Lookin' For Ideas on Neck Relief

[BubbaVO]

The Ibanez ST50 has a set maple neck, and I can't get it flatten out. I've got enough back bow to make the d chord plink instead of ring. I've adjusted the nut on the truss rod - damn thing is a fraction of a turn from falling out. I've put on 11s. And that doesn't work. Any ideas on how to address this issue?

Is this common with maple necks? None of the mahogany necked guitars I've owned (all Hamers) have ever had this problem. Do you know the cause?

As always, muchas gracias.

[paults]

Your best option at this point may be one of these:

Higher Action

Fret leveling

Fingerboard plane and re-fret

[Uncle Thor's Hamer]

So the truss rod is fully loose and there is still back bow? Sounds like a busted truss rod or some kind of wood warping beyond the capability of the truss rod. Regardless of the playability of the thing, a completely loosened truss rod should cause the neck to bow forward.

Lefty-loosey, righty-tighty. So if you have unscrewed the truss rod to the point that it is slack, the neck should bow forward and the strings should be higher off of the frets. It sounds like the neck isn't doing that, and that is a problem.

[BubbaVO]

So the truss rod is fully loose and there is still back bow? Sounds like a busted truss rod or some kind of wood warping beyond the capability of the truss rod. Regardless of the playability of the thing, a completely loosened truss rod should cause the neck to bow forward.

Yup.

[cloakerz]

a guitar I had was like that. I loosened truss rod, tuned to pitch and left it in the case for 2 months or so. It came back into shape for me.

[bbocaner]

A really excellent luthier I know told me that his fix for this problem is to clamp it down to the bench with some relief in it and wrap it in heating blankets. The heat softens the glue between the fingerboard and the neck and when it sets again it sets with the relief you've clamped into it.

You could also defret, plane it flat, and refret (making sure not to have any compression fretting effect...)

So the truss rod is fully loose and there is still back bow? Sounds like a busted truss rod or some kind of wood warping beyond the capability of the truss rod. Regardless of the playability of the thing, a completely loosened truss rod should cause the neck to bow forward.

If it's a classic 1-way truss rod then the truss rod is doing it's job, the strings just aren't providing enough tension to pull some relief into the neck.

[DaveH]

Yeah, that's not good. I had a guitar that had a slight back-bow like that once....I loosened the truss rod so that it had slack at the nut, and hung about a 10lb weight off the headstock (guitar facing down) for several days. It seemed to do the trick after I let it normalize and made a couple of adjustments. It might work for yours if it's not too bad.

Hamer doesn't have these issues because they use three pices of stress-relieved wood for their necks.

[JGale]

Run, do not walk, to the nearest Plek™ operator.