Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I have decided to get on with setting up my 1979 450-12, after allowing it a decent amount of time for climatic adjustment in its new home and a bit of research on setting up a Rick.

So, stick a capo of the first, fret the 17th. Measure things. About 0.7 mm of relief on the bass side at the 7-9th fret, 0.35 mm on the treble. Conclusions (1) too much relief, when i should be aiming for zero or cigarette paper and (2) a warped neck.

Off comes the TRC. Two truss rods, as expected. On the treble side, there's several turns of truss rod coming throught he acorn nut, whilst on the other, bass side there's none.

Explains the warp.

So what I need to do, according my forum searches, appears to be to loosen the truss rods and the strings, let it settle for a week or two, and then do the recommended manual adjustment of the neck while tightening the truss rods to suit and take out the warp by a relative adjustment.

However, there is a further problem. The bass truss rod nut cannot be accssed. The bass side truss rod nut underside is lying almost flush to the bottom of the headstock truss rod cavity - you could just slip a business card under it and no more. This fact does not appear to be due to a bend in the truss rod at this point (as others have reported as relatively common due to over-enthusiastic and ill-informed amateur adjustment), as the bass side acorn nut is also resting flush to the large, shaped aluminium washer that both truss rods run through - and the under side also runs paralell to the headstock underneath. Grinding down a Rick or like nut tool to loosen the bass side truss rod, as also recommended on the forum when the fit is tight, won't work as its resulting walls, at about 0.2 mm, will simply be too weak.

I'm unsure how to proceed. Thoughts about what I should do?

Just grind down the tool...Mine is ground to where the socket is nearly flush with the shaft, and there's about .010" (.25mm) of meat at each of the points of the hex; this is still plenty strong to work on Ricks, though not to torque down the lugnuts on your Sherman tank.

Point 2: The wood underneath that stuck nut is, despite being hard maple, still pliable. You will still be able to slide a thinned-out nut tool in there. with the "give" coming from both the nut moving up slightly and the wood compressing slightly. We're only talking about a fraction of a millimeter needed--just proceed gingerly to avoid traumatizing the neck at its weakest point.

Loosen that li'l puppy up, and make a new spacer!

Yup, keep grinding.

I actually ground mine down to work on a 425 awhile back, so maybe it's a tighter fit on the 400 series? (I don't see how though..)

You can get quite thin on the tool before it would break...particularly on the ends.

I remember reading here somewhere that Taylor guitar truss rod wrenches are the proper size and very thin. Maybe that would help.