| That could be real difficult to do. I've made repairs to guitars
with broken rods in them, and you often have to remove the fret
board (or on some Fender type necks) router out a section of the
neck & plan on rebuilding what you took out. I have may father make
up a very hard replacement rod (I don't recall the hardness number
for the stainless steel rod) & tap it at both ends. This would cost
quite a bit if you had to hire a shop to do this (my father has
the shop equipment to handle this & he is a mechanical engineer).
Some truss rods slide out, Micheal Gurian (used to be in Keene NH)
used to make these (I still have a few) that he put into his guitars.
You'll find similar ones in Warmoth Necks & lots of other guitars.
These come out fairly easy & can be replaced if you can get the
neck off of the guitar (some times you can leave it on). His method
was to take a rod, tap one end, fold it over so that the tapped
end and the untapped end wer next to each other, then weld a small
block to the untapped end that had a hole in it for the tapped end.
The tapped end took a bolt & by tightening the bolt, you would
pull on half of the rod, while the other half remained the same
length. Great design. You'll find out how good of a job the
manufacturer did at gluing the fret board on, as these can exert
a substantial amount of pressure in the fret board. Usually, to
use this type of truss rod, all you needed to do was to router a
1/4 inch slot in the neck where you wanted the truss rod to go,
about 1/2 inch deep, then glue the fret board over top of the
routered slot. Then finish the neck. Once assembled, you could
putz around with the truss rod until it was shaped exactly to
your liking, then slide it into the neck.
Martin uses (or at least used to use) a 1/2 inch square steel tube
that is simply glued into the neck, under the fret board. As long
as it's straight, it should last forever. I don't hear many complaints
about old Martin necks, so this 'LOW-TECH' solution must not be
too bad. It also adds mass to the neck & this should give you better
sustain. You can buy 1/2 square steel tubing at many hardware stores
very cheaply.
I use a homemade variation of Michael Gurians truss rod. Then again,
I have an Arc Welder, Acetelyne Torch & a drill press in my shop.
The advantage That I have Is that I can make the rods any length
that I want for the custom guitars that I build.
Jens Moller
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