Music Man JP6 Neck Issue

[tnourse]

Hi Guys -

I bought this limited edition JP6 new a few years back and I have a neck issue. When doing a set up, the truss rod is all the way loosened, so the neck has a bit of a back bow and buzzing. It can't be loosened anymore.

I got in touch with Music Man and a new replacement neck is $750 and you can't use a different neck on it because of the proprietary shape. I would even have to send back the bad neck if I ordered a new one.

Total drag. The guitar is spotless, ebony board, birds-eye maple neck, custom inlays and limited edition paint. I really don't want to put $750 into a guitar that costs as much as this one did. I play my Les Paul and G&L much more. This one sits in the case.

Any ideas? It still plays nice, but there's fret buzz, especially on the lower frets. Not even sure what I could sell it for?

Thanks much.

 

[mrhiwatt]

Try calling Hoffman Guitars on Franklin in Mpls. They re glued on a broken head stock on one of my Hamers. Other said new neck . Hoffman said they could and did fix it.

Mwal

 

[tnourse]

Try calling Hoffman Guitars on Franklin in Mpls. They re glued on a broken head stock on one of my Hamers. Other said new neck . Hoffman said they could and did fix it.

Mwal

I've heard they are really good. Thanks for the reply.

 

[DaveP]

Try going up a gauge in string size. May be enough to pull it forward.

 

[Fuego]

Is it a dual action truss rod?

 

[cardinal]

Yeah, surprised it's not a dual action rod?

I had a similar issue with a Fender with a single action rod. Brian Howard pulled the frets, leveled the board and refretted. Leveling the board took out the back bow and left it with room to adjust either way. And it cost a lot less than $750.

 

[tnourse]

Try going up a gauge in string size. May be enough to pull it forward.

One of the first things I tried. No luck.

 

[tnourse]

Yeah, surprised it's not a dual action rod?

I had a similar issue with a Fender with a single action rod. Brian Howard pulled the frets, leveled the board and refretted. Leveling the board took out the back bow and left it with room to adjust either way. And it cost a lot less than $750.

Dual action allows you to Loosen or tighten, correct? If so, it's a dual action. If I tighten it, the actions gets even lower and the buzzing gets worse and worse. Unplayable actually. When I loosen the rod, it goes as far is it can and the adjusting "nut" starts to unscrew. Can't loosen it any farther.

I did bring it to my local guitar store and they said the same thing. They didn't even charge me full price for a set up cause the neck can't be adjusted correctly. I've even tried putting slight pressure on the neck (per instructions from Music Man) to see if I could get it to go, but no luck.

 

[jack butler]

Saw a guy on youtube put a 1 and 1/4" wood dowel under the strings at the highest fret. Tuned it to F sharp with 10 gauge strings and wrapped the neck with a heating pad on high for 2 hours at time. Heating and letting cool completely 3 times fixed the back bow problem. My biggest fear in doing it would be cracking the Ebony board.

 

[atrox]

I MAY be able to save you some money if you have time and another guitar you can use for a bit with this simple DIY method. I just recently repaired a neck with this exact same issue. Honestly, this method takes A LOT of time and it depends on the individual wood on how well it "takes".

What I did was, instead of typically removing the fretboard and replacing the truss rod and doing the various things one can do to make the neck straight and true again once the board os removed, this client had not enough money for such things, but he had plenty of guitars he could use. So...

I went and found the heaviest gauge string i could find (think i settled on a 7 string super heavy set and just used the 6 heaviest strings). I tightened the truss rod just a bit and tuned that guitar waaaaay up until the neck had quite a bit of relief. I tightened the truss rod another quarter turn or so and tuned it up pretty much to where the strings felt like they would snap. This gave the neck plenty of relief to work with. Next, i stuck it in a closet with a bowl of water for 3 months. Never saw it again, except to refill the water. The water was just so the guitar wouldn't "dry out" during the winter.

After three months, i took it out, changed the strings one at a time with the clients gauge and did a proper setup. Ended up with a perfectly functioning guitar with plenty of room for adjustment and it cost the client 2 sets of strings and a setup.

Now i did not (and will not) guarantee this would hold as wood tends to have a memory, but i was attempting to give it a new memory. The client has had the guitar back for 6 months now and it still functioning perfectly and he has not had to adjust the rod.

Hope this helps.

 

[tnourse]

I MAY be able to save you some money if you have time and another guitar you can use for a bit with this simple DIY method. I just recently repaired a neck with this exact same issue. Honestly, this method takes A LOT of time and it depends on the individual wood on how well it "takes".

What I did was, instead of typically removing the fretboard and replacing the truss rod and doing the various things one can do to make the neck straight and true again once the board os removed, this client had not enough money for such things, but he had plenty of guitars he could use. So...

I went and found the heaviest gauge string i could find (think i settled on a 7 string super heavy set and just used the 6 heaviest strings). I tightened the truss rod just a bit and tuned that guitar waaaaay up until the neck had quite a bit of relief. I tightened the truss rod another quarter turn or so and tuned it up pretty much to where the strings felt like they would snap. This gave the neck plenty of relief to work with. Next, i stuck it in a closet with a bowl of water for 3 months. Never saw it again, except to refill the water. The water was just so the guitar wouldn't "dry out" during the winter.

