I believe the neck can be steamed off or maybe in your case loosened and reset to the correct angle.

FoolforRick, be careful Bro, you are entering dangerous waters by attempting the neck reset yourself. True, if there is a place to get the proper guidance, this forum is it, but if you love that guitar as much as I think you do, send it to jingle-jangle and start saving your money. By the time he gets it back to perfect, you will have the money to pay him for his work. The important point here is the guitar will be "perfect". That is worth not only waiting for, but also cost effective.
Mark

Removing the neck from the body is a job for an expert - it's certainly possible to learn how to do it yourself, but I would *not* under any circumstances start to learn on a vintage Rickenbacker! Or even attempt one until you have significant experience with the process. The chances are that if you don't know what you're doing you will turn a repairable guitar with minimal damage into a basket case.

Perhaps surprisingly, you don't need to remove the binding or anything else - in fact, if it's done really well there will be very little damage even to the finish around the neck joint, and it won't need more than careful touch-up work afterwards. No matter how much it costs, it's worth paying someone who can do it to this level of competence rather than wreck it by trying to save money.

For what it's worth, *I* wouldn't attempt it either - I'm a repair tech with woodwork skills, rather than an expert luthier specialising in Ricks... not quite the same thing! I would send it to someone like jingle_jangle.

S%*t! Not what I really want to hear but, yes I hear you! If it's possible to attach pictures, I'll post a couiple to show exactly what has happened - I'm going to sand the guitar down this weekend as the paint job is shot and one thing I am good at is spray painting and want to turn it from all black into a wood / sunburst finish. Once it's sanded down I'll post pictures (if I can) to show the damage. I never even noticed this damage when I bought the guitar ten years ago but it looks like at some stage the neck had come loose due to some kind of trauma injury (the back has a crack in it and the crack around the head / neck joint has been repaired before. Anyway, take a look - I don't think there is any physical damage - it just needs re-setting but I do appreciate that this could require skills I don't possess.

Please pardon my dissenting opinion as I have complete respect for the other posters. You don't really have a vintage Ric. You have an old, broken guitar. It really isn't worthy of a professional restoration. I think you have very little to lose by attempting the repairs yourself. As it currently stands it is only worth the salvage value of the hardware, therefore you can't make it worth any less.

Have a good time, learn a little about how it was put together and you might stumble on a way to make it playable and good looking.

If possible, why don't you post some pictures before doing anything, including sanding. Give everyone a chance to really see what we're talking about here.

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Jangle, Chime & Twang.

I completely disagree - especially as we don't know how serious the damage really is. It could very likely be repairable to a high professional standard and only a little less valuable than an undamaged one afterwards. Even as it stands, if the body isn't damaged it's worth plenty more than the value of the hardware - but attempting to remove the neck very well *could* damage the body and reduce its value substantially.

Or - with the very best intentions - completely wreck it beyond the possibility of a proper repair, or at best make it many times more expensive to do right.

I have seen so many sad examples of valuable old guitars with damage which *could* have been repaired properly by a professional originally - and quite inexpensively - but are now almost beyond salvage because a well-meaning amateur 'had a go' at it themselves.

This is absolutely not the right guitar to start learning about repair work on.

Are you forgetting the personal satisfaction of doing it yourself? I've taken lots of things apart and even put a few of them back together, (usually with pieces left over) that's how I learn.
RIP:'68 SG

How much personal satisfaction is there in having a go, then later finding out that you destroyed something that could have been easily and fairly inexpensively repaired *properly* if you'd only taken it to someone that knew what they were doing?

I learnt a lot by fixing things I didn't have much of a clue about too - but I purposely picked things that were obviously total basket cases first.

*Please* don't recommend someone just 'has a go' at a possibly valuable vintage guitar that may have only fairly simple, easily repairable damage - or even serious damage but which can be repaired perfectly by an expert. Of course, if we see some pics and it turns out to be one of the basket cases, I'll join you in suggesting that he spend no more money on it and have a go - but for that, both the body and neck would have to be unrepairable to anything like a good standard, and it *doesn't* sound like that, at least at the moment.

The going rate for '68 SGs is $3-6,000.

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Jangle, Chime & Twang.