Wrnchbndr
Wholenote
Posts: 353
Formerly Known As: WRNCHBNDR
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Post by Wrnchbndr on Feb 22, 2020 19:08:21 GMT -5
2 Year-old MusicMan St Vincent with a full rosewood neck. Client kept in on a guitar stand in a room w/central heating. Came into the shop with a backbow so severe that the strings were laying on the fretboard. The one-way conventional trussrod didn't help. No warranty. Quoted $700 from MusicMan for a replacement neck. As a long shot we installed a heavy set of 13s, and put it in the case with a wet sponge in a perforated zip lock bag. 6 weeks later, the guitar set up perfectly with a set of .011 to .048 with the trussrod just beginning to engage. Not quite there with a set of 10-46. I gave it less than a 50/50 chance that the humidity would work but it did. Faced w/ $700 for a neck or a no cost humidity treatment we took the longshot and it worked.
The rosewood neck is finished in satin with the fretboard unfinished.
The guitar plays exceptional and I suspect that it'll continue to work itself right with continued humity. Gotta check it now and then for corrosion issues. Very lucky that the neck didn't warp. I did not need to do any fretwork.
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Post by Peegoo 🏁 on Feb 22, 2020 19:26:01 GMT -5
Good fix! Humidity is critical with wood.
More than a few times I've had a guitar (usually an acoustic but not always) show up that's way out of spec and the customer says repair estimates have been in the hundreds of dollars. I dampen a paper towel, drop it into a trash bag, and then tie the trash bag around the headstock and hang the guitar up for three or five days. In most cases, that's what fixes the problem, with no other work needed.
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Post by rickyguitar on Feb 24, 2020 0:21:04 GMT -5
Dang, you are good
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Post by hotblooze on Feb 24, 2020 9:57:24 GMT -5
You don't have to re-hydrate the absorbent when in the case or huge trash bag ?
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Wrnchbndr
Wholenote
Posts: 353
Formerly Known As: WRNCHBNDR
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Post by Wrnchbndr on Feb 24, 2020 12:24:52 GMT -5
It wasn't that I'm good. Skill had nothing to do with this. I've never seen a guitar neck react to humidity in this fashion. Certainly I've seen the need for seasonal trussrod adjustment. Half of the guitars in the shop go south twice a year and need a tweek and the other half don't. This was a monumental reaction. I now feel a little more informed. The client is lucky as hell. Lucky that the neck returned to shape in a reasonably straight shape without a twist or a hump or dip.
Its nice to decorate a room with instruments. I've got over a dozen hanging on the wall but these are instruments that didn't want to be guitars or I made some sort of mistake with. This particular guitar needs to stay in its case most of the time with a humidifier during the dry months. We get icky humidity in the summer so it probably doesn't need the help in the summer.
This is an extreme example and in 20 years I've never seen anything like it. Maybe its the rosewood neck. I've only seen three or four.
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Post by modbus on Feb 24, 2020 12:41:43 GMT -5
The actual neck was rosewood? That's weird. Was the fretboard maple?  |
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Post by WireDog on Mar 3, 2020 10:44:51 GMT -5
This got my attention, Wrench. I may try try that on the back-bowed SG I told you about.
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Post by guildx700 on Mar 4, 2020 1:21:25 GMT -5
Well done!
Similar thing:
My 1970's Hagstrom Swede developed an unusual hump in the neck back in the 1990's.
So bad that no truss rod adjustment would help.
It noted out terribly all over even with setting very high action.
I thought it was dead.
I unbolted the neck and made a jig to hold it in my massive bench vise in the basement without limiting it's movement around the hump.
I put a huge weight on the hump, a 1 foot section of rail road rail to be specific, as this fit the hump perfectly.
I rarely use the vise so I could therefore let it set for as long as I felt it needed it.
A year later I finally pulled it out of the vise and
checked it with a straight edge and found the hump was completely gone.
Odd that it developed that hump as that Hagstrom had a bragging rights H beam in the neck. Go figure.
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Post by jazzguy on Mar 4, 2020 1:47:31 GMT -5
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Post by jazzguy on Mar 4, 2020 1:48:18 GMT -5
Good fix! Humidity is critical with wood. More than a few times I've had a guitar (usually an acoustic but not always) show up that's way out of spec and the customer says repair estimates have been in the hundreds of dollars. I dampen a paper towel, drop it into a trash bag, and then tie the trash bag around the headstock and hang the guitar up for three or five days. In most cases, that's what fixes the problem, with no other work needed. There was a spruce top crack on a VERY expensive vintage archtop I had just purchased about 25 yrs ago. I glued it and brought it into my bathroom after having run the shower and getting it steamy. the crack closed right up, I carefully put a pony clamp around the body to hold it tight rather than a cleat under the top as well as a c clamp through the f hole to keep the spruce level, then back in the case for it to acclimate on it's own rather than subject it to 2 shocks in just a few minutes. I thought it would work but was still nervous, not usually a great idea to bring something like that w/ a sensitive old carved spruce top from normal humidity to super high that quickly, fortunately it was my guitar so if I screwed it up I wouldn't be as painful. |
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