Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

And thus came autumn, with below freezing outside temp and dry room air. The neck of the bass is bowing againg and as I tried to tighten the rods I found both already maxed out. It'll really be needing that trip to a tech now. I've never seen a bass that's so badly affected by seasonal climate change.

Jouni, important to remember is that it has been affected by bad adjustments. It needs to be stabilized by removing the strings and fully loosening the rods, then letting it sit for at least a couple of weeks, indoors, at reasonable temperature and humidity. If it doesn't settle at that point, then heat and clamping must be done to get it straight and flat.

After this, a proper and gradual neck adjustment to equalize the tension of the strings, is in order.

Cheers, Paul, I will try that once I can take the time to be sans Rick for a couple of weeks - can't really stand the sound of my now back up basses anymore.

I am however rather curious as to what it is that caused this all to happen - the bass was new when bought it (unseen, shipped from the UK) and I have made but what I perceive as normal adjustments to the rods, in order to get a satisfactory (non-)relief. There originally only was a washer under the bass rod nut, which I always was curious about.

Soft maple at the body end of the neck, letting the rods compress the wood and move into the neck. Then you keep tightening the rods, they dig more into the body end, the neck again bows, so you tighten more, the nuts at the body end dig into the maple more and the neck bows, you tighten the rods more and they dig into the maple more at the body end letting the neck bow and you......

Remove the rods, stablize the maple with the superglue, add the right sized washers to the rod at the body end to get the acorn nuts where they should be, then insert the rods, put the metal plate back on, and tighten the truss nuts when the strings are at tension. You should not have any more problems like you are having and you will find the neck will be very stable. I rarely have to adjust the rods on my 5 Ricks and we go from very cold dry winters to hot and many times humid summer days.

Your soft maple wood is pretty unique. I've only heard of 3 others of the almost 1200 registered Ricks here on RRF.