Broken tail piece screws

[el8ed]

Well, now it gets a bit scary.
I took the tailpiece off the SSB to polish it and one of the 3 screws was not even tight and only half of it came out. The other 2 were tight, but it looks like they too have lost some part of their length. See photo.
Aside from ordering new screws, what do I do about the pieces stuck in the body wood?
Thanks again in advance for all your advise.
Cheers, Oliver

[StephenR]

I had the same issue when I removed the tailpiece from my 78 Series bass to clean it. I didn't realize that one of the screws had broken. In my case I was able to remove the plate over the battery compartment plus the batteries and a small bit of the screw was left protruding into the battery compartment. There was just enough there to back the screw out using a pair of pliers. Alembic no longer uses brass screws because they tend to break when old. You can get them to send you a set of stainless steel replacement screws or buy them at a hardware store but don't use brass again.

If you can't access the broken part of the screw from the battery cavity you may want to look into the tool that Bill recommended to another member here with a broken tuning peg screw.
https://club.alembic.com/index.php?topic=26449.0

[gtrguy]

If it is broken off below the body I might try using my Dremel tool with a super small metal shaping bit to carefully put a straight notch in the screw shank so that a flat blade screwdriver could remove it. I would use my close up LED visor to do the work.

[el8ed]

Thanks Stephen and David!
The broken off pieces are definitely too far inside the body to be accessed by any kind of tool, but the advise to try to get to them through the battery cavity might be the life saver. I am just about to dig in and report back to what I find.
Thanks and cheers,
Oliver

[StephenR]

One other thing to think about... when I put my tailpiece back on after cleaning it and swapping out the new screws they would not tighten up properly. If that is the case you will need to either glue a toothpick into the hole before remounting the tailpiece or do what I did and glue maple dowels into the screwholes then drill a pilot hole before putting the tailpiece back on. Hope you can get the broken screws out through the battery cavity. The problem with this approach is that the screws should never have protruded into the cavity in the first place so YMMV... Good luck!

[el8ed]

Hurray! I got the broken-off screw pieces out. One just fell out “breathing on it from the battery cavity side, the next one took a little wiggling to just slip out—these were the very small pieces. The bigger “stump" proved stubborn. I was not able to get a hold on it from either side, so I did some very light excavation from the inside of the bass. Once I was able to get a hold of the piece with needle nose pliers it was surprisingly easy to slowly back it out. I am left with a rather unsightly, but small excavation site which I will fill with wood shavings mixed with wood glue. I will also tighten the screw holes with toothpicks glued into them.
I guess as soon as I hear back from Alembic about new screws—amongst other parts for my restoration—I will be back in business.
In the meantime more brass polishing for me—bridge is next

[el8ed]

Oh, and thank you for the hand-holding!!! 

[pauldo]

Congratulations on a successful extraction event(s)!