neck bow and truss rods

[wokkaboy]

Hi Swanny yes the PBG kit necks have a double action truss rod

[Swanny]

Thanks Wokka! Good to know the ins and outs! Gives a better understanding of what's happening.

[BenWA]

Good info, Pabs! I'm assuming that Pitbull necks are fitted with double action truss rods?

I always had visions of undoing the truss rod so far that a nut falls off inside, never to be retrieved!

that was another one of my concerns too haha, i tend to overthink this sort of thing

[DrNomis_44]

When I first started playing guitars I was a bit confused about Truss Rod adjustments and neck bow, at first I thought that the neck had to be adjusted so it was straight as an arrow but then I later found out that guitar necks are actually supposed to be adjusted so the do have a small amount of forward bow in them, this is to help in further reducing fret buzz after all the frets have been leveled, when you put a capo on the guitar neck just behind the first fret and then fret either of the two E-Strings at the fret closest to the body of the guitar you may see a bit of a gap between the top of the 8th fret and the E-String, this gap is call the Neck Relief and can be made smaller or larger by tightening or loosening the truss rod, ideally you want to adjust the Truss Rod so you have a small amount of Neck Relief, Fender usually quote a Neck relief figure of .01 inch (apologies for the imperial measurements) for guitars with a 25.5 inch scale length (Fender Telecasters,Stratocasters, etc), Gibson on the other hand quote a Neck Relief figure of .012 inch for guitars with a 24.75 inch scale length (most currently made Gibson Guitars), however, some guitar players prefer more Neck Relief, some prefer less, apparently the well known guitarist Carlos Santana prefers the necks on his PRS Santana guitars adjusted so that the neck is dead straight, so I guess there's not really any hard and fast rules when it comes to Neck Relief and Neck Bow adjustments, it's really a case of what works for you and how much fret buzz you can tolerate, and also how low you like your 12th Fret Action set, what works for one guitarist may not work for another.

[Muzza]

ok sweet, yeah i didnt realise that excessive loosening would pull the neck the other way...

Not quite. The STRINGS pull the neck the other way. The role of the truss rod is to counter the string tension.

[tonyw]

I was taught by my much older luthier brother, when i was about 10, that lefty is loosey and righty is tighty, and i have never forgotten it.