What happened to my guitar?

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What happened to my guitar? - Grumpy - 20:33 21-11-05

I put together a Frankentele a while back ---the guitar's been together
for about two months now, and everything was great, I love playing this
guitar.

Or, rather, loved.

Because ever since we've been in a cold snap around here, things have
gone all screwy. All of a sudden, the strings are riding way high off
the neck.

I thought it might be because the relief in the neck --but that's within
normal parameters. It's not extreme at all. I'll try adjusting that if I
can find the right tool to use (it's a Fender MIM neck...trussrod's
accessible from the headstock...I'm not sure of what it needs--a hex key?
Hard to see in there)

In the meantime, I've lowered the saddles pretty much as far as they can
go --still no joy.

And the weirdest part is that lowering the saddles barely seems to have
any influence on the height of the strings.

The thing is, I don't need to lower it by much. Right now the low E is a
touch more than 3 mm over the 12th fret, the high E is at 2 mm...just a
little bit lower will do it.

So yeah, maybe it's the truss rod, after all, even though that 'looks'
okay?

Help!

So what happened to my guitar? And how do I get it back.

Re: What happened to my guitar? - Jim Anable - 20:38 21-11-05

Re: What happened to my guitar? - Grumpy - 20:44 21-11-05

>
> Neck angle? Loose bolts?

Checked the angle, seems okay. Bolts are as tight as they ever were.
Actually, I took the neck off and inspected the pocket --it wasn't
completely flat toward the back (the body came from a cheapo asian tele),
so I cleaned that up.

>
> Maybe you need an exorcist?
>

I'm thinking you may be right...

Re: What happened to my guitar? - Dave Van - 20:53 21-11-05

Grumpy wrote:
> I put together a Frankentele a while back ---the guitar's been together
> for about two months now, and everything was great, I love playing this
> guitar.
>
> Or, rather, loved.
>
> Because ever since we've been in a cold snap around here, things have
> gone all screwy. All of a sudden, the strings are riding way high off
> the neck.
>
> I thought it might be because the relief in the neck --but that's within
> normal parameters. It's not extreme at all. I'll try adjusting that if I
> can find the right tool to use (it's a Fender MIM neck...trussrod's
> accessible from the headstock...I'm not sure of what it needs--a hex key?
> Hard to see in there)
>
> In the meantime, I've lowered the saddles pretty much as far as they can
> go --still no joy.
>
> And the weirdest part is that lowering the saddles barely seems to have
> any influence on the height of the strings.
>
> The thing is, I don't need to lower it by much. Right now the low E is a
> touch more than 3 mm over the 12th fret, the high E is at 2 mm...just a
> little bit lower will do it.
>
> So yeah, maybe it's the truss rod, after all, even though that 'looks'
> okay?
>
> Help!
>
> So what happened to my guitar? And how do I get it back.

It's drying out. Things are happening that you cannot see or easily
measure. You need to nurture it back to health by putting it in a
climate controlled room where the temperature is between 66 and 74 and
the humidity is between 45% and 55%. Basically, what's considered the
comfort zone for humans is the comfort zone for the guitar. Get a
humidifier and a humidity meter and maintain that humidity level.

I lapsed and let the humidity in my office get down to around 26%. The
three low strings on my SG started buzzing and rattling like crazy. I
also noticed that the frets were starting to feel proud of the edge of
the fingerboard (it's a special, no binding) The odd thing is that the
action and relief measured right where I left them when I set the guitar
up months ago. I got my humidifier going and two days later the buzz
and rattle is gone. Back to normal.

If you built the guitar in particularly humid weather, now that it is
cooler and drier, you might want to go and make sure the neck is fully
seated in the pocket and tighten the neck screws again. It may be
possible that the contracting wood has loosened that joint a bit.

