Does my guitar need a neck reset?

Wrong question. A lot of guitars could benefit from a neck reset. Take a number.

Look, your neck joint is the belabored, under-appreciated workhorse of your guitar. It holds the guitar together while managing well over 100 pounds of steady, unrelenting tension. Give the damn thing a break, it’s doing the best it can under the circumstances.

Truthfully, most vintage guitars’ neck blocks have succumbed at least a little bit to the pressure from 6 (or 12) steel strings tuned to pitch for years and years. A little bending is not enough reason to start hacking away at the darn thing, okay?

Oh, it’s not a vintage guitar, you say? Then you, my friend, have allowed the dark mistress of relative humidity to have her way with it. That evil witch leaves scars! Especially if you’ve been using string gauges on the heavier side. I’m looking at you, ‘Medium Strings’ guy. It’s not a cheese-grater, my man. It’s a guitar.

In any case, the question to ask is this: How do I fix my ferociously bad action? No one can seem to do it, and the big box guitar store said I need a costly and potentially risky ‘neck reset’ which is Greek to me! So, what do I do now?

Two systems, not one

Let’s back up for a moment. Your guitar neck is a fairly thin piece of wood straining and bending towards the bridge in an effort to release the enormous tension the strings exert. Your truss rod is a sturdy bulwark against this tendency. It straightens the neck itself, the weakest part, and you can usually solve a lot of the action problems in any guitar with a proper truss rod adjustment.

The neck block is not involved with the truss rod at all. They are neighbors, not partners. Invisibly buried inside your guitar, the neck block is a chunk of wood, a big chunky joint between the neck and the body locked by glue. When the neck block itself has succumbed to the tension, the wood will become misshapen and the neck will lean forward. This is the real problem.

How to actually check

Well, let’s start with a solid diagnosis. If you can measure it, you can understand it.

1. So get yourself a rigid straightedge nearly as long as the guitar neck.
2. Rustle up the tool you need to adjust your particular flavor of truss rod.
3. Be sure the neck is under tension with your usual gauge of strings and tuned up to pitch.
4. Now adjust the truss rod to make the neck completely flat. Zero relief, and no back bow. Flat as a… well… flat as a board. That’s a wood joke. I digress.
5. Now, sight the neck from the headstock down to the body. Look straight? Good.
6. Lay it flat, put the straightedge along the center of the neck resting on the frets.

7. A fast way to test it to turn off your overhead light and shine a light behind the straightedge. You want to see darkness where all of the frets touch the straightedge. Or at least, as evenly as possible. Got it? Good.
8. Now, move the straightedge to the outside of the low E string (or just inside between E and A strings) and slide the straightedge down the fretboard to have it meet the bridge.

Now check out where the straightedge meets the bridge. If it’s corner to corner or laying right on top of the bridge like this, it’s perfect. This is where it is supposed to be.

We are talking about neck resets, so it’s probably lower…

Every millimeter counts. Like, really counts! Each 1mm is worth roughly 2mm of extra height at the 12th fret. Geometry is an unforgiving science.

The saddle test

Now, check the action at the 12th fret now. If it’s getting close to good, the neck reset is probably overkill. Then check out the saddle (the white plastic or bone strip set into the slot in the bridge). Is it standing up and out of the bridge with some white wall showing?

If it looks anything like this, yeehaw! You’ve got something to work with. Shaving down the saddle, cutting some ramps in the bridge, and evaluating/filing the nut slots might get you right where you want to be. You might even get close to mathematically perfect action. Yes, that’s a real thing IMHO.

Now, if this is not the case, if your action is still high AND the saddle is just a little sliver of white peeking out of the slot… well then. That’s a whole different ball of wax. Likely, some well-meaning luthier or DIY’er has already lowered the saddle at some point in the guitar’s history. There’s no more room to adjust it.

Taylor Guitars, an exception to the rule

They look like traditional acoustic guitars, but the neck is bolted on. In fact, Taylor even supplies certified techs with a whole kit of numbered, tapered shims. Unbolt, pop in a couple new shims, bolt it back together, and Bob’s your uncle. Simply, clean neck resets in an hour or less.

What a REAL neck reset involves

If you have a Martin, Gibson, Guild, Seagull or any other traditional acoustic guitar, this is NOT the case. You most likely have a dovetail joint with wood glue holding it in place. That’s a lot of wood-to-wood surface contact, and a glue that creates a stronger bond between the wood, than the wood itself.

In a nutshell, here’s what a traditional neck reset entails:

1. Score the finish around the entire neck and fingerboard to avoid cracking when the neck comes apart from the body.
2. Remove the fret at the point where the body and neck join, and drill a hole in that slot down into the neck joint.
3. Pump steam heat into the joint with a steamer needle, or similar apparatus.
4. Use a spatula to detach the fingerboard overhang from the body.
5. Work the neck joint apart, and remove the neck.
6. Clean the dried glue off of all surfaces.
7. Chisel/sand away material and/or fashion and glue in shims to reorient the neck.
8. Clamp back together and test angle. Good? Move on. Bad? Back up a step.
9. Glue and clamp back together.
10. Repair finish around the seams of the repair.

This is a ton of work, which means it’s a ton of money. Hundreds of dollars, probably. It’s also major surgery — it’s risky. You can make things NOT better, or even worse. You can mar the finish. It’s not something to take lightly, and it’s not a great solution for low value guitars.

Frankly, and this is a hot take, it’s stupid. Think about it. No wood has been added or removed from the neck joint. It’s no different than it was when it was made. The wood has simply changed shape. So, why are we getting in there and hacking away? There is another option. It’s non-invasive (read: less risky), and it’s significantly less expensive. Downside? It’s REALLY slow, and mileage may vary.

The alternative nobody mentions

You can YouTube it. It’s out there. Essentially you reshape the neck block through heat, pressure and time. It’s been said that time is a cheap glue. Time is actually the biggest part of the process. Once it’s rigged up, it needs to sit for a month or more. Wood is stubborn. It needs to be convinced. It needs to stop remembering its old shape.

This is the rigging. There’s a partially hidden clamp that is connecting the headstock to the table itself, bending the neck down away from the body. There is an earlier step, where I pack the body full of old t-shirts to protect the bracing from heat. Then, I pump a shit-ton of steam onto the neck block through the sound hole to heat it up, and make it pliable. You cook it, ratchet the neck into an angle a little beyond what you need, and just wait. And, wait. And hopefully, when you unclamp, that neck is aligned as it should be. In this case, it was!

So… do you need a neck reset? No clue. Should you get one? Probably not. But make an appointment for a free evaluation, and I can answer all those questions for you and your guitar. Hope this was helpful!