What do you do when a neck has a backbow even with the rod loose all the way?

[Mario Cardenas]

I happen to have to Fender Necks with a backbow even with the rod totally loose. One's a strat, the other a mustang. Strat's reativelly new and the other is from the sixties. What both have in comon is that they are adjustable on the heel (vintage style). 

I know how to straighten necks with an upbow and i'm very proficient at it, but this has me wondering.

Cheers!

[nathan clark]

Do you mean the neck is convex in relation to the strings with the truss rod nut completely loosened?

[Mario Cardenas]

Yep

[Hesh Breakstone]

If you mean that both necks are in back bow with the rod slacked and under string tension tuned to pitch first question from me would be is the strat a maple board?

Lots of folks heat treat necks (provided that there is a separate fret board that can be "slipped" with heat) but I'm not a fan of heat treating personally.  Why?  Because rarely have I see the fix last very long and I'm also not the biggest fan of attempting to loosen the glue joint between the board and neck.  Seems potentially problematic down the road to me.

A refret and board level can be helpful and you can also take a chapter from Martin's compression fretting for pre-truss-rod Martins where we shape the fret plane using various width fret tangs.  My hunch though would be that pulling the frets, leveling the board, and refretting with a tang size that does not induce back bow into clean slots and gluing the new frets would get you a level fret plane.  Add string tension and you should be in need of that truss rod again.

[Mario Cardenas]

Yeah, fancy that, i actually have a set of 13's installed on the mustang. The strat has 10's.

They are both rosewood fretboards. 

I totally agree with you Hesh. I'm not a fan of heat treatment either. In my experience, it also creates a mess with frets. I think it works but you have tu reach really high temperatures and then you have to dress the frets.

It'd be like decompression fretting lol, i actually talked to the owner of the mustang about it and he's ok with it.

But the other guy is kinda cheap haha I think he'd rather buy a new neck than have this one refretted. 

But hey, thanks for your reply. I'll see if i can talk him into a refret too. Cheers!