Everyone knows the mojo leaks out when a screw gets loosened. But where does it go? This is the part most people fail to understand. If you have all the windows and doors shut tight, the mojo will generally stay in the room. You can sort of feel it sometimes, circling around up near the ceiling, looking for something to attach itself to. Now, the worst thing that can happen at that point is that someone walks in on you and lets the mojo escape from the room. Say your wife comes in while you are working on your bass, to bring you a sandwich or tell you your buddy called from jail to borrow $200 for bail. The mojo will fly right out of the room! Then you have to chase it down the hall. If you're lucky you might still be able to find it, but there are so many ways it can escape from the house that it's unlikely you will ever get it back. This is why there are so many lifeless, lackluster used basses on Ebay all the time - someone loosened a neck screw, the mojo escaped, and the bass was never the same after that, so they sold it on and bought a new one. Of course a new bass only has the factory-installed mojo, not the additional mojo that has built up over time, so a new bass will never sound as good as an old one that has all its original screws intact. Many a bassist has switched to clarinet in despair upon realizing this.
Now the good news: if you have locked the door and windows while performing your truss rod adjustment, and can ignore the pounding from people trying to get your attention, you have a decent chance at being able to recapture the escaped mojo. The procedure is relatively simple: holding the removed screw in your right hand and the bass body in your left hand, stand in the center of the room and repeat this chant three times: "Mojo, mojo, where did you go? Back into your hole you must flow! Hoedown, flowdown, mojo go down!" When you have completed this chant three times, immediately replace the removed screw and tighten. You must do this for each removed screw in order to ensure that the mojo from each screw hole comes back.
That's all there is to it! But please remember that this only works for neck mounting screws. The procedure for calling back escaped mojo after loosening pickguard screws is much more complicated, and not for the faint of heart.
