Warmoth Neck X-ray and thinning!

[Dean N]

I'm refinishing a Warmoth Jazz (not thin taper) neck. I figured it's a good time to thin it a little bit, too.

After looking at a bunch of threads that discuss thinning Warmoth necks, a few people mentioned that short of x-rays, it's just a crapshoot when doing this. One might simply sand into the truss rod cavity or end up on the steel bars. I'm not going for a Geddy or Soundgear neck... just a little more trim.

Anyhow, turns out that I actually can x-ray my neck. I'll be doing that tomorrow, though I'm not sure exactly how much useful information I'll glean from it. I figured you guys here at the LC might be interested. Any thoughts on how to make neck x-rays useful or helpful?

 

[wcoffey81]

the amount of metal in the neck may create too much of a ghost image or shadow for it to be much good. but try it anyway!
i have so much metal in my hip+back it makes xrays of the area almost useless.

 

[Smilodon]

Should be interesting. It may not show you much, but it's always fun/interesting to use expensive machinery for things it isn't intended for.

Post the images when you get them so we all can see.

 

[Dean N]

Quick update - I shot two test films to see how they came out, but wasn't able to do larger ones to cover the whole neck. I'll definitely be doing that on Monday, and I ought to be able to post pics shortly afterwards.

 

[eukatheude]

Nice!

 

[Technotitclan]

Please do!!

 

[pilotjones]

Cool. I'd like to see it.

I've got an x-ray of a Lakland neck, from the web.

 

[Dean N]

I finally shot the films.





There's always distortion on x-rays, and though it's subtle, it makes it pretty much impossible to simply cut and paste images together to get an accurate full-size. Doesn't matter though, since that won't be necessary to get the measurements I want.

These are really bad cell phone pics. I'm going to use a good camera (tomorrow, hopefully) to get crisper pics. By measuring actual neck thickness at each fret, and measuring the thickness of wood behind the metal at each fret on the films and using good ol' algebra, I should manage to figure out how much to remove safely.

 

[Smilodon]

That's pretty cool.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[daveman50]

A whole lotta metal there.

 

[T_Bone_TL]

I'm guessing carbon fiber stiffeners look like metal on the x-ray.

 

[Tristan]

It looks like you could remove a ton of wood and still be OK.

 

[Will Kelly]

Neat!

 

[NKBassman]

Neat!

+1

 

[Hopkins]

I'm guessing carbon fiber stiffeners look like metal on the x-ray.

I don't know how they would look on x-ray, but Warmoth uses 1/8 x 1/4 steel stiffening rods.

 

[Toptube]

I don't know how they would look on x-ray, but Warmoth uses 1/8 x 1/4 steel stiffening rods.

They have carbon fiber as an upcharge option.

 

[Hopkins]

They have carbon fiber as an upcharge option.

Right, but, looking at those x-rays, I'm pretty sure those are the steel ones.

 

[BossOnBass]

This is so cool! Thanks for posting.

 

[uOpt]

Most likely Warmoth's truss rod sits at the same depth (from the fretboard) regardless of what the back-of-neck profile or thickness is.

At least for those necks with no skunk stripe.

 

[Dean N]

Those are definitely steel rods. Thanks for posting the dimensions, Hopkins, I didn't have those specs. They might help to determine how much I can shave off the neck.

Carbon fiber has a much lower density than steel, so it would appear much darker on x-ray than the steel rods.