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"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Easiest to think it like a bow and arrow bow. With no trussrod, there would be the tendency for the string tension to be pulling the tuners towards the bridge. The only thing that it flexible is the neck from the heel to the tuners and so it pulls that length into a bow.
The truss rod is trying to counteract that by trying to bend in the opposite direction. The result is that the string tension matches the trussrod tension and the neck therefore ends up straight again.
Then, if you loosened the tension just a touch on the truss rod, the neck will start to bow again - but just by a little bit...and that is the relief
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I think some of them are illustrating the point by using the nut and last fret / string to show the bow.
The clearest example is the full body drawings, which show the neck in relation to the bridge.
There are a few varieties of truss rod around, some of which can actually create bow, as well as correct for it, I recently saw a good vid by Texas Toast which cleared up a lot of confusion for me.
The principle is the same, but in practice there are nuances. In fact, all the diagrams are showing the same things, some are just clearer.
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as far as I can tell the current consensus is to have the neck as straight as possible, adding some relief for players with heavier picking technique (like me with my 3mm pick), does that sound right?
A lot of it to do with how high you like the action, and how hard you play.
A well cut nut helps to get the action low enough to be able to play cleanly without being too high?????
The relief in the neck has to allow for the strings to oscillate.
It makes sense in my head anyway-sorry not very clear, but the point is, you have to make it work for your own style.
It's an imperfect system really. The ideal would be to have a controlled curved from nut to bridge that matches the string perfectly. Of course, it would need to be a bit different for each string of we are aiming for perfection.
We make do with adjusting the bits we can control in the hope it's fine for the bits we can't adjust
The consensus is to have a small amount of relief for the majority of playing styles.. you add extra for heavier picking styles.
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"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I am starting to do more of my own tweaking
btw, finally watched Gran Torino last week, so now know where your quote comes from
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein