Graphite Truss

Gene Rawe

I'd like to hear from owners of guitars with a graphite truss in place of an adjustable truss rod. I like the concept but would like to hear from practical experience. Humidity, playability, can you get as low a setup?

Thanks!

Jazzaferri

If a bulder likes a flat fretboard shape then they work a treat. If a buider likes a gentle curve to get their relief profile then no. They are very very stiff. Theoretically it shpuld be quite possible to get the same action height with both, it just takes a very very preccise neck angle setup when building and I am not sure if the extra relief one gets from a curved shape gives a little more room when fretting the first few frets is truly needed.

Bob Holo

For a graphite reinforced neck with relief, you build it into the neck. Well, it's not the exact curve... it's part of the curve... and the rest of the curve pulls in when the neck is put under tension and the head comes up and the heel rotates slightly around the axis of the body join. This was common knowledge 60 years ago, but more specialized knowledge these days. So, never take a fixed graphite reinforced neck to the teenybopper at Guitar Center. Find the guy everyone in your area contracts to do their prewar acoustics... Good setup work is seldom cheap, but worth it.

Graphite reinforced necks are really stable if they're made well, and can be set up with great precision. But truss rod necks can also be stable and setup well. Neck stability is mostly about materials quality and the level of knowledge and experience of the person doing the work.

Jazzaferri

Thanks Bob.

Bob Holo

Well, actually, in practice - you're right as often as not - so I don't mean to contradict what you've observed. I've seen a lot of graphite reinforced necks with little to no relief - or oddly shaped relief. So in practice, your observation is pretty darned accurate. People who cut their teeth working on truss rod necks of a constant depth think of relief as a very curvalinear concept... make the neck straight... twiddle the truss... and there you go. But if you give those guys a neck with a tapered depth and fixed reinforcement and their instincts work backward on them because the neck is a tad weaker near the headstock because of the depth taper, and because the neck rotates around the axis of the body join unlike a bolt-on. I mean it's pretty small stuff we're talking about here... 3 or 4 thousandths of an inch rise in the neck due to rotation... but that's 20 to 25% of the desired relief... and although the width taper of a neck doesn't alter its strength very much, the depth does. If you double the width of a beam you double its strength, but if you double the depth of a beam you octuple its strength, so even that extra ~2mm of depth up near the top side of the neck adds a fair bit of strength... add those two together and a guy who has never worked on a fixed truss neck will tend to put the relief too low on the neck and keep going till he gets what he wants only to find he now has a big body rise from about the 9th to 16th fret. He gets burned like that a few times and winds up just thinking - hell - I'd be better off making the neck dead flat and praying that it pulls into the right relief. So in practice, your observation is accurate. The problem is that with a good stiff neck, you'll only pull about half the relief you need to play cleanly with a decent action... the rest has to be put in the neck. It's not actually all that difficult - I have explained this to a couple young techs and once they got it - their lightbulb clicked on and they knew what to do - or teach them to use a plek or even just a straight-edge and a small flashlight to check their work till they get a feel for it. It's kind of like shellac-floating pads in a saxophone vs. the modern method of using hotmelt or snaps or whatever the new cost-saving convenience is. If you drop $300 on a really nice set of natural-material pads for your sax and you go in to get them installed, you definitely want to find the guy who mixes his own shellac vs. the guy who reaches for a hot-melt glue-gun. ;-) Lol... Maybe not the best analogy, but decent I suppose. Hotmelt glue guns and truss rods make saxophone pad and guitar neck work a lot simpler, and old techniques like fixed reinforcement and shellac pad floating done wrong can yield inconsistent results (which is probably why the modern methods were developed - well - that and they're quicker) But the old techniques done right.... man... can yield sublime results.

noodlenot

always a pleasure to read your posts, Bob!

Gene Rawe

Bob,

Thanks very much for your response; that's exactly the information I was looking for!

Jazzaferri

Bob

Your explanation was most helpful. I loved your pad reference. My Keilwerth Shadow alto has lovely Italian leather pads shellac floated in place. The fellow I bought it from got it new and promptly sent to to the Tech who did Michael Brecker's work for a complete setup. Keywork blueprinted, bell soldered, taper reset pads relevelled and height set.