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The neck on this Hofner Colorama was originally quite badly back bowed, as shown here: In an effort to rectify this, we’ve tried three different approaches, as follows: 1. While re-radiusing the fretboard, more pressure was applied towards the middle of the neck in order to remove more fretboard material in that area. This would not straighten the neck, per se, but it would reshape the top of the fretboard in such a way that its top would end up being flatter. 2. When refretting, the fret slots were widened. When frets are forced into narrower slots, this has a tendency to force the neck to back bow, so we wanted to avoid this at all costs. The slots are still narrow enough to grip the new frets, but are certainly not overly-tight. 3. Obviously the truss rod nut was slackened as much as possible. In fact, even with the nut removed, the neck still maintained a back-bowed shape. It was noticed that the washer under the nut was wedged into place, and it was suspected that it might be pre...

The neck on this vintage Hofner Colorama II is going to get tackled before we deal with the guitar's other issues. The neck is in quite a state, with at least the following problems: 1. The frets need replacing (total refret). 2. The fingerboard is very uneven and needs re-radiusing (sanding down to the correct curvature again). 3. There is a long crack/gap running along the fingerboard that will need to be filled in (luckily this is not a structural problem). 4. The nut needs to be removed and replaced. 5. The old lacquer needs to be removed and the neck needs to be re-lacquered. 6. A new waterslide-decal logo needs to be made and applied. 7. The relief on the neck needs to be dealt with (it is back-bowed, even when the truss rod is completely loosened). Today we will just deal with the stripping down stage. First thing to do is remove the neck from the guitar as follows: The machine heads (tuners) and string retainer are also removed, leaving us with this: Before we can do any mo...