Truss Rod Adjusting

Hey guys,

I just had my guitar setup (thanks to aschelman for the suggestion of the place there isn;t hardly a decent place around the west suburbs anymore) and anyway since the seasons are changing and I went from Chicago to Cincinnati which is significantly warmer I believe that it needs some slight tweaking. The guy who did the setup said it probably would and even said if I brought it back in he'd do it for free, but I am several hundred miles away now and thats not really an option.

The problem I am having is with the high e and the b strings, they are all twangy and feel like they are being obstructed by the frets. I looked down the neck from above and it is obviously twisted upwards on that side of the neck. Well I don;t know if it should or shouldn;t be, or maybe just not as much as it is, but I was wondering how dangerous it would be for me to adjust it with a little knowledge gained from people here who know what they're talking about.

So if it isn;t too hard, which I can;t see why it would be to adjust the thing then it wuld be great to hear from some people on how I should do it, what to look out for and just generally things I should now so i don't break the damn thing.

FYI:

ESP LTD MH400, Floyd Rose, 10 gauge strings tuned to Eb (wouldn't mind tuning them back up actually but action was kinda high)


Thanks for any help I get.

Ouch.... a twisted neck isn't going to be corrected by a truss rod adjustment if everything is the way it should be.

The truss rod is a metal rod that is bowed in the center of the neck... So pretty much on torquing (twisting) of the neck is torqueing with the truss rod in no position to counterbalance the torque. Truss rods adjust the neck bow straigh forward and straight back... so it's not going to do much for you.

It doesn't make much sense for the e and the B strings to be the side of the twisting because normally the twisting occurs on the E and A side... Because there is much more string tension on that side of the neck and sometimes that can be counterbalanced by adjusting the truss rod and using the strings as the counterbalance... Using a lighter gauge set of strings on the bass strings and a higher gauge set of strings on the treble strings... Within a few months of that the neck should be straightened out in that case... But you can't really do that with your because it's your treble strings that are on the high side of the torque..... I'd say have a tech look at... It's always hard to give really great advice about a guitar that I can't see and touch and inspect up close... Take it to a tech and see what they have to say about the neck twisting... Getting a new nut installed or having yours refiled may solve your troubles though. Normally that twangy sound comes from strings that are getting pinched in the nut. As your strings sit in the nut the cut into it and burrow their way into the nut creating a pinch or pressure point for the string. What you can do is either totally replace the nut.... Or you can have a tech refile yours. Doing a refile will obviously be less costly. What they'll do is go in with some nut files and file in a proper seat for the strings to sit on and move freely through the slot when the trem is being used. It will help with tuning efficiency as well.

Hope this helps a bit... I'm sure that LATS will have some input as well and I'm positive there's something that I've probably missed... It's towards the end of the day and I'm ready to go home. haha.

Good Luck.

Alright I've inspected and there the specific frets that seem to be having trouble:


High E string, 16th and 17th fret almost don't play at all... below 17 its pretty fine, above 15 it gets better...

G and D are twangy around the octave and just below.

The whole thing kind seems to be off though...

hmmm... kinda wish I had never gotten it setup up in the first place...

Anybody know of a trust worthy tech in the Cincinnati area?

Its difficult to imagine without seeing the intsrument but you might be able to put it right by ajusting the string height at the bridge.
I adjusted the truss rod on my fender Bass and afterwards I had to adjust the action ( string height ) on the bridge