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Barry, I don’t have skills in guitar repair - particularly neck and bridge adjustments- but I found your video to be very informative and practical. I am returning to bass playing after many decades away from the art, and your explanation was very helpful in my evaluating the neck of my bass. I will be consulting a local luthier, but I feel much better prepared to have an intelligent conversation with him. Thank you for your excellent presentation.

So the people in the audience who pay more are more important so they are the frets near to the neck? Who is on the stage?

oh my, I've been repairing stringed instruments for over 40yrs, and you seem to be confusing a very simple thing as neck relief with little narratives and anecdote. Very simply, relief is how straight your neck is. Typically, guitars are set-up to be very close to perfectly flat, but with a little bit of relief (slightly concave). The rest is simply how to achieve this

As straight is so much in favor manufactors know tends to ship them necks straight, dead straight. I recently got three of them straight set guitars and all three came as backbowed. A high action and the neck set dead straight, there is a of lot of tension pulling on that guitar. These guitars are affordable so the truss goes with it, the neck trembels and to escape, it pops uppwards! That is hell.

Maybe this video is helpful to a person that already has a fair amount of knowledge about these things, but if you are like me, and you don't know anything about guitar setup, there is not enough information here to be helpful. The arena seating metaphor does not illuminate the situation. What exactly should the relationship between the fret and the bridge be? After watching your video, I don't know. You did not even take a moment to define and describe neck relief, which is the reason that I watched your video in the first place. In fact, you did not even mention neck relief until halfway through the video, and still it was not defined. I leave knowing nothing more than I knew before. As a teacher, assuming your students know more than they do negates the value of your teaching. I do appreciate you taking the time to make the video.

The first minute of the video made me smile, I've never thought of/seen a guitar that way! Got yourself a new subscriber.

This is one of the best explanations of neck relief I've seen. With a neck that's dead straight after the instrument is strung and tuned up, the clearance between the string and the fret above another one that's fretted (e.g. with a finger) gets increasingly small towards the nut end of the neck (basic geometry). Neck relief helps to reduce this effect, and it's very convenient that necks typically bow more at the thinner end, which is where the bow/relief is most needed.

I just did this to my twelve string, and when I got the neck off I noticed the heel shim was a #4 (0.095") and the pocket was a #-4. That is how it was from the factory. I calculated that I needed a #30 in the heel(.075") to get the correct angle, but I was always told the relationship between the two shims had to be a difference of 6. So I put a #24 in the pocket. Was that the correct way to do it, or should I have maintained the factory set-up and put a -30 in the pocket? any help would be greatly appreciated Barry!

From what I've been told, the heel shim must pair up with a specific fingerboard shim. And as Barry said, the definer is "6" So whatever number shim you put in the heel the fingerboard shim is 6 more up. Example, if the Heel shim is #6 then the FB Shim # to use is 12, if Heel is 8, then FB is 14, and so on and so on. Is that right Barry?

18 subscribers and counting. Hope all is well with you, the professor and the pup. This is Warren and I’m in Florida now. Pleasure to see y’all on CZcams.

Now ya got 17 subs Barry. Thanks for the info man!! Appreciate it!

Thank you Barry! I have been scratching my head trying to figure the math for a Baby Taylor. That is only a shim under the neck, but the math works out the same if you measure from the body joint to the bridge end of the shim. Now I need to go search for other videos you have.

Light does NOT travel in a straight line, Einstein said light comes to the earth at an ANGLE, and that angles of light are messenger particles, get the facts first.

A Gittler? Wow

I have a Brad Paisley Tele with the Truss Rod adj. at the Heel. Vintage. I get it. Wish they would have had made it at the neck. So if I had to do an adj. would it be possible to just remove the pickguard ? Question #2. How often do neck adj. typically happen ? 3. Would I just be better off replacing the neck with a truss rod at the neck end ? thoughts. Thank you ! Great vid.

Nice video. Do you think greater than 4/64 is needed on base side if you play more aggressively?

This video is amazing! Thank you so much! Regards from Brazil

Barry, Scobie from Seattle here. DH shared this video with me recently. This was a lot of fun to watch and reminded me of the first time you clarified so much neck geometry for me over the phone, in preparation for our bass-building project. I remain honored to have had that and all other lessons from you. In this CZcams presentation, I followed all of it.... right up until you started using your short Starrett to begin indicating an actual >reverse< in the relief curve as you began approaching the body of the guitar. Why on earth would convexity anywhere on the frets be desirable, however subtle? Wouldn't you want the neck to simply stop curving (having relief) as it approaches the body? Perhaps your explanation here is meant to address why one might want the relief curve to fully reverse, but if it does, I've missed it.