1963 Maton Coolibah neck restoration
Featuring one of the more ‘unique’ neck resets you will see, these vintage Coolibah’s have a non-conventional neck joint glued in with heat resistant glue. Unfortunately the conventional method of steaming/heating the neck out of the socket simply wont work. Maton Guitars themselves even stated there is no way of getting the neck out of its joint, so another way had to be found to do a re-set. In this case – cut it off and build a new joint!
What was also important was to create a new joint that would be serviceable on the chance another neck reset is needed in the guitars lifetime. So, a dovetail joint was chosen – doing so (and using hide glue) ensures a standard re-set will be possible in another 56 years time ????
While the neck was off the opportunity was also taken to install a modern two-way truss rod – a nice upgrade for the paddle-pop thin 60’s Maton neck .
The original bridge had also been shaved down from years of having a collapsing neck angle, so a brand new replacement bridge was in order.
After a full re-fret, some finish repairs to the neck and a full set-up, this beautiful old Maton is ready for decades more use.
