Neck Won't Come Into Enough Relief...

[Gemleggat]

I Agree in some ways Wes, i do also play and set up my guitars with virtual no relief and it does buzz on the lower fret but thats fine, people who set there guitars up like this play Shread with the Dirt up full and you cannot hear it, it doesnt come through the amp which is what is important. I play with a light touch and i can get away it and it is not suitable for everyone. I am a guitar tech to trade and would love to set up every guitar that way but its not possible, as it is not for everyone. Relief is meant to give a little in the middle, this is due to the way a string vibrates. It like a skipping rope. Imagine you and a friend are turning a rope (across a street) around like a skipper would and it is touching the street in the middle of the road. Ok with me? Now take a little step back and the rope no longer hits the road............. thats relief! Basically the action has to get slightly higher every fret ( i said slightly) or its gonna hit the next fret. Guitars buzz because a metal string is hiting a metal fret, theres no getting away form that. A truss rod is NOT there to strengthen a neck its purpose is to straighten a neck and counteract the string tension. Do not confuse the two. Wood is there to strengthen the neck! Now what was the post about?

[westhemann]

i do also play and set up my guitars with virtual no relief and it does buzz on the lower fret but thats fine, people who set there guitars up like this play Shread with the Dirt up full and you cannot hear it, it doesnt come through the amp which is what is important.

mine do not buzz at all.but i do not use insanely low action....rather just a bit lower than a factory setup.if yours buzz you need to either raise the action just a bit or level your frets

Imagine you and a friend are turning a rope (across a street) around like a skipper would and it is touching the street in the middle of the road. Ok with me? Now take a little step back and the rope no longer hits the road............. thats relief!

false analogy.does not apply because by stepping back with the rope you are "tightening the string",not "moving the neck away"

Basically the action has to get slightly higher every fret ( i said slightly) or its gonna hit the next fret. Guitars buzz because a metal string is hiting a metal fret, theres no getting away form that.

yes...but extra relief does not cause that...rather a straight neck does.putting a bow in the middle of the neck does nothing for the upper frets.

A truss rod is NOT there to strengthen a neck its purpose is to straighten a neck and counteract the string tension. Do not confuse the two. Wood is there to strengthen the neck!

who are you talking to?

[Setch]

Wes, the skipping rope analogy is half right, or at least usefull- in that it demonstrates the movement arc of a vibrating string. On a dead straight neck, the strings will be inclined to buzz around the middle of the neck, because this is where the strings move the most. To stop this happening, you are forced to raise the action a little higher. By introducing some relief, you can make the fretboard follow the same path as the vibrating string, and accordingly the string can sit a little lower.

I agree that the part about stepping back isn't relevant.

[Gemleggat]

I meant the skiping rope as simple anaolgy, do not take literally. I Play my guitars with a really low action 9',10' or 11's depending on the scale length of the guitar and basically how it feels. i dont mind a little buzz at the first few frets and with this setup thats the only place where it is gonna buzz.

false analogy.does not apply because by stepping back with the rope you are "tightening the string",not "moving the neck away"

Ok well imagine the road is pulled from under you slightly in the middle then.

We all know what we are saying, but remember a set up is a personal thing.

What setch says just about sums it up really.

[Bluestreak]

I certainly didn't mean to cause so much discussion over something so trivial in the grand scheme... I'll try to describe the whole process from beginning to end of what's gone on with this guitar.

The guitar's action was set cumbersomely high from the factory. Keep in mind - this guitar was constructed in Japan in late 2004, then traveled from Japan to Florida in late January. It saw a rather large change in atmospheric conditions and I thought initially this could perhaps be the root of the problem. It wouldn't be the first time I saw a guitar change completely with a change in climate - I once traveled from Orlando to Denver with one of my Ibanez guitars and the change in climate and altitude really hosed the setup on the guitar.

The first thing I did was check the nut and clearance to the first fret. This was set higher than I've seen on other RG's, and when I removed the locking nut, it had a 0.1-mm shim under it and one-half of a 0.1-mm shim under the bass string side of the neck (under the nut for strings 4, 5 & 6). I removed the full 0.1-mm shim and reassessed the setup. I have always used the following guideline for open-string-to-first-fret clearance: if you fret the first fret and see the clearance you have at the second fret (without fret buzz, of course), that's the amount of clearance I normally leave at the open string to the first fret for open string action. I've never had a problem with fret buzz in the past using this scheme to set open string action at the first fret. I have four other Ibanez RG's, all set up like this and they all have great low action and play like a dream - fret buzz isn't a problem on them, even on the low-B on my two RG 7-strings.

Once action at the nut was set, I checked the tremolo posts. I lowered them until they matched measurements taken off my other two 6-string RG's. At this point, the guitar was buzzing like a bee in a flowerbed.

So I figured I could cure this with some truss rod adjustment. However, I discovered that the truss rod was only tightened one full turn away from being completely loose. With only one turn on the truss rod, I don't think it was doing much if anything at all - so to see what would happen to the neck, I let it out completely and let the guitar sit overnight. I marked the position of the truss rod nut with a Sharpie so I wouldn't lose its initial position. I noticed no change in the neck profile the next day. With the truss rod completely loose, the guitar appeared to have a dead-straight neck under string tension.

