Neck twist and rocking fret question

LQGuitarist

Junior Member
Joined
Jun 18, 2006
Messages
17
Reaction score
0
I've posted another question related by setting up my 97 Bluesbird and finding that there is excessive relief in the neck. I need to know if what I plan to do as a prelminary measure is the most adviseable. The problem is that while there is one music store in my area, I'm not sure I would trust them to do a good job. I'm really picky and historically have worked on all by the saddles of my Martin OMC-28 and Taylor 915 bridges.

I believe it have one high fret at the 16th fret. A straight edge moved over the frets will rock on this one and any string fretted at or above the 12th fret will start a buzz in the string and ultimately mute the string.

I mentioned in my other post that my fret board had not been conditioned for a couple years as the guitar was cased and not played much until the end of last year when I purchased a new amplifyer and was able to take the time from working to start playing again.

I think the rosewood fretboard shrunk from dryness - especially since I live in the desert and average humidity is well below 12% and in the summer like now, can drop to 4%. I want to try tapping down the fret with a plastic mallet after taking the relief out of the neck. My thought is that the fret worked its way up as the fret boad shrunk or dried out. I would rather tap it than attempt to file it or crown it.

I would take to a shop, but there is only one in town and I don't want to trust a fret problem to the repair guy because most of the guitars in town sold by the shop are inexpensive imports where owners don't pay much attention to defects. I'm too far from Los Angeles to drive it down there and I don't want to send it - so this leave it up to me.

The other problem is that I want to use standard tools rather than pay the excessive prices for straight edges from StewMack or All Parts. From what I understand, I can purchase a wet stone that is normally perfectly flat or I can take the blade out of one of my hand planes and use the base with self sticking sand paper to run them over the top of the frets if tapping it down does not work. I also heard that I could purchase an inexpensive bastard file to use over the frets as these are wide and generally flat to work the frets.

Finally, is it common for a neck to twist rather than warp and if the twist is a factor, will the truss rod adjust it out. I have well over 0.003-inches of relief in the neck and this is three or more times the manufactuers spec, but since the neck is not pulling, I know that this is not contributing to the buzz.

I looked at the truss rod and it appears that it has never been adjusted although I have marked it's position, I have not yet tried to adjust. I thought I would get some opinions first.

Thanks and sorry if this seems redundant but I agree with the last advice I received that it is a high fret, but I also have an excessive amound of relief in the neck to deal with and wish to treat it as two problems.
 
Top