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Wavy Neck?


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Grabbed a guitar tonight that I have not played in quite some time.It has hung, dutifully on the wall with many others. I tuned it up and immediately noticed a fret buzz - BAD on the first 3 frets. After that, it seemed to go away. I checked the nut - and while cut a little deep - still provides ample clearance (as in a credit card slides easily through between the top of the fret wire and the string (somewhat high action). I looked at the bridge - adjusting the saddles made little difference until they were so high there was barely any screw left (it's a tele, style with a Wilkinson top load bridge). So... I laid a straight edge from saddle to nut and noticed that the frets by the neck/body join were rather low as were the frets behind the 5th fret. To test the bow, I adjusted the truss rod to attempt to level the neck. I only went about 1/4 turn at a time until I felt pressure. Neither tightening nor loosening the rod seemed to have much, if any effect. I did not build this one, so I'm not sure what's going on inside there :D. However, the problem seems to be a bow between frets 1-5 and a rise from 17-end. Is it possible that this was just a POS neck? Should I be more ambitious with the truss rod? Yes I searched and read about fret buzz - didn't really see anything about a wavy neck. Bow is one thing - easy to fix. Multiple curves is another. I know that when I got this guitar, the frets were not level and I did a pretty good fret leveling on it and played fine.... 3 years ago..... Thoughts? Ideas? Burn it and make a new one? Thanks in advance.

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Grabbed a guitar tonight that I have not played in quite some time.It has hung, dutifully on the wall with many others. I tuned it up and immediately noticed a fret buzz - BAD on the first 3 frets. After that, it seemed to go away. I checked the nut - and while cut a little deep - still provides ample clearance (as in a credit card slides easily through between the top of the fret wire and the string (somewhat high action). I looked at the bridge - adjusting the saddles made little difference until they were so high there was barely any screw left (it's a tele, style with a Wilkinson top load bridge). So... I laid a straight edge from saddle to nut and noticed that the frets by the neck/body join were rather low as were the frets behind the 5th fret. To test the bow, I adjusted the truss rod to attempt to level the neck. I only went about 1/4 turn at a time until I felt pressure. Neither tightening nor loosening the rod seemed to have much, if any effect. I did not build this one, so I'm not sure what's going on inside there :D. However, the problem seems to be a bow between frets 1-5 and a rise from 17-end. Is it possible that this was just a POS neck? Should I be more ambitious with the truss rod? Yes I searched and read about fret buzz - didn't really see anything about a wavy neck. Bow is one thing - easy to fix. Multiple curves is another. I know that when I got this guitar, the frets were not level and I did a pretty good fret leveling on it and played fine.... 3 years ago..... Thoughts? Ideas? Burn it and make a new one? Thanks in advance.

One of the things I've done in the past was a partial refret. Remove the frets where the problem occurs + a 1-2 extra ones and re-surface the fretboard, refret and you're done.

My preference is to re-fret the entire neck but sometimes, when the customer doesn't have a lot of money or time, a partial refret is the key.

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I have a bass neck that did the same thing. I actually removed the frets, re-radiused the fret board to remove the 'wave' and then re-fretted it. Worked out like a champ for me, but without seeing your neck, that might be a bit extreme.

Edit: its a Hondo neck , not a hand made one.... just to clarify.

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