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Green Wood: Time to Cut Bait!
- Thread starter Dr. Cheese
- Start date
Warmer / colder for a bit, perhaps, but humidity is usually the culprit in shifting necks / fret sprout.
I think Squier’s golden age ended with the second and third gen CV’s and VM’s. They’re just not on the same level as the initial run that happened to come at a time when Fender was knocking out of the park across the board. When it comes to budget basses, I still feel Ibanez, and especially Yamaha are very safe bets. Yes, they’re harder to mod, but they mastered the value for dollar element long before Fender took the segment seriously IMO.
I really don’t need anymore budget basses. The one bass I could honestly use would be a quality fretless, like my old Pedulla. That said, I don’t plan on any more bass purchases this year except a nice cab if I find one at a low price. Maybe next year, I can treat myself to a fine fretless.
Which reminds me, Doc...have you come across any of the current BB or 600 series from Yamaha to demo? I’d be interested in your thoughts if so. I’ve owned a couple 600’s and thought they were amazing for the price (though more in the mid-price category) and am very interested in the BB234.
Low Cost guitars are made with cheap cuts of wood usually. One of the main reasons they are cheap. There must be sooo many factors that go into warping though. If your neck is finished but part of the neck is not finished.... that area of your guitar's neck is absorbing moisture faster than any other part of the neck.
Copied - When wood has a relatively high moisture content, it shrinks as it dries until it reaches equilibrium with relative humidity, sometimes called equilibrium moisture content (EMC). Conversely, wood with a relatively low moisture content will swell as it absorbs water from the surrounding air until reaching EMC. This direct relationship helps predict how wood will behave as it adjusts to particular conditions.
Copied - When wood has a relatively high moisture content, it shrinks as it dries until it reaches equilibrium with relative humidity, sometimes called equilibrium moisture content (EMC). Conversely, wood with a relatively low moisture content will swell as it absorbs water from the surrounding air until reaching EMC. This direct relationship helps predict how wood will behave as it adjusts to particular conditions.
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Turnaround
Commercial User
Don't worry - I never had kids so none were frozen.
You never know doc. I bought a NIB Highway 1 J not long after the series was dropped and the first year it worked but i had to fiddle with it a lot more than my older MIM J’s. I was working a lot at the time and it did fine if I gave it plenty time to adjust to the temp where it would be used but it was wonky enough i didn’t trust it in temp extremes and carried one of my MIM’s to use if we were going to be outside.
Longer story short as time went on the neck settled right down, but it was getting a lot of travel time in the van and the temp changes that go with that so that may have accelerated it’s trip to more stable. It lived in an SKB 44 when not being used and i’d bring it inside if it was going to be really cold or hot at night, but after that first year it started staying in tune better longer. By the end of the second year it needed tuning occasionally but setup stayed good. These days, about 7 years in, it’s set and forget. I always check setup when I change strings and it needs tiny adjustments occasionally and that’s it.
Longer story short as time went on the neck settled right down, but it was getting a lot of travel time in the van and the temp changes that go with that so that may have accelerated it’s trip to more stable. It lived in an SKB 44 when not being used and i’d bring it inside if it was going to be really cold or hot at night, but after that first year it started staying in tune better longer. By the end of the second year it needed tuning occasionally but setup stayed good. These days, about 7 years in, it’s set and forget. I always check setup when I change strings and it needs tiny adjustments occasionally and that’s it.
Japanese Geddys are a special case because their necks are crazy thin.
. Greenwood is what you want for making smoke signals and eradicating mosquitoes.
I find that young children are fine on long flights as long as you place them in the overhead compartment.
I live in Florida and yes it gets very humid here but I've never had an issue with corrosion on anything. I have seven and they range from cheap to expensive. The couple that have Tomastik Infeld Jazz Flat strings on them will sometimes sill be in tune after hanging on a rack for a couple of weeks or longer. And if they are not in tune then they are not off by much. This tells me the neck is very stable. I keep them all in an air-conditioned environment but I still have some temp and humidity fluctuation in my home.
Salty air is only an issue if you live within a mile or two of the coast. If you can smell the beach then you'll have salty air and that doesn't travel very far. If you can smell the ocean from your home then you are doing very well financially.
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I just got a new Squier CV Jazz fretless, swapped out everything but the neck and body with Fender pure vintage hardware and "64 pickups" and I'm over the moon with the result. It had obviously been sitting around the music shop for a while (3 years) like most stock does in New Zealand. Heres hoping if it was going to warp, it would have by now.
Talking about thin necks, I have an 11 year old ibanez SR755 that I never have to adjust.
Just bought a new mim Fender Jazz 5 Deluxe that I had to do a bit of adjusting to. Keeping my fingers crossed on neck stability.
Considering it was a $1000+ bass I'm counting on it.
Just bought a new mim Fender Jazz 5 Deluxe that I had to do a bit of adjusting to. Keeping my fingers crossed on neck stability.
Considering it was a $1000+ bass I'm counting on it.
It still limits exposure to kids, moisture attacking the strings, attack dogs, mafia. If it falls over in the case, the strings may still get moisture but still at a fractional rate and the bass doesn’t get whacked on the floor.
Humidity control is probably equally or perhaps more important than temperature control. In something like 2006 or 2007, I cracked a Rob Allen fingerboard a bit because the whole house humidifier wasn't working. That being said, I try to avoid ebony fingerboards on basses. Once I took control of humidity, I found myself adjusting truss rods almost never once things have settled.
Dryness and fluctuations can kill a lot of guitars and basses over time.
