reworking the neck on my Guild, could use some input!

[Mental Octopus]

Hey luthiers,

so i have a Guild JS-II bass (set neck) that I've recently fallen in love with. however, long story short, the bass was left in a hot garage for about 6 days while I was away and the neck completely flipped out. The neck did need some tweaking to begin with... but it looks like it needs to be reset. It's completely unplayable right now and the truss rod is not straightening things out.

I'm thinking that the truss rod needs to be replaced, and I guess that this entails removing the fretboard. From what I hear, these older Guild necks have problems staying straight for long periods of time, and since I'd like to use this bass extensively and travel with it when it's fixed, I want to make sure it stays that way.

I've thought that replacing the truss rod and adding graphite rods would do the trick. But I'm not a luthier so i have no idea if this is feasible or not on a neck like this. The neck measures 1.5" at the nut and 2.175" at the heel. It's .855" thick at the first fret, and tapers to .950" at the 12th fret. The neck is fully joined with the body at the 19th fret.

So what I'm asking is, if I was to bring this bass into your shop, and say "Hey, man.... make this neck straight AND make this neck very stable", what exactly would you do?? Of course I'd be taking this to a pro to have any work done, I just want to have some sort of plan before I drop the bills and send it in.

 

[Lesfunk]

Talk to this man
Von Schmidt Guitars
Paul Von Schmidt
65 Old North Rd.
Barkhamstead, CT 06063
860 309 8699
[email protected]

 

[Beej]

What exactly is wrong with it that is making it unplayable? Is the action brutally high and not adjustable lower? Is the relief too high or too low? Can't adjust the neck at all with the trussrod? Is it torsionally twisting? What's happening? The more detail you can provide, the better answers we can give.

In my own experience with a Guild like that (only a handful I've worked on), I had to back off string tension to get the truss rod adjusting accurately. I also recall backing off a trussrod, clamping a neck into position before adjusting the trussrod in order to set the relief accurately.

I don't know about others' experiences setting them up, but I've found them to be a pain. Long story short, if you outline the exact problem and post up some pics that demonstrate it, we can better guesstimate what might need to be done...