I borrowed a neck jig from a friend, turned the truss rod back to where it was when I received the guitar, and placed the guitar in it to simulate the truss rod action and string tension on the neck. Again, the neck appeared to be perfectly flat along its length - the center frets appeared level with both ends of the neck. Assessing the frets was performed using a draftsman's straight edge (a perfectly straight, flat metal straight edge used by old-school draftsmen). I placed the straight edge lengthwise on the fretboard and ran it up and down the neck. Frets 4, 5 & 6 appeared to be ever so slightly higher than the rest of the fretboard. These are the frets that have been dressed - I have a fret dressing tool kit I got from StewMac a few years ago. I first gently leveled them, then recrowned them using a fret dressing file. Like I said, this is something I've done in the past in the course of refret jobs or replacing/upgrading fretboards, so I was pretty confident I could do the job just fine.

I did not assess how the frets were seated; I assumed they were seated properly. After having taken a look at the fret seating last night, they all appear to be seated fine with no play in them when pressed. I have a drill-press in my garage with which I have a home-made arbor press type setup for refret jobs I've done in the past. The frets don't feel or appear to be moving in the fretboard, but I may not be able to see that with my eyes or they may be seated at the ends but not quite properly at the center of the fret. I'm afraid if I set the neck in my arbor press setup and try to make sure that the frets are seated properly that I may push any loose frets deeper into the board (if indeed they aren't all seated properly) and I may have to dress all of the frets on the guitar - this is an assessment I should have made initially but didn't, so I'll probably go ahead and check this soon. I assumed that the luthiers who I hired to inspect the guitar made this assessment, but I didn't ask specifically.

Once I knew (or so I thought) that the frets were true, the nut action was set properly, the EdgePro tremolo was adjusted properly, and that the truss rod wasn't able to be loosened enough to perform its intended function, I sought professional help. One month and two luthiers later, I had no more answers than when I started except that it sounded like a more involved repair could be needed, though I never got a clear, concise answer from either of them as to what that repair might be. I was more disgusted that I'd been without my guitar for a month and no closer to a solution.

That's pretty much it.

-Roger

[Gemleggat]

Yea this thread has went way off in a tangent, probably cause of me! I would do what i first suggested, keep the 9's on it if you intend to use 9's, keep the rod loose and tune the strings a little higher and just leave it siting. It will start to bow.

What is the neck made of? Is it maple/bubinga/maple?

How are you measuing relief? What is your method?

Later

[Bluestreak]

I have a set of feeler gauges I can use to measuring the existing relief. No real measurement has been taken in that regard.

It's listed as a 5-piece maple neck, but the structural portion of the neck is three piece, the other two pieces are only there to shape the headstock.

-R

[westhemann]

Wes, the skipping rope analogy is half right, or at least usefull- in that it demonstrates the movement arc of a vibrating string.  On a dead straight neck, the strings will be inclined to buzz around the middle of the neck, because this is where the strings move the most. 

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okay...well taking the amplitude of the strings into account makes some sense..i still don't find it to be of practical use...because all of my guitars have floyds,so the lowest action possible is still not as low as you could get with a fixed bridge,kahler,really anything except a floyd.

my ibanez's action is 1 mm at the 12th fret...1.5 mm at the 24th fret...as you can see,no relief at all,just a very gradually increasing height

i have zero fret buzz even when i pull the trem all the way back into the recess

[Guitarfrenzy]

I've worked on an Ibanez guitar that had the same problem before and there are multiple ways of fixing this issue. What I did to correct this problem was using the neck jig. **First, be warned, you will have to take off the frets to do this job best. **

Using the neck jig, and guitar in proper place, fully strung up to pitch I checked with a straightedge and noticed that the neck was slightly backbowed even, almost straight, even with the truss rod completely loose. Which is almost your problem, in that you can't get any relief established even with the truss rod totally loose and even with string tension. So, I set my dial indicators just for reference to zero, and pulled up the support rods to keep it in place. I then took off all the strings, and then pulled all the frets, since the issue was with the wood, so that's what I needed to deal with. Next, I placed the strap pulldown around the neck headstock making sure not to move the indicators. I then pulled down all the support rods except the one in the middle of the neck. I tightened the pulldown strap until I was close to zero again. I then kept pulling back the headstock until I had a bit of backbow on the neck. Now I could relevel the fingerboard with my 18" long radius sanding block and various grits. After it was level, I took it off and pressed new frets in with the arbor press system. Now I restrung up and noticed I had a nice amount of relief and I could tighten the truss rod to get the amount I needed. This isn't the only way of doing this, I could have forced it forward and heated the neck, but this way worked great. I wouldn't recommend doing this if your going to have to remove a lot of the fingerboard wood, or the fingerboard wood is thinner than normal.

Hope this helps...

MaTT Vinson

[Devon Headen]

The refret with the fretboard levelling will obviously work, but there's no reason not to try another suggestion first. If you can fix it with less work, there's no reason to do the extra work.