LeftyBassist.com

Hadn't played my Stagg EUB in awhile, but took it to a rehearsal a couple of weeks ago for one of the old Blues bands I play in.... unzipped the case, and the headstock fell out on the floor! Looks like the wood is very soft and porous, and along with a crack that starts from one of the tuning screws, I think it can be attributed to wood failure, as I've never manhandled this bass, or any of the other 15 I currently own.

I'm going to send the pictures to Stagg, and see what they have to say about it. didn't buy it that long ago....


Where the crack started, at the screw, that may have contributed to the failure of the wood....

This looks like a void, or an open vein to me...

The wood literally disintergrated...

Man that sucks! Hopefully they'll replace it...

How do you find it? I'm thinking of picking one up, did you do the conversion to lefty yourself?

Originally found and bought it through eBay. Had a local guitar tech convert it for me - I think the total was $100 or so...

Yikes! That sucks! I'm checking mine now. I had thought about switching out the stock strings for Corellis, which are supposed to be lighter tension. But this might be an indication that perhaps strings need to be loosened when the bass is not in use. At any rate, good luck and let us know what they say.

Is that plywood?

Looks like laminated mahogany.

I sent an email to the eBay seller, who has given me the contact info for the company that handles the Stagg bass line. The contact person's title is "Customer Service/Product Specialist", so I'll let you know what he says...

As far as the wood goes, I've not seen mahogany that soft and fibrous before, although it does look like a laminate, as the "void" area seems to be going in a 90 degree direction. I had though it looked laminated too... Rod if you have time to weigh in, what do you think?

I've got friends in the carpentry/cabinet business, so I'll let them have a look at it, and see what they think, as well as have my guitar tech, who switched it for me, take a look at it.

PJ, just to be safe, changing out to lighter gauge strings wouldn't be a bad idea, and would most likely give you better tone over the originals. As for your suggestion to de-tune a bit if the bass isn't going to be played for awhile, sounds like a good idea to me! Does anyone else in the forum do that with their uprights - either double bass or EUB?

Is it a good idea to slightly de-tune any bass that isn't played on a regular basis? Although I doubt that any bass neck made with good quality maple or other laminations would suffer the fate of my Stagg. I just think my neck and headstock were made with a low-grade wood. The wood has the look of something close to Balsa Wood!

Will keep you all posted as I converse with the Customer Service rep....

Just got off the phone with a very nice Customer Rep from Stagg... and to make a long story short, they're going to send me a new neck! The Rep said that the batch of Stagg EUB's made and sold around the time of my purchase (April 2011) were made with inferior wood (Duh!) and there were quite a lot of breaks similar to mine. And after Googling "stagg broken necks", I came up with several stories and pictures that confirmed (for me) that this was true.... and sending him the pictures above made it easy for him to decide to replace my neck.

The new necks are made with a harder wood, and a Rosewood fingerboard (mine had some sort of resin-based finish), so it will be a great improvement over the original! Am much relieved I didn't have to get testy or demand my rights as a consumer etc... a good company to work with!

"Much like the defective Chinese drywall fiasco of 2006, defective KitKat bars and sugar wafers of unknown origin made their way into the construction of some Stagg EUB necks made in 2011. Representatives at Stagg say they still are unsure whether the chocolate covering or the vanilla filing were contributing factors that caused the necks to collapse, and are experimenting with solid mahogany as an alternate, more rigid material..."

VerrrrRRRRRRrrrryyyy Funny.... I like it!

Sad but true ....

Brilliant !!

BAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Oh, man... that was funny shit!