I really like these Tanglewood TW55 Heritage acoustics; decorative bindings in Walnut and Rosewood, Piano Black Ebony fingerboards, AAA grade Engelmann Spruce tops (or AAA Canadian Red Cedar). B-Band A5 EQ systems, luxury Waverly style hi ratio machine heads etc . . .
They are just over £1000 new, but you can pick them up second hand for only a couple hundred quid, there’s a lot of second hand ones knocking about and there’s reason for it. They all seem to develop a pretty bad belly hump raising the action and making the guitar virtually unplayable. There doesn’t appear to be sufficient internal bracing to keep the top flat, but this is also one of the reasons I think they sound so good.
On this one the action is over 8mm at the 12th fret and not much room at the saddle to take it down.
You can seethe belly hump here against a straight edge.
I don’t what to start adding bracing inside the guitar as this will kill it’s sound. It has amazing sustain and resonance. So this neck needs to come off so we can change the angle and get this thing playing again.
To loose the glue hold on the tongue I’m using a very strange device I found in my house under the stairs. You plug it in and it gets hot and steam shoots out of it. What will they think of next.
Carefully does it.
Almost there!
With the tongue removed it’s time to fire some steam into the neck joint. I’ve disassembled a Tanglewood before and the neck was held on with three large dowels, so I’m assuming this is the same. If this had a dove tail joint I would have picked the 13th/14th fret instead.
Drilling into the neck pocket
Steam going in now for about ten minutes and I can smell Titebond or some kind of alphatic resin.
Starting to move.
Here we go!
It was a dovetail after all.
Bit of mahogany shim in there to help for a good tight joint.
Offset tennon on one side to add strength to where the body cutaway is. not sure about the scoop!
Cleaning up some of the glue around the trussrod.
Let’s patch these holes with some ebony and dust. And put a new fret in.
Neck re-angled and glued with a tongue shim, fret dress and a new 1.5mm action at the 12th fret – and It still sings. More pics to follow . . .
John Wesley - Guitar Repairs 
Great post – love the pics (in the garden – really?!) Just about to attack a TWRSFCE with the same problem. Thanks for the courage top-up!
Hi i own a sundance pro tw55 in sunburst….had it about 18 years …its got a nice so;id spruce top and solid mahogany back….the only quibble is id prefer it to have an ebony board….i really enjoyed this article …i think Tanglewoods are under rated hence you can get a great guitar for a fair price….the bellying thing has never happened to me …thank god as itd probably cost as much as the guitar to fix …its had maybe 5 truss rod tweaks and a fretboard inlay has fell /corroded out…but 18 years of never been in its case and played probably more than my other guitars as its always hanging around…( funny how expensive guitars seem to spend time in their cases …my pricey hand made in spain concert classical guitar for example )…it bears the scars…but i think it sounds pretty nice …OK so its not a Martin D28….but its not too shabby either …and heres a thing
i sold my Lowden O10 a year after buying itas the taglewood to my ears sounded better,,,for my mainly hybrid strumming /picking pete townsend style acoustic thing heresy i know!! but i shit you not…dont get me wrong though i regret getting rid of the Lowden as its a “heirloom” guitar and pricy and was nice for finger style…ah well..
anyways enjoyed your article greatly …intresting to see one taken apart….those chinese guitar makers are pretty good i have a Ibanez george benson GB10SE and thats just about as good as a japanese one…go figure man !!!