Members nin8185 Posted July 17, 2016 Members Share Posted July 17, 2016 I bought a used MIM Standard Strat on Ebay. There is to much relief Currently at .017 at the 8th fret. The issue is the Truss Rod does nothing, it just spins either direction with little to no resistance. I started off with a Quarter turn clockwise to tighten and was surprised how it moved so freely, then a half turn. A week later now I've seen NO adjustment made and have giving it Two full turns with out feeling any bite from the Truss Rod. Should i keep turning it till i feel it tighten? don't know how many full turns it will take, and at that point i don't see why it is not working, Guitar was hardly ever played as it was a professional keyboardist before mine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members billybilly Posted July 17, 2016 Members Share Posted July 17, 2016 If not disclosed in sale, contact seller, it's faulty. Seek refund. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nin8185 Posted July 17, 2016 Author Members Share Posted July 17, 2016 Good news... The truss rod was just very loose. I gave it a good 2 full turns more and it started to bite. I have the Relief set perfectly at .010 now. Took at least 4 turns total to get it adjust, at that point it didn't take much to adjust. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members doodie Posted July 18, 2016 Members Share Posted July 18, 2016 2 full turn is a lot(too much in my opinion)! I bought a few new neck and they only took me 1/8 - 1/4 of turn to adjust. Was the neck up bow(concave bow) when you got it? Please be very careful here you don't wanna end up like this guy here (http://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/forum/guitar/acapella-41/31722781-an-open-letter-to-ernie-ball-music-man-about-my-awful-experience) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted July 18, 2016 Members Share Posted July 18, 2016 Hammering frets when necks are made in can expand the fret board if the slots are narrow. This can cause some necks to be slightly back bowed when new. I have a couple of necks that use no truss tension at all and are dead straight. The previous owner may have started with a straight neck or used lighter strings. As time went on, the neck forward mowed and he simply never compensated for it. He may have put the guitar in storage with the strings off and released the tension so it wouldn't back bow too.In any case, simply keep and eye on it for a month and tweak as necessary till it settles in. Sometime the wood has memory and fights the truss tension. It may continue to flatten for awhile depending on the thickness of the neck and dryness and type of wood. After a month it should remain stable. I'd even loosen all the strings then then retune so any binding in the truss rod may have will be equalized. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted July 18, 2016 Share Posted July 18, 2016 Me too! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted July 18, 2016 Share Posted July 18, 2016 2 full turn is a lot(too much in my opinion)! I bought a few new neck and they only took me 1/8 - 1/4 of turn to adjust. Was the neck up bow(concave bow) when you got it? Please be very careful here you don't wanna end up like this guy here (http://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/forum/guitar/acapella-41/31722781-an-open-letter-to-ernie-ball-music-man-about-my-awful-experience) Good advice... but it's also possible that the previous owner loosened the truss rod too much, which is why it took two full turns (way more than it usually should take) before the rod started to have any effect. In most cases though, anything more than 1/4 to 1/2 turn and you should start to worry... and consider taking it to a good tech if you don't know what you're doing, because breaking a truss rod is not something you really want to do... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nin8185 Posted July 18, 2016 Author Members Share Posted July 18, 2016 Good advice... but it's also possible that the previous owner loosened the truss rod too much, which is why it took two full turns (way more than it usually should take) before the rod started to have any effect. In most cases though, anything more than 1/4 to 1/2 turn and you should start to worry... and consider taking it to a good tech if you don't know what you're doing, because breaking a truss rod is not something you really want to do... Yes the issue was that the truss rod was Over loosened, the 2 full turns was before there was Any resistance in the turn. I measured it every 1/2 turn before the tension was present. Once it finally gripped I measured , then did 1/4 then 1/8 to get it to .010 from the .018 it was at, so once set was set it worked just like it should, I've read about companies including Fender sometimes shipping their guitars with out any truss rod tension. I'm going to keep an eye on it to make sure the Neck doesn't drift in either direction after the truss and neck settling. Actually hoping it settles forward a bit at .011 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Freeman Keller Posted July 18, 2016 Members Share Posted July 18, 2016 As Nin found out, with many of the Fender curved (skunk strip) truss rods if you back off the adjuster it simply unscrews. That could have happened for a variety of reasons. If the rod was broken then it would also turn fairly freely in both directions. Modern double acting rods don't do this, they exhibit some resistance turning both directions - at the neutral position they have the least but you still feel resistance against the wrench. In the opinion of many setup techs, 10 or 11 thousands of relief is still quite a bit and with low action and lighter gauge strings can cause some buzzing, particularly in the upper end of the fretboard around the neck-body joint. With perfect frets you can frequently get the relief down to somewhere between 0.002 to 0.004 - however that is really a function of the technique and attack of the individual player. