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Given the recent guitar and amp threads I thought someone might be able to offer some sage words of wisdom on my acoustic.
It's a reasonably nice Tanglewood Black Mountain like this:
Solid wood body and top, decent tuners, and a lovely sound.
I've owned it for probably 15 years or so now and over time it has developed what I think is a neck warp. The guitar has always been stored inside in the dry, and not near any heat sources or anything along those lines.
The severity of the problem varies with time, but the symptoms are that I get a lot of fret buzz going up the neck. It's fine in open chord positions. Currently it's particularly bad, and on the D, G, B, and top E strings in particular there's a range of frets from about 9 or 10 through say 14 or 15 where I just get the same note on a given string (clearly the string is hitting a higher fret when fretted lower down the neck). If I sight down the length of the neck there's a definite "bulge" around where the neck meets the heel around fret 12 or so. By "bulge" I mean I can see the neck/fretboard has a slight hump in it up toward the strings.
Any thoughts or insights as to how fixable this is? Anything I can do myself to improve things at all?
Thanks for any suggestions 🙂
It could just be the truss rod needs adjusting.
Plenty of youtube videos on such things.
Videos from StewMac or Dan Erlewhin would be the equivalent of a park instruction video.
Truss Rod adjustment should sort it - yours will need loosening by the sounds of it.
https://acousticguitar.com/how-to-adjust-an-acoustic-guitar-truss-rod/
Thanks both.
I should have mentioned I have tried in the past to adjust the truss rod to address this issue, but I'll have a look at the linked article just in case I got it wrong previously!
Take it to a guitar fettler as they do this all the time and have all the tools.
Once the neck is fixed get them to check the frets bridge nut and the overall action.
Don't forget you need new strings.
A good guitar shop would be able to tell you very quickly if its fixable or not at no cost. I have my acoustic guitar re set up every few years, they are always much nicer to play when a pro has done it rather that my unrefined fettling.
Could it need the frets removed and the fretboard carefully planed level and refretted? A solid topped guitar like a Tanglewood is almost certainly worth having some money spent to restore it to full playability, surely.
You can raise the bridge by lifting out the saddle and cutting a piece of hard resonant material to pack it out a bit before replacing saddle the same way round. Heavier guage strings will raise the action too.
I'd take it to a reputable shop personally, as said they have the tools and are used to doing it.
I had an issue and ended up with a shim under the nut and a rod adjustment, can't remember what it cost but it seemed very reasonable.
Thanks again.
Although I read up on the theory again, I haven't tried adjusting the truss rod. From my understanding the truss rod generally tightens to bow the neck backward, thereby counteracting the pull of the strings.
I have the opposite issue: I want more forward bow. And IIRC when I last looked at the truss rod it was backed right off, so there was no possible adjustment in the direction I wanted, other than fitting heavier gauge strings.
Interestingly, if I fret 1st and e.g. 14th and check the action at the 5th fret there's a decent gap. So I think the majority of the neck has good action/clearance, but has a bit of a hump further up which causes the issues 🙁
Time to take it to a shop I guess, at least if/when they're open again!