truss access at body end of single-cuts?

[jordan_frerichs]

I am working on a single-cut bass, i already glued the neck in, and the truss rod (went with a hot rod) access is at the end of the fingerboard. will this take away from the truss rods ability to manipulate/correct the bend of the neck? i went with body access because it is an open headstock bass, and i wanted it to have a cleaner look. hopefully it won't need adjusting much, because i made it a 5 laminate (walnut-maple-bloodwood-m-wn) neck, all lams quartersawn. i have an inch of neck, not including the fb to carve. would it be a good idea to keep it a bit more thick than most other basses?

[pilotjones]

Regardless of whether the adjuster is at the head or body end, the truss rod should have more affect on the parts of the neck length where the neck is more flexible, have less affect on the parts of the neck length where the neck is less flexible, and no affect the parts of the neck length beyond the "working portion" of the rod.

[Rickett Customs]

Jordan, You could always plug the access and the void rod slot portion and reverse it (that is, if you want more effect for the rod). 1" thick? Is that @ the thinnest portion (without the FB)? If so the rod may have less of an effect with tension, rather than figuring the minimum thickness possible, especially considering the woods you have used. Just my .02

[Phil Mailloux]

It definitely will have less of an effect to the fingerboard seeing as your neck is glued on the body all the way up to the 12th or 11th fret. It'll be a whole lot stiffer from fret 11 on up. The truss rod probably stops around the third fret inside your neck and are designed to work best from the middle of the length. There's not that much space for it to do its job. This is why I put my truss in at the neck end on SC's. Since yours is already in, just leave it in and see this as an experiment. Who knows maybe your neck is stiff enough that it'll never need and adjstment

I'd definitely carve the neck down to normal size, what's the point of having thicker??

[Cy_Miles]

I confronted the same issue placing the truss rod on my first build which is a neck thru. I did not want neck access becaues I wanted a slim neck and did not want to weaken the neck/headstock join with the rod access, (it is a no angle headstock), but still wanted the rod up in the neck instead of down in the body where it does nothing for the neck.

my solution was to place the the rod just close enough to the body end of the neck, to be reached by the long end of a standard allen wrench, instead of placing it to be tightened with the short end of the wrench, using the long part of the allen wrench allowed me to put the rod an additional two inches or so further up into the neck.

That puts the rod from about the 2nd fret to somewhere two or three inches into the body.

I then found a small round wood knob (from a craft supply store) to glue onto the short end of the allen wrench to add torque and help protect the wood of the guitar.

[jworrellbass]

If you add 2) 3/16" c.f. rods to your neck and put them all the way up to the nut, you can have your t.r adjustment at the body end. When you adjust the t.r. the c.f. rods will make the neck move with the t.r.

In the picture the t.r. is blue and you can see it stops about 2or 3 inches from the nut.

[PasdaBeer]

My single cut is built like that, No issue. But then again, its a really...really big truss rod.