. And the vintage FG's are finished inside and out. The steam does nothing since it can't penetrate the wood, it's just a smokescreen. The traction does all the work. In the end, the process is inexact, at best, due to not knowing how much/long to back bow. Also, the biggest problem is typically the body is collapsing around the soundhole. The only way to fix a bend is to overbend, and there will always be some spring back. Since you can't overbend the top, you can't possibly get it back to its original shape. And there's a high risk of overbending and popping braces or the top, causing difficult and unnecessary repairs. I designed a holding fixture to try this, but I don't have the room to dedicate to storing a guitar in traction for 1 to 2 months. And I have severe doubts about the consistency and longevity of the process. Maybe someday. For now, I'll stick with conventional neck resets. I'm up to 60 vintage FG's! One more coming on Sunday, from NJ thru NH. And many more in my collection to do. DON'T SELL IT!!!!

Have you ever experimented with tuning partials / overtones?

Had the inverter go out twice. Can be damaged too many ways to mention but must have it's own circuit and no gfs or surge protector. Electrical storms and power interuptions are just a few of the most obvious. Good luck.

Lovely carving, sir! Thank you for the pleasant sounds of your wood shop.