Truss Rods

[Cy_Miles]

+ a billion.

I always find those kinds of claims so interesting, especially when the type of material used, the design, string brand and gauge, and bridge type are so rarely mentioned. At any rate, I play with mutes half the time anyway, sustain is definitely overrated on a bass...

The first reason that those other things aren't mentioned here is that the OP was about truss rods.

And building a great instrument is like building a great race car. It is a long series of small details.

Will taking a few ounces of brake pad make a car faster? Not if you stop there, but if you go through the entire car and you trim ounces off every where you can, and then go into the engine and squeeze out every HP possible, pretty soon you are lighter and faster then your competitition.

So if you put a bunch of attention to only one or two aspects of your build, none of the small details will be that noticable. A Bass is a bass is a bass, right?

But the more of the small details you get right, the better the overall product.

Now, until someone says they have built multiple necks where the only diffetence was the truss rod, all opinions are just that, opinions. And we all know what oppinions are like.

 

[pushifier]

+1 totaly agree; the sum of these small details makes a (huge) the difference.
I am working now with the traditional trussrod and my personal opinion is that the response of the these trussrods are more direct on the neck and also more even (even curve) throughout the hole necklength. Just a personal opinion not based on facts; but hey it must feel ''right" when you build a bass!

 

[Diogenes]

... And building a great instrument is like building a great race car. It is a long series of small details.

Will taking a few ounces of brake pad make a car faster? Not if you stop there, but if you go through the entire car and you trim ounces off every where you can, and then go into the engine and squeeze out every HP possible, pretty soon you are lighter and faster then your competitition...

I'm glad you brought this up, not to argue against you, especially since I agree with you, rather to take this opportunity to point out that things aren't really simple, cut and dry matters. For instance, a car can be lighter than another yet the heavier car can handle better and be faster through turns if it's unsprung weight is less making it easier for the suspension to be tuned and handle surface irregularities better than the overall light car. A car with less HP can actually be faster than one with a higher peak HP if the power spread is more consistent throughout a wider RPM range therefore more HP is not necessarily desireable.

To me it's the same as truss rod arguments. One person may say that a traditional truss rod is the best because you have to remove less wood to install it and the result is more sustain. Another person may then argue that if removing wood is so detrimental to sustain, why bother removing any? I prefer building my bass necks using strong woods that are so stable that truss rods aren't needed and they aren't affected by climate changes. Shape the neck with the desired relief to get the desired action and you're good to go. The bass is a set and forget proposition. A builder who prefers to use double action truss rods may also argue that the extra wood removal having an affect on sustain is purely theoretical because he/she builds stouter necks with a more substantial profile so there is actually more wood in the neck than the builder who uses traditional truss rods but makes thin necks.

There are so many variables involved in building a bass that we can argue theory and the pros and cons of various build philosophies all day but not get anywhere. The end result is what matters and whether it suits the person buying/playing the bass.

 

[rdrr]

Cy , you're right , that wasn't inline with the OPs question and probably shouldn't have been mentioned here. but now that it has let me just clarify something.

You are right in that the sum of a number of small details makes a difference, all I'm saying though is the the quest for more and more sustain isn't really one of those details that makes a huge difference or IMO all that needed. You can have a really crappy bass that is crap to play but will hold a note forever , still doesn't overcome the fact that it's a crappy bass, more sustain is not equal to better it's just more sustain. I'm not trying to start an argument just saying what I think about the quest infinite sustain, thats all.

As to the OP I've been using dual action rods because they are simple to install and because sometimes wood has a mind of it's own and I want the ability to to correct for that.

 

[Rocky McD]

I have seen some builders install a traditional single action truss rod in a straight (non-arched) channel under the fretboard. I can't see that does anything but squeeqe wood. If the channel is not arched, whigh puts a bow in the rod, than it is useless IMO.

 

[Sardine]

...Because Leo did it that way.

True, but Leo didn't want to use truss rods at all at first. The whole point of the bolt-on neck system was to enable easy replacement should the neck develop excessive relief (warp). When he was finally persuaded to use a truss rod, he developed the "traditional" truss because it was cheap, easy to fabricate, and could be installed very easily using equipment he had on hand. Although we now generally think of the "traditional" truss as being harder to install, Leo had a quite ingenious method for routing the channel which was very simple and required only one basic template. He was very proud of his "truss-less" necks though. He would usually end shop tours by having the visitor stand on a neck supported at either end by two chairs. They never broke.

Back on topic, Rick Kelly claims that solid maple necks with no truss rod do sound slightly different than ones with trusses. I've never tried it, so I don't know if that's true, but it's on my to-do list.

 

[pilotjones]

I have seen some builders install a traditional single action truss rod in a straight (non-arched) channel under the fretboard. I can't see that does anything but squeeqe wood. If the channel is not arched, whigh puts a bow in the rod, than it is useless IMO.

This is correct, but also it's not far from something similar that does work. Just as the strings, lying to one side of the central plane of bending of the neck and under tension will cause the neck to bow forwards, a straight truss rod positioned to lie on the other side of the central plane of bending of the neck and under tension will cause the neck to bow backwards.

I believe Carl Thompson does his this way.

[edit]just realized rocky said "under the fretboard" so I changed the description above.