How @#$%&! is this neck?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bardagh
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Bardagh

Bardagh

Well-known member
Well this is a new neck day but unfortunately not a good one. I finally got the neck in I ordered from Parklane back at the start of the year and had waited ever so patiently for. It looks fantastic but unfortunately seems like something is wrong. This is a roasted maple neck with a richlite board by the way, choices I made partially because I wanted the neck to be resilient to the big swings in humidity here.

I let it acclimate to the inside of my house for a day before doing anything with it as I was busy anyway and again it has been humid as fuck here. When I finally got around to inspecting it, I noted it was not totally straight when checked with a straight edge but it was close, so I figured I would just mount it, string it up and see what I needed to do with the truss rod once it sat with some tension on it. Well, the longer it sat, the more the neck just kept bending. I kept tightening the truss rod and letting it sit but basically it seems like the truss rod is doing jack shit. It feels tighter as you turn it but it doesn't seem to be straightening the neck out at all.

What's weirder is I took the strings off and tried readjusting and it actually gets straighter the LOOSER the truss rod gets. I honestly can't even make sense of that. I haven't brought it up with Parklane yet because I didn't want to go off half cocked if it just needed to acclimate or something, but again this is roasted maple and I have got multiple necks from WD Music, Mighty Mite, and Allparts in the past several months, all just plain old flat sawn maple and none have had any issue whatsoever.

Furthermore I actually received two necks from Parklane, the other being a pretty standard telecaster neck he had made and offered for a good price I jumped on right around when my custom neck was completed. That Tele neck seems totally fine, although its truss rod tightens in the opposite direction.

Anybody ever have this kind of issue with a neck?
 
Bardagh said:
What's weirder is I took the strings off and tried readjusting and it actually gets straighter the LOOSER the truss rod gets.
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This almost sounds like it may be a double action truss rod. When you "loosen" the nut at a point it starts to bend in the other direction creating more relief.
 
MadAsAHatter said:
This almost sounds like it may be a double action truss rod. When you "loosen" the nut at a point it starts to bend in the other direction creating more relief.
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Well you know what? I literally have zero guitars that are NOT dual action but until this moment I guess have never encountered the fact that the nut actually tightens in both directions. I thought it just got looser or tighter, not like loose in the middle and tight in either direction. I kept loosening it which was like "Why would I keep loosening it?" and sure enough it started tightening up and this time the neck is straightening. I guess the issue was the truss rod from the get go was turned all the way to the "wrong" side so when I moved the allen wrench I felt it was tighter in one direction and figured that was the way to turn it in order to straighten it out.

And this is why I asked this shit here instead of firing off an email claiming the neck is fucked to the dude who put in hard work to build it for me. It really looks killer. Contrary to some claims the fretwork is not ready to go out of the box, it needs to be leveled, crowned and polished, but the Tele neck I got has much more finished frets.
 
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With what they charge for necks there should be zero leveling crowning and polishing necessary .
 
ccn said:
With what they charge for necks there should be zero leveling crowning and polishing necessary .
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Well, it was roughly the same as a similar neck would have cost from Warmoth or Musikraft and it's the same deal with them or moreso on the fretwork. I had heard from others that Parklane does a bang up job fully dressing the frets so I was looking forward to not having to do it for once so that is a bit of a disappointment, especially because I can tell an attempt was made. That is kind of silly because if I still have to do it myself to get it to where I want it you might as well have not bothered trying, as its a waste of time and time is money. But as I said I've had to do it with every replacement neck I've bought yet so I'm not really mad.
 
Bardagh said:
Well, it was roughly the same as a similar neck would have cost from Warmoth or Musikraft and it's the same deal with them or moreso on the fretwork. I had heard from others that Parklane does a bang up job fully dressing the frets so I was looking forward to not having to do it for once so that is a bit of a disappointment, especially because I can tell an attempt was made. That is kind of silly because if I still have to do it myself to get it to where I want it you might as well have not bothered trying, as its a waste of time and time is money. But as I said I've had to do it with every replacement neck I've bought yet so I'm not really .
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Any guitar neck priced between $395.00 - $495.00 is steep to me and I'd be furious if it still required a lot of work but that's just my opinion . If you're happy that's all that counts. Those prices I got directly off their site of necks they have in stock.
 
