1960s EKO Ranger 12-String Acoustic/Electric Guitar

I used to have an EKO Ranger 12-string (in sunburst) ages ago with the "slope shoulder" body and a trapeze tailpiece setup. I loved that guitar, but like this one, it played like garbage "as is." It needed a bunch of tweaking to play half-well and I wish I had the skills then that I do now as I would've had a lot more fun with it.

This one is owned by my local friend Sam and he was really interested in acquiring the Esquire 12-string I worked-on recently but wasn't up to forking the funds over for it. He'd initially brought this here for fix-and-sale but I called him up to tell him to come check it out first (because, post-work, it plays and sounds great) and he took it right home to enjoy!

I snagged these pics on its way out the door but was lucky-enough to have recorded a video the night before.

The short of it on these guitars is that the neck joint (bolted and compromised as built from the factory) is not up to the task of 12 strings. Once you modify that and add some lengthwise structural support inside, it becomes a useful, functional, stable instrument that's fun to play and pulls double-duty as an acoustic mic-up recording buddy or an electric plug-in fun-machine.

Much work was needed -- I shored-up the neckblock and stability problems, gave it a fret level/dress, added a replacement truss cover, and fit a new, big, wood saddle with individual compensation for the strings. This is setup for a 12-string electric set of strings so gauges are roughly 46w-9 low to high.

The guitar is all ply in the body -- ply spruce over ply mahogany -- and the neck is multi-piece mahogany. The bridge and fretboard are rosewood.

At the end of this post I've included a set of photos from when I was working on the guitar so you can see how I solved its structural issues.

Ready for funk?

Here's the guitar "as-is" when it arrived.

Here we can see the goofy neckblock -- it's made of 4 layers of 3/4" or so thick pine with gaps in-between sections. Weight relief, maybe? But dumb...

Here I'm adding pine blocks to make the joint more rigid.

The first one is glued, the second one is glued, and then I used the drywall screw to "suck it up" to the original block.

I then added an internal support dowel (painted black, here) that runs from the fixed-up neckblock right through the endblock. It's held in place both with glue and a 1/4" dowel that runs through it in the endblock to lock it in place. This alleviates compression tension on the joint and top and so the instrument remains a lot more stable -- closer to semihollow or hollowbody electric stability vs. wonky acoustic.