Correcting neck bow on a Stick

[boomstik]

Hi there... I've got a 10-string Ironwood with non-adjustable truss rods. Well, recently I noticed a slight (or maybe even not too slight) bow in the fretboard.

Are there any techniques of correcting this without sending the Stick to Mr. Chapman himself? I simply can't afford to do that, and frankly would rather try to fix the instrument myself anyway....

I am using light gauge strings. What's kind of frightening is that the bow appeared within the last several months - i noticed it because one day I realized that action is higher than normal - but I don't understand why this would happen in such a short period of time.......

any tips?

thanks!! :)

[qbensis]

Hi boomstik,

normally I would advice you to install light gauge strings to get rid off the bow - but you're allready using them so ...
I would tune the whole instrument down - begin with a half step, if it isn't enough a whole step, ...

This should work. But keep in mind that this isn't a "beautiful" solution. You'll have to train yourself to fret the strings some frets higher, the tension off the strings gets less, the intonation will get worse (I assume that, as your stick doesn't has a truss rod, it also has no adjustable bridge?!), ...

The ideal solution would be sending it too SE, and letting them install a proper truss rod!

That something like a big bow can show up within just a bunch of month seems strange to me. Assuming that you didn't do something really dump like tuning the bass strings up into the melody range and leaving it like that - I don't know how it happened?!

The only thing I consider with my stick is to treat it like I would like to be treatened. So I don't expose it too unusual temperatures (nights in the car), dry air, and stuff like that.

[BigDaddyPoo]

There are really 3 options.

1. Send it back to the manufacturer. ( and kiss your axe goodbye for the 9 months or so that it would sit in Emmett's shop. )

2. Flatten the frets. Get a strait edge or a piece of thick glass and attach sandpaper. The frets will then be equal height, but will need to be recrowned to regain the roundness of the frets and the intonation of the neck. You can only really do this if you have pretty tall frets, which aren't found on some of the older sticks.

3. Refret the neck. Remove the frets and use glass or a strait edge to flatten the fret board then refret the whole thing. You may have to resaw the fret slots if they get too shallow.

You could send the stick off to a local repairman to do the work, but I've had bad results from locals. That is why I've taught myself to do this kind of work. If you want to play it safe, I would go with option 1.

[rjgoos]

How bad is the bow?

If you hold strings 1 or 2 or 9 or 10 down at fret 1 and 20-something (the other end), how big is the gap between the string and the top of fret 11 or 12?

Ideally, there should be no gap, or almost no gap (like the thickness of a business card or something like that). The bigger the gap, the less chance that re-levelling and crowning the frets would work.

[sobear2003]

I had the same problem on my ironwood stick back in the 80's.

I see that you are in Toronto. Talk to Grant MacNeill at the 12th Fret. He fixed up my axe wonderfully.

Tom McMahon

[boomstik]

Thank you so much for your replies. The bow isn't too terrible - if I fret the strings at the 1st and the 22nd frets, the gap around the middle is about the thickness of a penny. But mind you, this is after i've dropped the action to pretty much as low as it will go by adjusting the bridge screws.... (the only adjustable part on this Stick, really)...

The instrument is still very playable, that's why I don't want to send it to SE (just like BigDaddyPoo said, it'll sit in the shop for all eternity). I'd go crazy without it :)

Thanks for your advice, Tom! I will definitely get in touch with Grant at the 12th Fret. will let you know how it goes!

boomstik