Peace

DV

Re: What happened to my guitar? - Grip - 21:23 21-11-05

you may need to shim it slightly
"Dave Van" <dave@brickNOSPAMgarage.com> wrote in message
news:uSugf.1905$aA2.1529@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> Grumpy wrote:
> > I put together a Frankentele a while back ---the guitar's been together
> > for about two months now, and everything was great, I love playing this
> > guitar.
> >
> > Or, rather, loved.
> >
> > Because ever since we've been in a cold snap around here, things have
> > gone all screwy. All of a sudden, the strings are riding way high off
> > the neck.
> >
> > I thought it might be because the relief in the neck --but that's within
> > normal parameters. It's not extreme at all. I'll try adjusting that if I
> > can find the right tool to use (it's a Fender MIM neck...trussrod's
> > accessible from the headstock...I'm not sure of what it needs--a hex
key?
> > Hard to see in there)
> >
> > In the meantime, I've lowered the saddles pretty much as far as they can
> > go --still no joy.
> >
> > And the weirdest part is that lowering the saddles barely seems to have
> > any influence on the height of the strings.
> >
> > The thing is, I don't need to lower it by much. Right now the low E is a
> > touch more than 3 mm over the 12th fret, the high E is at 2 mm...just a
> > little bit lower will do it.
> >
> > So yeah, maybe it's the truss rod, after all, even though that 'looks'
> > okay?
> >
> > Help!
> >
> > So what happened to my guitar? And how do I get it back.
>
>
> It's drying out. Things are happening that you cannot see or easily
> measure. You need to nurture it back to health by putting it in a
> climate controlled room where the temperature is between 66 and 74 and
> the humidity is between 45% and 55%. Basically, what's considered the
> comfort zone for humans is the comfort zone for the guitar. Get a
> humidifier and a humidity meter and maintain that humidity level.
>
> I lapsed and let the humidity in my office get down to around 26%. The
> three low strings on my SG started buzzing and rattling like crazy. I
> also noticed that the frets were starting to feel proud of the edge of
> the fingerboard (it's a special, no binding) The odd thing is that the
> action and relief measured right where I left them when I set the guitar
> up months ago. I got my humidifier going and two days later the buzz
> and rattle is gone. Back to normal.
>
> If you built the guitar in particularly humid weather, now that it is
> cooler and drier, you might want to go and make sure the neck is fully
> seated in the pocket and tighten the neck screws again. It may be
> possible that the contracting wood has loosened that joint a bit.
>
> Peace
>
> DV

Re: What happened to my guitar? - Boyd Williamson - 01:36 22-11-05

On 11/21/05 8:23 PM, in article fYydnZiOTrerHB_eRVn-qw@suscom.com, "Grip"
<mbetts@suscom.net> wrote:

>>> Because ever since we've been in a cold snap around here, things have
>>> gone all screwy. All of a sudden, the strings are riding way high off
>>> the neck.

It's been my experience that the change in seasons regularly brings a change
in the action of my guitars. I believe it to be the neck's relationship with
the truss rod.

When I make a quarter turn adjustment or something, I find it helpful to try
to actually bend the neck back and forth just a bit to get the adjustment to
"take" or "set," otherwise the guitar may seem to ignore it until sometime
later, and then suddenly "sproing" when I least expect it. This can happen
especially when I've made a quarter turn, and it seems to have no effect, so
I put another quarter turn on it, etc.

And, like I said, they seem to do an "adjustment" of their own going from
summer to winter, and vice versa. Although I make every reasonable effort to
keep them comfortable and happy with me indoors, it's as if they're saying
"you can't fool me. I know what the weather is like outside. I'm gonna react
to it."

The humidity thing, which I've never really paid much attention to, would
seem to make a lot of sense, too. Wood is inclined to swell when it's humid
(summer) and contract when moisture in the air tends to freeze and fall out
of the sky in the winter.

Zoid

Re: What happened to my guitar? - Grumpy - 02:58 22-11-05

> It's drying out.

You might be right...actually, we had a drought this summer and in
September (when I put the guitar together)...the last week or so we had a
cold snap, and for the couple of weeks before that it had rained bit...

So the guitar is probably completely confused.

To make matters worse, I usually leave the guitar out and available on its
stand in my office/studio. And usually that's not an issue --except with
the cold weather I should have been putting it in its case at night (I
don't heat in here at night).

Cleaning the neck pocket and reseating the neck seems to have helped a lot
though.

At this point, I've got most of the strings back to where I like them --
only the low E is a bit too high (but I can file the saddle a bit for
that--they're Graphtech string savers, so it's easy enough to give it a
notch.

Re: What happened to my guitar? - Grumpy - 04:50 22-11-05

> It's been my experience that the change in seasons regularly brings a
> change in the action of my guitars. I believe it to be the neck's
> relationship with the truss rod.

Well, it's definitely the relief on the guitar...way too high.

Problem is, I just discovered that the truss rod adjuster is
stripped...which means the neck is basically trash...

Man, I hate ebay. The seller had great feedback though...

Re: What happened to my guitar? - Nil - 09:09 22-11-05

On 22 Nov 2005, Boyd Williamson <zoid@z9design.com> wrote in
news:BFA81893.D76E%zoid@z9design.com:

> It's been my experience that the change in seasons regularly
> brings a change in the action of my guitars. I believe it to be
> the neck's relationship with the truss rod.

Here in New England, I find that most of my guitar's necks go out of
whack twice a year, at the start of winter and the start of summer,
when the temperature and humidity changes. I either give them the bi-
annual truss rod tweak, or put them in the closet and play something
else for 6 months.

The doors in my house swell up in the summer and stick in the frames,
but loosen up in the winter. Same cause.

Re: What happened to my guitar? - Nil - 09:11 22-11-05

On 22 Nov 2005, Grumpy <snow@white.com> wrote in
news:Xns97166E600F0C5oyesyescom@193.252.117.183:

> Problem is, I just discovered that the truss rod adjuster is
> stripped...which means the neck is basically trash...

Not necessarily. I've never had to do it myself, but I've been told
that sometimes it's just the nut that's stripped, and you can replace
that. Or sometimes the truss rod threads can be recut.

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