Neck Bow

[Lord-of-the-strings]

I have an Ovation Celebrity cc68 in my lap right now which is suffering from a little neck bow, I can fix this with the truss rod, correct? Which direction do I turn the rod? The neck is bowed forward (away from the top of the guitar)

[Southpa]

"Away from the top of the guitar" is commonly called "backbow". If the bow is the other way, ie. concave fretboard then its a "warp" or "forward bow". Either you don't have enough string tension or truss rod is tightened too much. Here is some info to read, about truss rods http://www.fretnotguitarrepair.com/trussrods.htm

If you loosen the truss rod and the neck is still bowed (even with strings tuned to pitch and truss rod totally slack) then your problem is a bit more serious. But don't expect to see results right away. Leave it over night after adjusting and see where its at in the morning. Btw, in most cases truss rods are "righty-tighty...lefty-loosey".

Edited March 14, 2006 by Southpa

[Druss]

Thanks for that link Southpa theres a lot of good reading there...

[erikbojerik]

Before tweeking the truss rod, check to make sure that the "bow" you're seeing isn't a bend at the neck joint (which the truss rod can only do so much for). Place a capo at the 1st fret and then fret the G string at the neck-body joint (usually 14th fret on an acoustic) and look at the distance between the G string and the 7th fret. If you see a gap, you've got some bow. If not, its probably movement at the neck-body join.