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Cold = neck adjustment


Dg77

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Well it's that time of year here in the northeast....been cold for a few months now and the LP wood is shrinking up forcing the action to be higher and relief to be more pronounced. Small turn of the truss rod and she's back to being pretty straight. Slight adjustment on the action and she's good to go. I'm able to get the action down to a little less than 2/32 treble side and a little more than 2/32 on the bass with no buzzzing.

 

Anywhoooo, when I took the truss rod cover off I noticed that it the nut was only threaded through the first half of the nut or so if that makes any sense. And I noticed that if I loosened it to give more relief the nut was too loose and would have fallen off, possibly the neck was not moving with it keeping pressure against the nut?

 

Don't think it's a problem but I thought that was weird at first and then I thought if I had to loosen it to put more relief, id run into issues. Good thing I had to go the other way this time!

 

Any thoughts?

 

 

Oh I also noticed that some clear lacquer was peeling or flaking off of my binding. Doesn't affect playing obviously but is that normal road wear?

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Yeah, I had to adjust 3 of my SG's, recently, the same way. All are back

to the action I like. Mahogany necks, seem especially prone to moving,

with the humidity changes. My denser wood maple neck guitars seem a

lot less prone to that, and certainly not to the extent. Probably have to go

the opposite direction, come late Spring's humidity. "C'est La Vie!" [tongue][biggrin]

 

CB

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0F74E1B7-9B6E-48CE-8B2C-4E8D46533664.jpg

 

Here's a picture of what I'm talking about. It's a thin layer of what looks like the nitro laquer. It adds a shiny gloss to the binding around the entire guitar and fretboard. You can see the flaking right at the first fret. My only concern would be that is spreads and begins flaking off the neck.

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Guest Farnsbarns

For the second part, there shouldn't be any laquer on the binding, they must have missed it when they were scraping it off.

 

Sorry, but this is rubbish. There is lacquer on the binding. The dye is scrapped off the binding and then the lacquer is applied.

 

I wouldn't worry about it. Cracking, chipping, yellowing and checking are just part of the nitrocellulose finish thang. I love it.

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Sorry, but this is rubbish. There is lacquer on the binding. The day is scrapped off the binding and then the lacquer is applied.

 

I wouldn't worry about it. Cracking, chipping, yellowing and checking are just part of the nitrocellulose finish thang. I love it.

 

 

Yup I'm not worried about it. Just something else to give it character....aka mojo.

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Don't know if it could be road wear but didn't suffer this on my Gibsons up to now. My 1978 S-G is my oldest Gibson with neck binding. There were from the start and still are small notches along the fretboard on either bass and treble side, assumably due to gaps between binding and neck which aren't evenly filled with lacquer. I guess these are flaws due to craftmanship.

 

My newer Gibsons with bindings are perfectly smooth up to the edges of the binding along the neck. However, all of my Les Paul guitars have touchable ridges in their finish where the body bindings meet the woods, but that doesn't bother me anyway.

 

I should add that I keep all of my guitars nicely adjusted. In some winters slight tweaks of the truss rod settings were necessary, in most winters not.

 

As for your nut going loose rather early, I think there won't be a problem in the long run. I was considering returning my Traditional 2013 since the fat late 50s neck just needed a slight adjustment when changing from the stock .009" - .046" Les Paul Signature set to .011" - .050". There also was next to no force needed for rotating the nut. So I decided to check it out by tuning down eight half tones (!) in order to simulate .007" - .032" although I never would use Billy Gibbons gauge strings. It took two days, and everything was fine. So I knew the guitar is a keeper.

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