Hey,

I've been getting a little string buzz, and on inspection, the neck on my strat seems to be ever so slightly back bowed (with no strings on it), and I've read a very small amount forward of straight is what's most desirable.

My question is this, is it better to adjust the truss rod with strings on or off? The adjustment is at the head on my '94 MIM, so i guess it could be done either on or off, but was wondering what was best.

As I said, I have no strings on it right now, and was wondering if having them on and tensioned up will have the effect of pulling the neck forward without any adjustment? If it does it probably won't be enough as like i said there is some string buzz, but just in terms of the degree of adjustment i need to make prior to putting strings on, if thats the best way to do it!

cheers for any advice,

Hammer

Hi Hammer2009: no point in doing trussrod adjustments without the guitar strung and tuned to pitch. The entire point of that adjustment is to get the desired distance between the top of the eighth fret and the underside of the low E string while it is capo'd at the first and simultaneously fretted at the last fret. People have different tastes for that distance: 0.010 - 0.012" / 0.25 - 0.3mm is a good starting place.

Can't do any of that... without strings.

Cheers - C

Thanks Ceri,

that certainly makes sense. Will get to it!

As an aside, how is that managed with the older adjusters at the body end of the neck?

cheers,

Hammer

do it with the strings on.But let it sit for a day or two if you had the string off for awhile. the neck needs to settle.It's that time of year that the weather is starting to change and the neck starts moving.I set my relief at .008,but .010 is a good starting point.

Well frankly it is a tiresome aspect of the original Fender design, which is why the rod nut was moved to the headstock end of the neck later on.

Some people string the guitar to pitch, hold the string to the frets at both ends of the fingerboard (as previously described), measure the distance between the bottom of the low E string and the top of the eighth fret (with feeler gauges or a small ruler calibrated in 64ths of an inch), slacken the strings, take the neck off, make the appropriate adjustment, put the neck back on, tune to pitch... and hope they guessed the adjustment right so they don't have to do all of that too many times.

A pain, huh?

The smart way is this: measure the gap (as above), slacken but don't remove the strings, then instead of taking the neck right off just loosen the four neck bolts enough that you can slide it upwards out of it's pocket to the point you can get a screwdriver at the adjustment nut. Make your adjustment, usually in increments of an eighth of a turn at a time. Tighten the neck bolts again (don't over-tighten them!), tune to pitch and measure again.

It is still time consuming, but less so.

People who do this often get very good at accurately guesstimating how much to adjust the rod the first time, so they don't have to go through the whole sequence more than once or twice.

With trussrods, you turn it clockwise to tighten it (make the neck bow backwards), anti-clockwise to loosen. Or, looking at the top of the adjuster bolt: "righty-tighty; lefty-loosy". (I know: yuk.)

Cheers - C

Sounds a bit of a pain alright. The classic 50's i just bought to mod has the heel end adjuster, so hopefully the neck will behave and not need any mucking about with!

Happily the mods I have in mind won't involve the neck or head!

thanks again,

Hammer