Fender Strat neck mystery

[Dave Slimmer OldSchoolGuitar]

hi Chip,

I’ve run into several Fenders that had the same sort of symptoms. Yours may be something different altogether, but with the Fenders I’ve worked on I came to the conclusion that the neck wood was just not sufficiently rigid and the truss rod can not compensate for string tension. The result is that the guitar winds up having an up bow for a long time and seems to take a “set” to that shape. I’ve tried heat treating by putting the necks into a pretty severe back bow and heating them for an hour with two 150W infrared lamps. The temperature was limited to 180F on the surface of the fret board with my controller. After heat treating the necks rebound to almost straight or a very slight back bow, but once the string tension is on the neck goes back to an up bow. In these cases I wind up clamping the neck into a back bow, tightening the truss to a high C, and then putting on super light strings.

[Brandon Forsyth Fret Tec, LLC]

Wish I had more experience with this thing, but it did get a guitar back in shape a couple of years ago. This was the opposite of your situation, I suspect the neck had been leaned up against something and took to this orientation. My first attempts at straightening were failures, working with fret beams and a pvc heating blanket I couldn’t achieve a temperature hot enough to relieve the bow after unclamping the rig. Not to be defeated I got the Aria neck straightening contraption from a friendly Japanese seller on EBay. These were sold in the late 70’s/80’s and seemingly disappeared until recently. I worked with heat and clamping pressure to get some relief back into the neck and open strings ringing nicely again. I was very happy with it when left a couple of weeks afterwards. It left a couple of weeks later, no issues when the customer picked it up. I have not heard back, but I made no guarantee that it would stay. Now, if I can get a few more jobs to pay for this damn thing. 😂

[Chip Tait Brooklyn Fretworks]

I improvised by borrowing my wife’s heating pad, which purportedly achieves 149 degrees F at its highest setting. I’ve read conflicting numbers as to the softening point for PVA glues that I’m assuming Fender used to attach the fingerboard, but I was certain that 150 degrees wouldn’t destroy anything.

First round, I heated the neck for an hour at 140 degrees. When I removed the blanket, the neck was very warm, so I clamped it into a backbow and let it cool. Nothing. Second round, I maxed the temp at 149 degrees, and let it cook 2 hours. Now I was at .014 at the 6th fret. Nice. Another round, three hours at 149, clamped and allowed to sit overnight. Now .008 at the 6th fret.

From there, I once again clamped it into a backbow and tightened the new truss nut as far as I was willing to go. When I released the clamp, the board was pretty much dead flat. I installed Stringjoy 11s, and we are sitting at .010 on the treble side and .009 on the bass side. This will work.

In celebration, I got on Amazon and ordered the parts to assemble Dave Slimmer’s cartridge heater controller, which I hope will make the next job like this a little more practical and predictable.

Cheers!

[Mike Hoenerhoff Elderly Instruments]

FYI to any would-be heat pressers here- the Aria one works great (it’s the main one used in our shop), and I’m sure I’ve used it on over a hundred guitars, but you can make your own pretty easily. Large chunk of square stock with a strip heater element mounted inside it. I think those two things cost me about $60 US if you have a metal supplier nearby that sells scraps. Then wire a plug on it and plug it into a variac, which I already had on hand but you can buy online for about $50 these days. You don’t need a good one. Then find the voltage that gives you the temp you want. Usually 160-180 Fahrenheit unless its made with really stubborn glue. Works best on hide glue construction necks. Will not work at all on a one-piece maple fender-style neck. Really needs a hefty slab fingerboard to work well.

[Tony Lewis Skypilot Guitar Repair]

I use two heat lamps. Scott St. Dennis uses a heat lamp as well in his vids. I think this system works well because it heats up neck from underneath as well. I think you need to put it/them closer and get the heat up higher than 180 as the glue is probably pva and titebond says starts to soften at 150 but I think the glue used is probably higher. I’d take the heat up to at least 200 or so to account for heat loss at inner actual joint and truss rod is a big heat sink. The neck shown in pic used titebond. I heated to about 220 and finger board not close to separating and polly finish doesn’t start to melt until at least 220. Note the sheetmetal reflector underneath to reflect heat to underside. Key! Heats the whole shootin’ match up where as bar type heaters only heats from the top. The neck shown does not have a fingerboard on it, but same principle(this neck had a side bow of an 1/8” as well and that’s what it’s being heated for in the pic. It took the side bow out as well). I bent this neck first for the back bow with the fingerboard on it. It had a 1/4″ back bow. I over bent by same amount. It came back fairly straight and easily truss rod adjustable. The sequence I used that I got with input from Scott’s vids are this. Release tension in truss rod. Over bend neck by same amount yours is under bent ( in your case 023?). Heat neck until desired temp reached (heat gun temp reader), remove heat and leave clamped for two or three days (key). Tighten truss rod after that time until pressure applied. Then un-clamp.