Bass guitar neck bow. Heres the fretboard against a straight edge yikes. The tension of the strings pulling the neck upward. The bass strings put many pounds of tension on the neck of your bass guitar.
Think of it like a bow as in bow and arrow. Sometimes however we get whats referred to as back bow. The rod can be tightened or loosened.
This week we took in a 1960s fender p bass for a refret that had a severely warped neck. The truss rod is a metal rod inside the neck of your bass. Ill show you all how to adjust your easily adjust your neck wit.
Photograph by dave hunter. Holding the guitar in playing position on your lap with the body perfectly perpendicular to the floor use a finger on your right hand for right handers to fret the low e string up the neck at the fret where the neck joins the body. Tightening the rod is supposed to straighten the neck so it sounds like the rod is working backwards string tension bows the neck towards the strings tightening bows away from the strings.
Put a capo on your guitars neck at the first fret. There seems to be a debate about the best way to set up a guitar necka slight bow or straight. Adjusting your guitar neck is one of the scariest things a guitarist can do to their guitar.
One tech will only put a bow in the neck while another says that its easier to play when the neck is straight. The neck simply would not straighten out no matter what we did with the truss rod even with the truss rod completely loose the neck had a severe back bow. Enough usually to pull the neck into a bow shape with the middle being farthest from the strings.
Thats because the rod is routed so it sits below center on the neck. Our trusty truss rod can generally be called on to counteract that tension and to control the bow or even straighten the neck completely against the string pull. Two things cause the neck to bend.