HTS Reprofiling Neck

Necks come shaped in many configurations, some are thick, thin, C profile, D Profile etc, the list of differences is endless.

Not all necks feel good under the touch, so occassionally we need to do a task called reprofiling, this is where we thin or change the shape of the back of the neck to suit the players hands, it is a task that can go wrong, if the neck is too thin the truss rod breaks out of the back of the guitar neck.

Time to repair approx 2 hrs

Lifting the fretboard off, we have a truss rod slot and truss rod.

The core neck itself is 17.57mm thick.

We are measuring the depth of the slot with a set of verniers.

Hard to see, but its 11.16mm deep, the neck has a core thickness of 17.57, so that means under the truss rod on my 21mm thick neck, is a remaining wood thickness of 6.41mm

5mm is the bare minimum IMO

This current neck is 23.6mm thick, so I feel safe taking it down to 21mm total thickness.

At the 7th fret area, it is around 23.8mm

We start with a rasp and file a flat across the back of the whole neck.

My goal is just to thin it to a height suitable for then shaping.

Now 22mm, 1mm gone

This neck is a hard C and feels uncomfortable, we are going to change the shape into a D and thin it down.

I have here a neck in house made to show some building basics before we attempt thinning of the customers neck.

Total neck thickness is 21mm

Removing the truss rod we can see the depth of the slot inside the neck itself.

Bit more rasp work, getting close to desired height

So what happens if its too thin, this happens, the neck cracks at the end of the truss rod and the area of the slot starts to push through the back of the neck.

Explanation Neck - not this tute.