I seem to always have trouble finding the right necks. New ones or used ones. Ive bought and sold several over the yrs and only have kept a few of those. I will say there are three that come to mind I wish I kept. A 90s reverse maple banana ESP-- 80s reverse pointy Kramer-- 88 floral Ibanez.
 
sideburns said:
I seem to always have trouble finding the right necks. New ones or used ones. Ive bought and sold several over the yrs and only have kept a few of those. I will say there are three that come to mind I wish I kept. A 90s reverse maple banana ESP-- 80s reverse pointy Kramer-- 88 floral Ibanez.
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I think because most guitar manufacturers stick with only a couple neck profiles at different points in time, it is hard as a guitarist to really have a chance to try out different ones and discover what really feels right to us. On a lark I tried out one of the WD Music Soft V/C (aka Clapton) necks and much to my surprise I have come to love the feel of that thing.

I have other necks I like as well (usually they have 1 5/8" nuts and are thicker) but with experimenting on partscasters I've come to find I do not get along with the typical thinner and wider modern neck profiles. I think a big part of it is I have found I just do not like a lot of shoulder on a neck. I tend to thumb wrap the neck in certain positions and the amount of shoulder the average C shaped neck has feels like it's in the way. I have had some 1 5/8" nut necks that are C shaped and still felt good just because they're narrower, but this Soft v/c neck is 1 11/16" but feels great in my hands because there's no shoulder hump. The soft V shape sits comfortably in your palm and the sides of the V give your thumb lots of different really good feeling places to rest and apply tension.
 
sideburns said:
I seem to always have trouble finding the right necks. New ones or used ones. Ive bought and sold several over the yrs and only have kept a few of those. I will say there are three that come to mind I wish I kept. A 90s reverse maple banana ESP-- 80s reverse pointy Kramer-- 88 floral Ibanez.
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One of my fave necks ever was an early 90's Sabre
 
Bardagh said:
I think because most guitar manufacturers stick with only a couple neck profiles at different points in time, it is hard as a guitarist to really have a chance to try out different ones and discover what really feels right to us. On a lark I tried out one of the WD Music Soft V/C (aka Clapton) necks and much to my surprise I have come to love the feel of that thing.

I have other necks I like as well (usually they have 1 5/8" nuts and are thicker) but with experimenting on partscasters I've come to find I do not get along with the typical thinner and wider modern neck profiles. I think a big part of it is I have found I just do not like a lot of shoulder on a neck. I tend to thumb wrap the neck in certain positions and the amount of shoulder the average C shaped neck has feels like it's in the way. I have had some 1 5/8" nut necks that are C shaped and still felt good just because they're narrower, but this Soft v/c neck is 1 11/16" but feels great in my hands because there's no shoulder hump. The soft V shape sits comfortably in your palm and the sides of the V give your thumb lots of different really good feeling places to rest and apply tension.
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Had the same experience with the Jimmy Vaughan Strat years ago. My buddy got it and I was "ewww - soft V neck!" But then I played it. Hell yes.
 
GearGasms said:
Had the same experience with the Jimmy Vaughan Strat years ago. My buddy got it and I was "ewww - soft V neck!" But then I played it. Hell yes.
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This is an inexpensive neck and not the best looking in terms of finish but I swear its making me feel disappointed every time I pick up something else.

I have one more partscaster to do this year (BloomDoom is doing a nitro british racing green strat body for me) and I think I’m going to have Warmoth do a neck for jt because they have the “Clapton” neck profile option.
 
I’m yet to get a neck that needed no fret leveling and nut work. Some are better than others but they all need something
 
LP Freak said:
I’m yet to get a neck that needed no fret leveling and nut work. Some are better than others but they all need something
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It’s kind of a head scratcher though because it isn’t that difficult to do right. I’m sure it’s easier than most everything else they are doing in the process of making a neck.

Some of these neck makers say its because it is best to finish off the frets once you have mounted the neck to the body but that makes no sense to me. Most people level frets with the strings off and the neck straight so it doesn’t matter at all. I’ve seen guys who have convoluted methods of trying to do it under string tension but that just seems like something for people who want to be too clever by half.

The nut is a different story obviously.
 
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