Loosen the bolts holding the neck about a 1/4 turn.

I ' heard ' movement on my Korean Hamer Strat.

April 16th 2018 edit--------------------------------------------------------------
According to Leo Fender and this G&L manual, it is recommended maintenance with strings at ' half tension '.
http://glguitars.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/GLmanual.pdf

 

Last edited by a moderator: Apr 16, 2018

From what I heard putting a wood wedge in between the body and the neck will help also.

 

Just a little 'clink' sound, right? A bunch of years ago I did this to a friend's Squire 3/4 Strat that I had for a while and it made the noise when I loosened up the neck. After that it had a different vibe, sounded better. I did it to the Blade RH2 when I first got it but it was tight as tight could be. I also have a Westone Thunder version 1, a Matsumoku build, that has sat in its case since I bought it (I didn't have a double humbucker guitar and bought it just in case. Has active electronics, a whopping 25 dB internal boost and has crazy sustain with its neck thru body, it just never ends, plugged in or not! It needs TWO batteries!!! Canadian Ash, hard maple and walnut. It needs a fret job and lots of work...one day!

 

Why extra sustain?
what does loosening actually change in guitar? action?

 

Yup.
I have a Greco neck thru that looks very similar to yours.

Click on the video again, I cued it to 0:41s where he explains the concept.

The dude mentioned ' the first two normally don't creak......'
I heard creaking on all four bolts. This is probably a great tip for medium to budget guitars.
I can't imagine a Tom Anderson with his two bolt system needing this.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Apr 1, 2018

The Greco neck thru guitars are just killer. The woods that they, Westone and the old Blades are really dense. Your Greco and my Blade are Sen Ash and hold a certain power that is visceral, they exhude strength that comes through and is felt when played. The guitar vibrates powerfully against my body and I catch a kind of a buzz every time I play it. It is also a really beautifully figured wood. I just enjoy looking at it.

 

That's the one. Only I had a Floyd Rose and some Duncan LiveWires installed.

I always thought it was walnut, thin maple and mahogany in the middle?
I need to pull it out for dive bombs.

 

I’m a guitar tech for a living. All he’s doing is maring the threading inside the body, more than likely causing an air gap which over time will gooch your neck up by causing a hump in the neck. Please don’t do this to your guitar....

 

@Moogerfooger that's not what i see.

On most cheap to medium guitars, neck pocket is not adjusted right.
Neck is bolted on BEFORE putting the strings in tension. So the neck is NOT in final position, but in average/centered position.
And no time/money to loose to do it again with strings in place at factory.

What he is doing is just letting the strings "pull" the neck tighter into the pocket. He explain it very well.
And the creak is just the neck "sliding" in the pocket, due to adherence between neck and pocket (paint, varnish...)

About air gap, i don't see anything with this method. When he tighten bolts back, one by one, each bolt will push air out of the pocket.
I don't see how an air bubble could stay under a neck, until there is some "glue" or anything like that.
If so, any neck assembly could have the same problem at factory

Another proof there is no air with his method : sustain improved, so wood contact improved, too.
And that was the point.

I really don't see any problem, apart VERY bad neck pocket sliding laterally when released.

 

Here's a G & L manual:
http://glguitars.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/GLmanual.pdf
This clearly states several times as recommended bass and guitar maintenance when you first receive the new guitar.
The only difference is G & L, recommends strings at ' half tension '.
That ' L ' guy knows a little about bolt-on necks?

 

Last edited by a moderator: Apr 1, 2018

Leo who?

 

I've got an Ibanez 4 string bass and a Parker Nitefly with bolts.
Maybe loosen the strings a few semitones first .....

 

Several schools of thought on proper guitar maintenance.
Fig. 1 Mr. Townshend, here shown "sighting the neck," prepares to resets it during a performance at a major venue.



Fig 2, Wherein Mr. Green of the rock-and-roll outfit Billy Joel, illustrates his neck resetting procedure on a neck-through guitar.



Fig. 3 Mr. J. Hendrick, here seen annealing his instrument after a particularly hot "solo,"

 

A few times when I was drunk, to show how well made my Madeira A-30M (Guild's import brand in the '70s) I would hold it vertically about a foot up in the air and bounce it on the ground hard enough that it would come back up into my hand which I hadn't moved. It never hurt the guitar and it would actually, amazingly stay in tune. Maple is a hardwood, LOL I sold it for $100 to a guy in my dorm, and one night he got angry and for some reason to let the steam vent, pulled a Pete Townsend on it completely obliterating that poor guitar. That Madeira looked a lot like the big old jumbo Ibanez that I now, but there is no way that I could ever get drunk enough (I don't hardly drink, maybe a beer or a Baily's now and then) to try and bounce this one. It was a tightly built guitar.

The Madeira A-30M

 

On a side note, in the 1980s Pete Townsend had made for him a bunch of the then new ESP brand guitars which were in the earliest of days just the parts shipped in from Japan and assembled by contract by a few shops on 48th Street in NYC. I bought one because my friend Jeffery Levin was assembling them, it was only $350 (he didn't charge me tax, oiled the neck to my specification and also put in rightous pups...and if it was good enough for Pete then it was good enough for me!

 

Just performed this maintenance on my Ibanez bass. A quieter ' creak ' than the Hamer. It could be due to strings loosened first?
Even the Parker Nitefly ' creaked ' a little which has metal inserts in the neck, a non traditional bolt-on setup.

Dropping a guitar? WTF

I actually bought a Takasaki model when ESP was just a retail store in Tokyo about the same time.

 

If it's made of wood, it will move and move and still move almost continuoisly until it falls apart. Houses settle and creak, trees sway in the wind and bend until they break. I need to loosen and tighten the legs of our long kitchen table at least twice a year lest they wiggle. If its not glue binding it together adjoining wooden pieces seem to want to skidaddle away from each other like as if each thinks the other has cooties. I had an Ovation big bowl back acoustic that I got rid of because the wood moved but the fiberglass back didn't. I never really liked it that much though.

 

dude I drink... that option has never been an option

 

I guess that you just need to drink MORE! MUCH MORE!!!

 

I just done it on my old Jackson DK (it needed a full reset due to gauge AND tuning change)
Neck moved a little, and yes, i got more sustain/bass response.

Another mod i done : a little wood block between body and vibrato block to convert "fully floating" to "dive only" vibrato. And over tightened springs.
Now i have more "wood" sound. I can drop tune. I can bend like crazy. And no more "zero return point" instability due to floating vibrato
I still can dive bomb and such extreme vibrato tricks.

I advice the "wood block" trick to every one having problems with floating vibratos