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted July 18, 2016 Share Posted July 18, 2016 Whenever my friend Dennis (who is a Fender Custom Shop master builder) sets up my guitars, I ask him to set them up with the action at Fender stock height, which always surprises and amuses him a bit... he can set them up much lower and keep them buzz-free, but I don't like my guitars set up with the action too low. I guess I'm a bit unusual in that respect. FWIW, I use 10s on most of my guitars, and 9s on a few... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Freeman Keller Posted July 18, 2016 Members Share Posted July 18, 2016 Actually, your not, Phil. There is a link on the StewMac website to measurements taken off of many of the stars guitars - a surprising number of people seem to like fairly high action and lots of relief. However what I usually hear is "I want my action as low as you can make it without buzzing..." OK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members doodie Posted July 18, 2016 Members Share Posted July 18, 2016 Ahh I guess in his case it's a single action truss rod. Clockwise turn simply unscrew. The previous owner probably have zero clue what he was doing and start cranking the thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted July 18, 2016 Members Share Posted July 18, 2016 I'm the same way. Fender stock settings is plenty low for anything I need to do. Its low enough to not to overwork the hand muscles holding down barre chords yet still have fast action. Its also high enough to not have fret buzz. It's just high enough for playing slide or gripping strings comfortably for bending them without fretting out on the fret relief above the 12th fret. I've played guitars with ultra low action before and the string dynamics are severely restricted and the notes contain more slap then tone. Of course too high and the strings can twang too much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GAS Man Posted July 18, 2016 Members Share Posted July 18, 2016 I like to get my action low. I used to use Randy Parsons for some setup work (he's now well known since he appears briefly regarding his work with Jack White in "It Might Get Loud"). Anyway, as he said, "a little bit of fret buzz is okay". And I tend to agree. I get hand cramps fairly readily if I'm doing songs that call for a lot of bar chord action, but the trick for me is to keep that fret buzz minimal enough to where it doesn't knock the tone out of the notes. In other words, maybe a bit of buzz if the string is struck hard, but very little to none for medium to light touch. Fret buzz is a definite vibe killer to your tone if there's a bit too much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GAS Man Posted July 18, 2016 Members Share Posted July 18, 2016 It happens. I was recently working on one of my guitars tightening the truss rod and the resistance was so little, I was a bit worried, but it did the trick. Sometimes they just leave the factory that way too. It's not been uncommon for me to have to do 2 full turns on some of my guitars, it can make me a bit nervous doing that, but so far, no disasters. But I do find that it's not a good idea to turn it that much all at once. Over the years I've found that on guitars where I had to make quite a few 1/4 turns to get the action dialed in, I usually have to come back later and loosen the rod a 1/4 turn or so. Necks often just take a bit of time to fully respond. And that's with me usually trying to "help them along" a bit by flexing the neck a hair. So I may set it down for a day or two and see where it settles before adding more turns if it's starting to make me a bit nervous due to higher resistance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members billybilly Posted July 18, 2016 Members Share Posted July 18, 2016 Wow, must have been pretty loose, I'm relieved for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Grant Harding Posted July 18, 2016 Members Share Posted July 18, 2016 Your post could have been written by me, except the part about your friend in the CS. That's exactly how I like my action. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DeepEnd Posted July 18, 2016 Members Share Posted July 18, 2016 I'm kinda the odd man out because I prefer higher action to avoid fret buzz. I have the relief set correctly and there are no high frets I can detect but buzz can still be annoying. Both my acoustic and my electric have higher than "normal" action. I use 12-53s on my acoustic and "light top/heavy bottom" 10-52s on my electric. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nin8185 Posted July 19, 2016 Author Members Share Posted July 19, 2016 I actual like a decent relief. My gigging and writing guitars are set up with d'addario NYXL (best strings ever, bend like lower gauges and stay in tune through a set) 11-56 in drop c/ d standard relief set at .012 on 24.75 scale and .013 on the 25.5 scale with standard action. Playing heavy gauges and drop tunings got me accustomed to relief. I got this strat to play my standard tunings and wannabe Jeff Beck blues, I'm so use to a greater relief that I may bring it to .011 in a few weeks if I don't want to settle with the current set up Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Freeman Keller Posted July 19, 2016 Members Share Posted July 19, 2016 You know what you like and it works with the string gauges and tunings that you use - that's perfect, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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