HTS Assess Truss Rod

Truss rods are a very mis-understood part of a guitar. The purpose of a truss rod is to assist a neck in being relatively straight.

Sometimes truss rods break, its not that uncommon, it usually happens on older guitars where the parts have rusted and occassionally on new guitars where someone may have been a bit over zealous in adjusting.

I have attached a couple of other tutorials on truss rods

Manufacture of a truss rod........................................................................................................

Cutting a Truss rod Channel.....................................................................................................

Time to assess 5 minutes.

Using a magnet we identify the end of the truss rod, being steel the magnet will be attracted through the fretboard

Fitting an allen key and turning anticlockwise (direction of least tension) I wind the truss rod until it stops.

I like my ruler to reach from the nut to the end of the truss rod

Like so

Visually we can see we now have lots of relief

The area of greatest relief appears to be at the 8th fret location, this correlates with the manufacturers directions of measuring truss rod relief at the 8th for Bass Guitars

Using feeler gauges, I roughly check the height

66 thou was able to be fitted.

First remove the truss rod access cover

And strings

Bit of masking tape for reference later

For warranty purposes, manufacturers want quantifying, that is if someone says my truss rod is not working, manufacturers actually want measurements, not mmm...I think its working.