Uneven neck relief.

[Kris Schramm]

Hello,

I am interested in any/all methods to repair a bolt-on electric guitar neck that has significantly more neck relief on one side than it has on the other. I see this issue on a semi-regular basis and have not yet learned a reliable way to correct it. Thanks.

Kris 

[steven gallagher]

Nathan,

Could you clarify that you use a convex sanding beam? I've never seen one that wasn't flat or concave.

Thanks

[Jim Pratt]

Ive been building repairing and setting up strats for 10 years now. Maybe some speculation here but Ive seen so many strat owners complain about uneven neck relief on 2000 and newer strats. I just finished setting one up that Id bought and almost sold at a loss because I encountered this same thing. Truss gives more relief on the heavy top E string. Dont worry too much about it as long as the opposite side (giving less relief) is straight. If its severely backbowed while the Top side is straight then you have a warped neck. Work with it in very small incraments as your doing all the other adjustments.(There are alot) and eventually you should be able to find the "sweet spot" for the truss. When you do you might see a very very slight difference in relief or maybe just a percieved difference, but you should be able to get the two sides very close to even relief when you find the "sweet spot" for the truss rod. Remember not too much relief but just enough so you eliminate any fret buzz. Thanks.

[Hesh Breakstone]

Didn't have time to read the other posts so my apologies if any of this is redundant.

A refret can correct the relief and if your client does not want to go that route a fret dress by a skilled Luthier, not a novice or hobbyist, can correct relief too.  It's an art though and not something that I can explain appropriately here or on any forum.

The advantage of the refret is full new fret height is mostly preserved where when correcting relief with a fret dress lots of fret height in certain regions may have to be removed and reduced.

It's easy to do, takes me about an hour and is always an individual effort with the degrees of correction being a function of how messed up the individual instrument you are working on is.  Our fret dresses and set-ups are less than 1/2 the price of a refret.

I'm seeing that no effort is made these days by most f*ctories to correct relief making proper relief very much a luck of the draw thing. 

[Kerry Krishna]

Nathan,the pics in that photoessay are amazing. Some has both an eye and a great camera!

[David Farmer]

I don't see removing " neck twist" as necessary. Proper relief on treble and bass sides Is essential. 

I see twist as a separate and usually irrelevant issue. 

One down side to using a full length radius beam parallel to the neck is it gratuitously removes (or imparts!) twist.

[David Farmer]

Needless twist removal on a customers 39' Martin.

Look at the fingerboard end!