NGD - Fender Swinger

[knathan]

awesome.

[manliusguitar]

I used to have one of those, they are pretty cool guitars. I will say that my neck pocket wasn't the tightest, but it wasn't as wide as yours. Nice guitar!

[luau]

That's hot! Good luck with the neck issue, FenderBob.

[wardpike]

Problem:
Back bow? As in the neck is pushed out further in the middle and as a reult you need high action and it frets out a lot?

Solution:
Take neck off, use large #4 Philips screwedriver to loosen the truss rod by turning counter-clockwise 2 whole turns. Reattach neck, and string back up and tune to pitch. Leave it for a couple of hours and see where it is.
If not any better, loosen trussrod another 1/2 turn and re-tune to pitch, wait a couple of hours.
If not any better, steam the neck....don't remove it, don't loosen the strings. Use an old electric kettle and have the guitar leaned string-down against kitchen chair, kettle underneath the chair so all steam permeates the neck of the guitar. Do this a 1/2 hour at a time. After each session, check to see if relief is returning to the neck.

Any other questions or more details, please email me directly... wardpike (at) gmail (dot) com.

Cheers and good luck.

Ward

[CROSS_guitars]

It doesn't seem like a difficult thing to repair. I have used clamping and a heat gun before to reset a neck. It's probably not good to use a heat gun but the kettle idea is good. String it up really tight with really heavy gage strings.

[FenderBob]

I want to thank everyone who posted suggestions for fixing this problem. However, I really wasn't comfortable attempting to fix this myself. I intended on having Guitar Center cover the bill from an experienced luthier for the fix. I ended up sending this to Dan Erlewine's Shop in Ohio, the best shop I could think of. They had the guitar for months and were able to get some of the bow out with a heat set but not all of it. However they did get the guitar playing good again with a refret. The repair bill ended up being pretty high and Guitar Center ended up covering about half. In hindsight returning the guitar may have been the better option because now I've got a lot of money in this little guy, but I do enjoy these swingers very much.

FYI - I've bought several other guitars from GC without problems.

[fullerplast]

glad it worked out, mark!

dont worry, you're certainly not the only one who is wildly upside down in guitars...

enjoy!

[noisepunk]

I am so jealous of you for owning that thing.

[redeyeflight]

wow...what a cool looking axe!! It's a keeper...glad GC paid at least some of the bill for ya to get it fixed!

[Rich]

Glad you were able to get it playing well. I love Swingers.

[Flatus]

Really cool and rare guitars, only 250-300 made so they are probably worth alot. How much did you pay for yours if i may ask ?

here is Tina from Talking heads rocking on a Fender Swinger
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqg_ZGcu ... re=related" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

anyways Congratz with your Swinger

[noisepunk]

Really cool and rare guitars, only 250-300 made so they are probably worth alot. How much did you pay for yours if i may ask ?

here is Tina from Talking heads rocking on a Fender Swinger
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqg_ZGcu ... re=related" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

anyways Congratz with your Swinger

I was just watching this today, I saw the swinger and was pretty excited.

[schmerf]

That's too bad about the neck. I always thought these were really strange looking guitars.