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i have a neck going bad


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Ill try and get pics up as soon as I can of the affected area, I have a beautiful sonata jumbo acoustic guitar that i suspect the neck is going bad, its starting to warp at the neck joint, right now the relif is not so bad that its unplayable, but slowly the strings are getting closer to the hump, very much so that im not sure if its the truss rod or what, i carefully took a popsicle stick and cut it length wise the same size width the saddle slot is to shim the bridge up and raise the strings over the hump, but slowly the neck is bowing, any suggestions as to what else i should do, i would love to try and save the guitar, its very pretty, lots of abalone inlay in it, ill get pics up as soon as i can

thanks

jeremy

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Very common problem to have a hump at the neck/body joint. If that is, in fact, what it really is, the problem is usually fixed by removing the frets in the hump area and the frets between the hump area and the end of the fret-board (closest to the body), sanding the hump out and if the frets were still high enough and taken out without messing them up, they can be put back in.

These humps usually take years to develop. You are making it sound like the hump is getting worse before your eyes. That's not really happening is it ? Because if you are actually noticing the problem getting worse within days or even weeks, there might be something else going on, like a loose neck-joint making the neck slowly pull farther out of position. Weather changes can also make the action on an acoustic go up or down (dry air will often make the action get higher--high humidity will often make the action get lower)

The clearest pictures of a hump on a fret-board are still very hard to judge over the internet.

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its been a slow gradual thing, i had shimmed up the saddle with a piece of popsicle stick that i cut for it and that helps keep it from buzzing, but the action is kinda high now, its still playable, just i wanted to know if i could reverse the hump somehow, would turning the truss rod help or not? thanks for all the advice

jeremy

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The truss rod will affect the area between the nut and up to around the body-joint area. If your truss-rod is way off from where it should be, then yes, adjusting might make the neck play better, but won't get rid of the hump, if it's the kind of hump I'm assuming it is ( an area of fret-board actually higher than the fret-board on both sides of it). Something very important to consider is that many guitar have what is called " fallaway" (also goes by other names , of which I can't think of now), which means that when the fret-board was shaped, it was purposely made so that the last few frets near the body would be on a "slope" going lower towards the body. This is done to "help" get a low action , although I usually don't do it when I do a refret because I just don't see the need for it. I can get the strings set at 1/32 (High E) and 3/64"-1/16" (low E) at the 12th fret without any "fallaway"at the end of the neck . This "fallaway" can make the fret-board appear to have a hump, since the area around the body joint would appear higher than the rest of the neck especially if the truss-rod is adjusted too loose. Maybe you should press the low E string down at the first fret and body-joint fret and look at the space between the top of the 7th fret and bottom of the string. There should be very little space, just enough that you could slip two pieces of paper in between without pushing up on the string. Maybe even one piece of paper, but you need frets that are level and in good shape to have the neck set this straight. make the neck straight and see what happens with that "hump".

It's common with acoustics to have a "summer saddle" and a "winter saddle" because the action does change that much.

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its playable, and i just will have to wait and see, i live in san antonio tx wich the humidity can be high, the other day it was 80 degrees and now its like 50 something again, south central tx has the most crazy weather in the winter, shorts one day and jackets the next, and in the summer its just plain hot hot hot, so its probably like u said, winter vs summer, ill just play it by ear and try turning the rod little bits at a time and see what i can come up with, thanks for all the advice and help

jeremy

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