While drawing the instrument on paper has some advantages from an artistic point of view, it is a long and cumbersome process to follow if one simply wants to know this angle. Stratocasters, Telecasters, etc.) The procedure for checking neck relief is simple, and all you need is a capo and a feeler gauge (and even that isn’t absolutely necessary): Put a capo on your guitar’s neck at the first fret. Some possible reasons are: They’ll eventually discover that different neck pitches change the feel of the guitar significantly, though. When designing a guitar, determining the proper neck angle is important in order to make the instrument playable. (If you don’t have any feeler gauges, the average business card usually works for a rough estimate.). So, the TundraMan is here at your rescue, with a little help from our friend trigonometry. Many Fender guitars (i.e. For some guitars with body-end adjustment nuts, you have to remove the pickguard, or even loosen and lift the neck, as on many bolt-neck Stratocaster-style guitars. Again, if the nut gets either very tight or so loose that it feels about to come off and the adjustment hasn’t yet produced the desired result, or if you find yourself turning more than one and a half or two full turns or so with no apparent result, then STOP! Adjusting your guitar’s neck relief (the amount of bow and resistance in the neck) may sound like a scary proposition to the first-timer, but this task is something you can definitely do yourself if you take it slow and work in very small increments. To determine the height of the fingerboard at the neck join, measure the distance from the top of the guitar to the top of the highest part of the fingerboard, then add the height of the fretwire you plan to use. You never, however, want any back bow (a convex curve in the fingerboard), which definitely produces a lot of fret buzz and other playing difficulties. If the bridge is height adjustable, the measurement should be made with the adjustment at the lowest position (or close to the lowest if you want a little wiggle room.). When designing a guitar, determining the proper neck angle is important in order to make the instrument playable. It’s usually fixed at one end and adjustable at the other (threaded) end with a bolt that you turn to increase or decrease the amount of backward tension the rod applies to the neck (that is, the degree to which it counteracts the string tension). Here's some more information to help you while entering information in the fields: The calculator will work with both english and metric measurements. In these cases you must specify the amount of rise in the top for the calculation to be accurate. On carved top guitars, often times the part of the top where the bridge is located sits higher than the end of the body where the neck attaches. Repeat Steps 2 and 3 with the high-E string. Often times, this angle is determined by drawing a full-scale profile of the instrument on a large piece of paper, then taking a protractor and measuring what the string angle should be. Holding the guitar in playing position on your lap, with the body perfectly perpendicular to the floor, use a finger on your right hand (for right-handers) to fret the low-E string up the neck at the fret where the neck joins the body. Too little of a neck angle, and the bridge may not be able to be adjusted low enough to bring the strings down to a comfortable action. From this picture, you can see why some guitars need a neck angle. Also, be sure you’re using the correct tool for the job, ideally one supplied by the guitar’s manufacturer, or as per its instructions (there are too many variations to cover them all in detail here). Before making any truss-rod adjustments, loosen your guitar’s strings until you have removed all significant tension from them, but not so much that they’re entirely slack and floppy. Holding the guitar in playing position on your lap, with the body perfectly perpendicular to the floor, use a finger on your right hand (for right-handers) to fret the low-E string up the neck at the fret where the neck joins the body. Therefore the need to adjust an electric guitar's neck angle is necessary for different reasons. If a gentle quarter or half turn of the truss-rod nut doesn’t seem to produce any results whatsoever, or if the adjustment point is stiff and won’t turn easily, or at all, consult your guitar’s manufacturer before proceeding, or take it to a professional repairperson. Strats and Teles) use a bridge that sits at a low enough profile so as not to require a neck angle. While drawing the instrument on paper has some advantages from an artistic point of view, it is a … For some guitars with headstock-end adjustments, you may need to remove a truss-rod access cover before proceeding, and you usually need to lift some strings aside to do this. Just select which you want to use, and enter the fields using the appropriate values. If you’re new to truss-rod adjustment and don’t have a handle on how much of a turn achieves what result in your guitar, start with just a quarter turn, then bring the strings back into tune and check the relief again. Pardon my homemade picture. Slip a 0.010-inch feeler gauge into the gap between the bottom of the low-E string and the top of the 8th fret (or whichever fret is half way between the capo and where you’re fretting the string). Other bridges, such as the Tune-O-Matic found on many Gibson guitars have a much higher profile which requires a neck angle. The internal tension applied in a guitar’s neck to counterbalance the natural tension applied by the strings is achieved by a component called a truss rod. Most quality guitar manufacturers supply the correct tool for adjusting neck relief specifically because they feel this is a job the player can tackle and often needs to tackle as wood shifts due to seasonal changes in climate, travel, normal aging, and other factors. All website Content Property Of Terry Mashek (2003-2020 All rights reserved). To use the calculator, simply enter the information in the fields, then click on the "calculate" button to view the results. Indeed, many players do prefer a very straight neck, but in certain cases, though, players like to have just a little concave bow in the neck — with the fingerboard curving up if the guitar is lying on its back — to keep the strings from buzzing against the frets when you strum and to provide a natural curvature that matches their vibrational arc when you play. have a flat top, in which case you would enter "0" because there is no height difference. In any event, if you're building a guitar you need to know what angle should be used. The color is much more important. The height of the bridge must also be entered. However, if the neck join occurs between frets on your guitar, the fret can be entered as a partial (i.e. Increase: To increase relief in the neck (increase concave bow), turn the adjustment point counterclockwise. Getting the proper neck angle on a guitar is imperative to making the guitar play correctly. Causes of Poor Neck Angle. So, we’ve sort of brought Leo Fender full-circle and back to the archtop guitars — complete with tailpieces and neck angles — that his first designs had completely eschewed. For example, you would enter 1/4" as .25. This distance should be measured from the top of the guitar, to the highest point on the string saddle. I created this simple calculator that will take the measurements from the guitar and determine the proper neck angle. To make adjustments to neck relief, proceed carefully, gently, and slowly, and work in increments of just a quarter turn at a time. Tune up, check again, and proceed accordingly. Dave Hunter has made a career out of explaining the relationships between guitars and amp tone, and the technology that creates it. Even worse, too much neck angle and the bridge may not be able to raise the strings high enough off of the fretboard to make the guitar playable. Often times this join occurs at the same postion as a fret (i.e. Shimming the neck artificially creates our neck angle and means we can raise the bridge up without screwing with our action. For the "increase in top height from neck to bridge" field, you must enter any difference in the height of the guitar top from the point at which the neck joins, to the point underneath the bridge. Note that if you're entering values in inches, you must use decimals. the 16th fret) so you can just enter the fret number. With your free hand, use the feeler gauge to measure the gap between the bottom of the string and the top of the … It can also have a … More information about scale lengths is available on my fretboard calculator page. Affix the capo to the first fret and depress the high E string at the last fret (G string on a bass guitar), or where the neck joins the body (often the 17th fret on Stratocaster and Telecaster guitars).