acceptable neck twist?

[cdlynch]

I've been sweating about possible twist of a cheap SX neck I got for a parts build, and I didn't know how to check aside from eyeballing, but today I realized I have some 3/4" aluminum angle stock, and it's twistless as far as I can tell, so I laid it on all my basses and the SX neck.

Without really knowing the accuracy of this thing, it looks like ALL of my necks have 1/32" to 1/16" twist across the 7/8" width of the angle legs, EXCEPT for my least favorite bass, my toothpaste blue SR-1000, which appears to be perfectly flat. Second to last on the bottom, for giggles.

On one hand, I never noticed a playability problem and the SX is no worse than my others. On the other hand, the SX hasn't been mounted or under string tension yet, so I assume it'll get worse than the rest of my fleet in short order, but I have no experience with this at all.

The project requires routing a guitar neck pocket for a bass neck, so I only want to do this once. I'm assuming the safe path is to see about sending the SX back and start saving for a better neck.

I would love to hear experienced voices on this!

 

[bolophonic]

I bought an SX neck that had a 1/4" of twist. It's hanging as a decoration on the wall.

 

[T_Bone_TL]

I'd start with being highly suspicious about the "tool" you are using to measure twist. Aluminum angle stock and precision don't go hand in hand in my experience.

And then there's this approach to twist: Invalid Link Removed

 

[cdlynch]

I'd start with being highly suspicious about the "tool" you are using to measure twist. Aluminum angle stock and precision don't go hand in hand in my experience.

And then there's this approach to twist: Invalid Link Removed

Ha, those have been showing up in a lot of threads lately. I didn't exactly claim high accuracy. Can you suggest a better method?

 

[Gilmourisgod]

If you have even a passable quality aluminum level, it's probably pretty damn straight. The old cast aluminum ones were usually really good, and you can find them at yard sales for cheap. I stumbled on a really cheap straightedge recently. I bought a precision aluminum box-beam for fret leveling, and I've been taking it to hardware stores to compare with off-the-shelf tools. To my surprise, even a cheap ruler is within .001's of my precision straightedge, and I was shocked to see how straight these cheap painters edging guide tools are:
Warner 23 in. Paint Guide and Wallcovering Tool-2735 - The Home Depot

At $5.00, I'm going to buy one, true it up against my precision box-beam (or not, if it's straight enough), and fret notch it for checking fingerboard straightness. They have them at HF too, 24" length.