Repair And Restoration
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Stripped Out Trussrod
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Stripped Out Trussrod
I have an epiphone 335 style guitar on the bench right now. Bad fret buzz on the first frets. No relief in the neck. Pretty Clear its a trussrod adjustment and out the door it goes. But the truss rod is stripped out pretty bad. My 4mm allen fits, in but it has a lot of wiggle. My 5/32″ allen doesnt slide in all the way. I dont have a full set of torx wrenches. But i thought that might get some grip. What is the best way to get this thing Adjusted?
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24 Replies
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So I think those are double action trusses? If so, I’d take a 5/32″ hex wrench, cut the 90 degree end of so it’s straight, slightly bevel one end, and hammer it in and adjust. 5/32 is a hair bigger than 4mm. You can back it out by putting a pair of vice grips on the end of the rod and hammering on the vice grips to back it out.
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I was thinking about making a custom wrench. will probly give this a go. Maybe even give a slight hollow grind to each surface so those corners BITE
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stewmac.com
Gripper Truss Rod Wrenches - StewMac
Allen truss rod nut too worn to adjust? These wrenches save the day!
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I am not one of the Rich looths
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Just passing along a suggestion. Good luck on your project.
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If that nut comes out I’d pull it and replace it. I’ve had luck with a flat blade screw driver before. If that didn’t work, you could go with a reverse drill bit, reverse tap and then a reverse bolt. Chances are good that it would come out with just the drill bit. You might also just try popping an easy out in there.
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Thats a great idea! i have a set of Ez outs
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That’s the thing though…..I think it’s a double action so you can’t take the nut out. If you could, piece of cake. That’s why I think your gonna have to go oversize and adjust. I like the gripper wrench….same idea. I’ve used the idea I’m suggesting by the by and it works well. 4mm or 1/8″ hex size is stupid. Don’t know why they’re allowed. The pressure it takes to turn a double action vs. the pressure it takes to strip crappy steel small dia. hex nut is a loser.
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Oh gosh, and forgot to mention…..DO NOT USE a ball end hex wrench……The groove where the hex rod meets the ball end is considerably thinner than the dia. of the hex rod, especially on a 4mm or 1/8″ wrench. The ball end snaps off quite easily.
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I went out and bought a set of allen style torx wrenches. i got one to seat really snugly with some taps of a hammer. No luck turning. Tapped in an EZ out. got that bad boy gripping real good. Verdict is, this thing is seized up real good. I had already sprayed a dash of penetrating oil in there the other day.
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I cant tell if the easy out got it turning.
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No, i slowly gave more and more elbow grease and nothing. The neck was coming out of the vise. but no turning.
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Interesting. Did you try heat ?
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no. heat it with a soldering iron and then the EZ out again? What are the chances of the hex nut coming off and being able to be replaced?
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If there previous comments about double action rod are correct, 0% chance. Also, if it is a double action rod, you may be at the end of the adjustment going towards relief. The only move from there is broken.
Is this a customer guitar ?
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Good points. It is a customer guitar. He likes it but says he has little emotional attachment to it.
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Burn it in a pile of used underpants that were discarded for loose elastic.
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Said a well regarded professional. Ok well. Cant said i didnt try. Thanks for the help
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I like the burning approach………However, problem solving can be fun? So, If your using an easy out that means your turning counter clock wise on a double action and that means that you are trying to force relief. So, did you try to turn it the other way to confirm it’s bottomed out, because if it’s bottomed then you should be able to go the other way towards upbowing. If the rod nut isn’t stripped or the rod broken, then put it in neutral, and go for heating the neck. Cheap and easy with heat lamp. Clamp it down well past relief wanted (say 20 thou), then heat that neck up to about 250 for an hour, and then let sit for a few days. Before unclamping, hopefully truss rod will adjust to tightness to maintain relief you’ve introduced. This all if the truss rod can be turned towards up bow. Good training as you are gonna run into this a lot.
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I thought about exactly this last night. I have been mainly trying to add relief to the neck this entire time. I have tried to move the truss rod both ways , but mainly trying to loosen. I would say its a good idea to put some effort trying to turn it the other way, but i need a way to get some GRIP on it.
I Do like the problem solving and i don’t like being defeated. This would be the first unaccomplished repair
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So……the same tool you used doesn’t work the other way? You stuffed a torx head in correct? Should go the other way as well. You can get left handed bolt extractors as well to go in opposite direction but I think stuffing torx bit does less damage. I fixed a neck this way. It twisted all over the place. Someone bottomed out nut in relief direction and broke off hex ball end in nut. Extracted that but the advantage I had was the nut wasn’t stripped. I turned nut in clockwise direction until tightened up. Then backed off to neutral. Neck was 3/32″ upbowed! I clamped double the amount of relief into neck (1/4″ expecting neck to spring back but also thinking that I’d have more play in truss rod towards relief). Then used two heat lamps to heat entire neck to about two hundred degrees. I put sheetmetal reflector under neck to reflect heat to underside (this idea from Scott St. Dennis. He has numerous youtube vids where he uses this method. Good to check out. Thanks Scott!). Used an infared gun to check. You can move heat lamps up and down above neck to control heat. See previous post to go from here. End result was slight relief. Go For It!
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I like this! Thought about doing something similar already. Doesn’t really solve the Trussrod issues tho.
Dove in trying to Crank it the other direction yesterday, with no luck. Good idea tho.
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You can fix it if you want as a learning process if you haven’t done the fix. Good training for when something serious comes in. The picture of the neck heat was learning for me. We were able to get a replacement neck for the instrument but I wanted to see and experiment for myself. I had access to the truss rod if it needed replacing. Everything worked, but I needed to go through the process.
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