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Adjusting Neck Relief

  • Updated

Before Adjustment

Neck relief informs you how much the neck has bowed. Because wood is a natural material, your guitar’s neck will bow over time, with the intensity based on temperature and humidity.

Relief is the first adjustment made after installing new strings on your guitar, and comes before setting the string action, bridge, intonation, pickup height, and string nut.

Our relief specification: Relief should measure .005" to .010" (.3/64” to .6/64”)

Checking Neck Relief

  1. Tune the guitar.
  2. Put a capo on the 1st fret.
  3. Hold down the string at the last fret.
  4. Measure the gap with feeler gauges at the 8th fret.
truss_rod_adjustment.gif

Adjusting the Truss Rod

Remember: The PRS double acting truss rod achieves twice the amount of adjustment as the single acting rod with the same amount of movement of the adjusting nut. Do not over-adjust!

  1. Remove the truss rod cover on the headstock and place the truss rod wrench over the adjustment nut.
  2. Reducing relief: turn clockwise (straightens forward-bowed neck).
  3. Increasing relief: turn counterclockwise (straightens back-bowed neck).
  4. Only move in ⅛-turn increments, retune, and recheck.

A video tutorial can be found here: Understanding Truss Rod Adjustments | Tips From The Tech

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