2000s Ibanez Artwood AW10ECE Cutaway Dreadnought Guitar

July 06, 2022

2000s Ibanez Artwood AW10ECE Cutaway Dreadnought Guitar

So, the trouble with guitars like these is that they're in that sub-$300 range where, if something goes wrong on them, it's almost silly to repair them. A local customer likes this guitar well-enough, though, that he brought it by for a level/dress of the frets and a setup.

Unfortunately, to get it playing right without a neck reset would have meant shaving the bridge down to almost nothing and then having a very low saddle. In addition because of that the undersaddle pickup wouldn't work as well as intended due to lack of downpressure. I decided to bite the bullet, lose some time, and do a "quickie neck reset" free-of-charge on this guy. That means cutting the fretboard extension, heating up the joint, and "wedging" the joint back to the angle one wants it at.

The only problem here is that when I removed the extension I found that the joint was covered by the top wood. That either meant that the dovetail or tenon was hidden underneath the top wood or that, in fact, the joint was a "doweled" joint with a flat attachment to the body. I chiseled-out enough wood to find-out that, indeed, it's a flat, doweled joint with no support running into the body of the guitar. Dumb!

I drilled holes for my heatstick at the flat of the join and heated-up the joint enough that it would flex open at the top, drove some wedges in to knock the neck angle back, and then filled my excavations, reglued the extension, tidied-up, and was off to fretwork and setup work.

Why do I bother? It's a good question -- but in this case I was (first of all) curious about the structure and also I wanted victory -- now this guitar is recycled back into use again! I don't know whether it's worth recycling back into use, but it does have a Takamine or Alvarez-Yairi sort-of sound and feel going-on that makes it a pleasant instrument to play. It's got a solid top and ply mahogany back and sides and a modern, fast neck.