rattling inside neck!

rahimiiii

Senior Member
Messages
311
I have one warmoth neck and I can hear rattling inside the neck around the first fret. I had it all strung up and all and I checked if its the tuner and its not. I loosened the truss rod as much as I can because I can't get any relief from the neck, and the straightness is causing buzz in low frets... Is this neck defective?
 
The truss rod is rattling.  The key there is - "loosened the truss rod as much as ......"

Normally you want a little tension there, even if you dont want it to take out any curve caused by string tension.

I've found that, depending on the string gauge, humidity, etc etc, your neck might take a few days to really find its way and begin to curve, at which time you can straighten it a bit, for proper relief.  Not sure what gauge strings you're using, but you might want to increase one gauge (say from 9s to 10s) just to help things along for a while.

And.... there's also the possibility you need to level the frets for the lowest action.

You make no mention of the very important numbers - radius, actual measured relief, string elevation above fret 12 for the low and high E's (assuming bridge curvature is set correctly as well).

Lately, I've set up a lot of 12 inch radius fretboard guitars.  They seem to like about .010 relief, and 3.5/64 elevation on the high E, 4/64 on the low E.  This allows a decent bend up at fret 12-17, where things tend to fret out if they're too low.

I'd like to know those critical numbers for your instrument - along with bridge type, to see if your setup is ok.

And... do you need to scrape the finish from the frets?




 
I am using a standard Warmoth radius (10-16 compound radius) and the bridge type is Wilkinson VS-100N. I don't know if I got the radius set right because I don't have a radius gauge...
 
-CB- said:
And... what is the relief, and what is the string elevation?

Relief is barely measurable... If I took a straight edge to the fret while the neck is under tension I'd say its about .005 or so... at the 8th fret. string elevation is 1/16 at 12th fret and a little under 1/32 at the first fret, on the bass string.

EDIT: Problem solved... its the ****ing tuner.... the metal disk under the bass tuner is loose...
 
Actually, relief of .005 (half the thickness of the high E string) is actually just about where you want it on a new neck.  It will increase slightly as things settle in, wood compresses slightly, etc.  Sounds like your nick is just the way it should be but.... its still not a good idea to leave the truss rod "slack".  Always have just a bit of tension on it, even if only a little bit.
 
Back
Top