Truss rod removal

[cassius987]

I have noticed that after adjusting the truss rods on my bass, the D and G strings have "rise up" after the 15th semitone or so. The A and E strings max out their action at the 12th fret. This leads me to believe the D/G rod is sucked in so far it is not working on the whole fingerboard anymore. I can't think what else it might be. Sure enough there is a lot of rod length extruding past the nuts in the truss rod cavity and the rods are pretty much maxed out.

I have seen rods replaced before but I would like to know what is the best procedure to remove, treat/fix, and replace the truss rods on a Ric (bass preferably) so that issues like this can be remedied.

[cassius987]

Nobody?

[Badanovski]

There are a few different threads on rod removal, you can use the search function to find. I'm not really understanding your description of the problem. It would be nice to know if your talking about 4001 rods or 4003 rods. With 4003 rods the wood at the body end can get soft allowing the nuts to sink into the neck. This could account for having so much rod at the headstock end. Is it just the E & A strings with high action at the 12 fret ? Is the neck still parallel with the body? Pictures would be nice.

[cassius987]

I haven't found anything yet that describes the method in very clear detail. Maybe I'm not looking in the right threads. Like I said I've seen it done before, I know it's easy, but I want a very clear description so I mess nothing up.

I think it's the D/G rod that is messed up in my case because the action "apexes" around the 12th "fret" on that side of my 4003FL. It "plateaus" there for the E/A strings.

[johnallg]

A curved rod might have flipped over. To remove the new rods, I take the truss nuts, washers, and spacer off. I then tap the rod back into the neck to expose the acorn nut and washers. I remove them then push the rod back into the neck as far as it will go comfortably. I then pull the rod out from the headstock end. You might need to clamp the fretboard to the neck at the headstock end. Depends on the curve and your nerves.

It also sounds like the maple, wood at the body end may be soft and the washers and acorn nut are working up into the neck. You will need to use super glue treatments to harden the wood, then add extra washers at this end to get the truss nut end to be where it is supposed to be when the rod is back in place.

[Seans]

Rod sleeve covering bunching up?.

[antipodean]

If the rod end hasn't vanished up into the channel and/or hasn't rotated 180 degrees it may be that the neck of your bass is being pulled upwards into the pickup cavity. This uncommon event usually gets mentioned in the context of '70s 4001s and 5 or 8-string basses but I believe Dane has mentioned that modern 4-string 4003s can be susceptible as well due to the generous size of the pickup cavity. I think Eden and Dane have both mentioned that it can be fixed relatively simply by plugging the cavity with a piece of maple and rerouting so the new cavity is just large enough to house the pickup.