Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Jake, the way that I test for a neck twist is simple.

Hold the guitar up with the lower edge of the body facing you and sight up the body from its rear and up the neck to the head.

If the frets, which are supposed to be parallel to each other, appear to converge to a side of the neck and do not seem parallel - the guitar has a twisted neck. If the frets all appear parallel, as they should be, the neck is fine.

The more the frets seem nonparallel to each other as you sight up the neck towards the nut, the more the neck is twisted.

Ted,
Good to see you Sir !!

Hope all's been well with you.

Thanks Jim! I am at work right now. Doing the IT infrastructure thing. Just testing a new firewall / caching proxy. I have to test it on a variety of content sources and Rick Resource qualifies as content in some form. It is working beautifully BTW.

Good stuff, I'll be doing something very similar in about two weeks !!

One more question ... anyone have any tips for getting rid of that lovely smell that results from residing in a smoker's house for nearly 10 years? My very first bass didn't smell right until more than 10 years of regular to semi-regular use.

keep it out of the case for a while and let the case breathe.

Do a Scratch-X plus Zymöl treatment. That should take care of the smell and will make it look nice too.

Spray a clean diaper lightly, 4 inch squares at a time, with Windex. Wipe down the entire guitar, all surfaces, until the white diaper cloth stays clean and white after wiping. Then get some old-fashioned lighter fluid (100% naptha) and do the same thing.

The Windex removes surface dirt and grime that is water-soluble. It just leaves behind the tar and yellowish gunk residue from the cigarette smoke. The naptha specifically will safely remove the tar and residue without harming either a nitrocellulose or a conversion varnish guitar finish. If you are diligent, use up lots of white 100% cotton diaper squares, and go until every surface is wiped and no longer leaves any color on the diaper, your instrument will be smell-free. Use the naptha everywhere, even the plastic and the strings, the pickups and knobs, on places where you would never use wax or polish.

The case, if it contains smoky smell, is another issue. Leaving it open is one way, that takes a long while though, like almost a year. A better way is to replace the guitar with lots and lots of dryer sheets, like Febreze or something else designed to absorb odors, close the case tightly, and leave it closed for a few weeks. Check it afterwards to see if the smell is absorbed, and if not then replace with fresh dryer sheets and do it again for a few more weeks.

When it smells good again, toss the dryer sheets out and put the cleaned guitar back in the case and see if the residual smell, if any, is still tolerable the next day

I also recommend polishing the painted (and some of the plated) surfaces of the guitar with Scratch-X, and then putting several coats of Zymol car wax on it. Use the same 4 inch squares of clean 100% cotton diaper. Work in two-inch sections of the finish at a time, not the whole guitar at once. Nice smell and great-looking finish - better than the original factory finish

Newsapers will also absorb smell.

Awesome. Thanks for all the advice.

Now I only have to learn how to play better.

Jake, Ted is right on with his advice. I got a 4004 that had a slight neck twist in it and using the two rods and adjusting as Ted described cleared the issue for me.

As for sighting down the neck for a twist, you can't use the top of the nut because it is sloped, you can't use the wings as they are asymetric and won't give a true sighting, but I use the bottom of the nut where it meets the wood and align it with the top of the body at the neck joint. Manual's way is even better and more foolproof.

I use Manuel's way of checking how parallel the frets are with each other, except that I sight from the headstock down, rather than the body up.

Now this is neck twist:



(sorry for the non-bass, non-Rickenbacker content, but I couldn't resist ... )