After three months, i took it out, changed the strings one at a time with the clients gauge and did a proper setup. Ended up with a perfectly functioning guitar with plenty of room for adjustment and it cost the client 2 sets of strings and a setup.

Now i did not (and will not) guarantee this would hold as wood tends to have a memory, but i was attempting to give it a new memory. The client has had the guitar back for 6 months now and it still functioning perfectly and he has not had to adjust the rod.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the info! Maybe I'll try this and see how it goes. I have plenty of other guitars, so that won't be an issue. This is the first guitar I've ever had a neck issue with, sure would be nice to get the neck back to normal again.

Thanks!

 

[Fuego]

Yeah, surprised it's not a dual action rod?

I had a similar issue with a Fender with a single action rod. Brian Howard pulled the frets, leveled the board and refretted. Leveling the board took out the back bow and left it with room to adjust either way. And it cost a lot less than $750.

Dual action allows you to Loosen or tighten, correct? If so, it's a dual action. If I tighten it, the actions gets even lower and the buzzing gets worse and worse. Unplayable actually. When I loosen the rod, it goes as far is it can and the adjusting "nut" starts to unscrew. Can't loosen it any farther.

I did bring it to my local guitar store and they said the same thing. They didn't even charge me full price for a set up cause the neck can't be adjusted correctly. I've even tried putting slight pressure on the neck (per instructions from Music Man) to see if I could get it to go, but no luck.

If it were a dual action, it would tighten like normal but have a zero spot with no tension in the center of the range. If u kept loosening, it would start to tighten in the opposite direction.

 

[tnourse]

Yeah, surprised it's not a dual action rod?

I had a similar issue with a Fender with a single action rod. Brian Howard pulled the frets, leveled the board and refretted. Leveling the board took out the back bow and left it with room to adjust either way. And it cost a lot less than $750.

Dual action allows you to Loosen or tighten, correct? If so, it's a dual action. If I tighten it, the actions gets even lower and the buzzing gets worse and worse. Unplayable actually. When I loosen the rod, it goes as far is it can and the adjusting "nut" starts to unscrew. Can't loosen it any farther.

I did bring it to my local guitar store and they said the same thing. They didn't even charge me full price for a set up cause the neck can't be adjusted correctly. I've even tried putting slight pressure on the neck (per instructions from Music Man) to see if I could get it to go, but no luck.

If it were a dual action, it would tighten like normal but have a zero spot with no tension in the center of the range. If u kept loosening, it would start to tighten in the opposite direction.

Oh ok. Mine doesn't do that. Damn..

 

[guitarlegend1986]

I've got a jp7 with the same issue. In the winter it plays fine, summer buzzes out on open strings. Which is backwards of what I would expect. Musicman said the rod is probably stuck, and per ebmm I've actually had the neck off of the guitar trying to bend it in the middle to "pop" the truss rod loose, with no luck. It went from just fine to unplayable literally overnight. On top of that my majesty had to be returned to musicman right after it was delivered because they had oversprayed the bridge pickup cavity and the high pickup was causing buzz across the whole fretboard. I love their guitars but their quality control needs work.

 

[messenger]

I've heard of people using heat and clamps. I think there were some threads on the mylespaul forum.

 

[tnourse]

I've got a jp7 with the same issue. In the winter it plays fine, summer buzzes out on open strings. Which is backwards of what I would expect. Musicman said the rod is probably stuck, and per ebmm I've actually had the neck off of the guitar trying to bend it in the middle to "pop" the truss rod loose, with no luck. It went from just fine to unplayable literally overnight. On top of that my majesty had to be returned to musicman right after it was delivered because they had oversprayed the bridge pickup cavity and the high pickup was causing buzz across the whole fretboard. I love their guitars but their quality control needs work.

Yeah, this experience makes me never want a Music Man guitar ever again. Used to play fantastic and the trem is the best. I bought a ESP new back in 1988, never had a neck issue and I have multiple Charvels from the 90's that have never had a neck issue. It's not like my JP6 was a inexpensive guitar either.

 

[tnourse]

I've heard of people using heat and clamps. I think there were some threads on the mylespaul forum.

Thanks. I'll check it out.

 

[glip22]

Did you try tightening it to see how it affects it? I would turn it in until it is tight, then turn another 1/2 turn and see what that does. If you have a jammed rod that might set it free. Does the rod have a nut on the end you can remove? If it does try and see if the washer under the nut is stuck. Sometimes a jammed washer can stop the rod from working.

 

[thisguy]

I have an Axis (from 1998 I think) and a 5 string Stingray bass (2002 or so) that are both fantastic. I bought a used Silhouette Special for a great price 5 or 6 years ago and the neck had all the rigidity of an old banana. Hopeless garbage. I ended up selling it to Guitar Center to ease my conscience since they offer a return policy for whoever bought it.

 

[tnourse]

Did you try tightening it to see how it affects it? I would turn it in until it is tight, then turn another 1/2 turn and see what that does. If you have a jammed rod that might set it free. Does the rod have a nut on the end you can remove? If it does try and see if the washer under the nut is stuck. Sometimes a jammed washer can stop the rod from working.

Yep. When I tighten the neck, the action gets much lower and is unplayable. The rod has an adjustment "wheel" at the end, near the neck pickup.