Adjusting a Guitar Truss Rod

Video Transcript

"The truss rod adjustment is a delicate operation. It's very easy to break them if you go too far. We've already removed the truss rod cover. And, ideally, it would nice if we can release some of the middle strings so that we have some room to move. So, I'm going to loosen these two center strings so that I can pull them out of the way. But I don't want to completely remove all the strings because once we do, we release the tension on the neck and then all of the adjustments inside change. Remove those two, the thing that I want to make sure that I do is find the right size Allen wrench to make the adjustment. This particular one has this, this will do and what we'll do is we want to test it. If we see a warp, then we want to, if it's warping up, then typically we're going to go, in a, I guess that would be a clockwise motion in order to increase the tension and as the increased tension goes that warp should go down. We only want to go one quarter turn at a time in order to make an adjustment. Then let it sit for a moment, actually probably five minutes be wise. Test for straightness again and if it's straight then you can stop the adjustment. That's the process. If it's warping the other way, which is more rare, then you make the adjustment going this direction. If you're finding that it doesn't want to move, then there's a possibility that your truss rod has rusted. Whatever you do, the important thing is not to force it. You're likely to cause the nut that creates the possibility of making the adjustment to break and then you've got a much more expensive problem to deal with."