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Neck bolt issues

K

KornDog

Jul 14, 2010
8
0
#1
Alright so I have a Ibanez k5. Had it foor a little over a yr. And the gauge string is 45 130. About a month ago I rrstrung it . And I pulled my neck off so I could fix the bow. Which the bow was not serious , but just enough to bass fret buzz on the first fret. Now when I put the neck back on I noticed that 2 screws were long and 2 short. I put the neck on and the bass is not the same. Tried different holes for the screws. And It has high action (not high compared to most basses but higher than previously before. ) and the string tension is veryy high. I keep this bass in drop a. Which befor this the top "A" string was borderline floppy in A. And now it.feel like Its in E standard. So my question is what are the screw lenghth difference mean? Where do the shorter one go and the longer one? Is there a bigger issue at hand or not? Please help me I dont want this bass to go to crap.
 
#3
Yes. the screws that bolt the neck down. And I took it offmostly to ckean it. And patch up sctatches. Its stained wood and I have the sange color they used tp stain it. Sounds stupid but its whatever.
 
#4
KornDog said:
Yes. the screws that bolt the neck down. And I took it offmostly to ckean it. And patch up sctatches. Its stained wood and I have the sange color they used tp stain it. Sounds stupid but its whatever.
Click to expand...

Stick a toothpick in the holes in the neck to see which are deeper... and then put the LONGER screws in the DEEPER holes: )
 
#5
Do the screws slide through the body holes, or thread into them along with the neck holes?

They have to slide through the body and only thread in the neck, or the neck won't be clamped tight to the body no matter how hard you crank the screws.

+1 to making sure the short screws go in the short holes! Get it wrong and you could split the neck!
 
#6
+1 the screws have to pass through the body holes, not turn in. If they don't pass through, that is because of the way they assemble them in a mass production factory. You will have to drill out THE BODY HOLES ONLY out so the screws pass through, just a wee bit bigger than the screws. Glad you didn't keep torquing on them and mess it up!

My guess why your action is so messed up is that the neck is not tight in the pocket at the top. My guess is that the longer screws go in the headstock side of the pocket because that's where the most pressure is from the leverage of the strings.
 
#7
Wow u never thoight of using a took pick. And I have not fully screwed them in if they fekt loke they werent gunna go. Also they feed though the back of the body, througj a spacer and then to the neck.
 
#15
The fact that your action got higher suggests to me that the longer screws got put back in the holes closest to the nut and need to be moved to the bridge side.
As Ubnomar suggested, just put something in the holes to gauge which are deeper, which will indicate the proper location for the longer screws.

However, as 96TBird pointed out, you would expect that if two of the screws are longer than the others, they would go in the location with the highest stress, being the nut side holes.
 
#16
It's not about the highest stress, just the contour of the neck-body joint. Some are thinner under one side than the other, needing shorter screws to keep them from poking out through the fretboard.
 

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