Just a quickie this week; a whine about standardisation and a tip that will be incredibly handy to a small sliver of those reading.

Truss rod adjustments can be a pain in the ass. Mostly this ache is around the differences between metric and imperial measurements. I'd shout at the hold-outs to just get with the program but I have to confess to thinking in sixty-fourths and thousandths of an inch when setting up guitars so that might be slightly hypocritical. And, anyway, even if the entire world switched to metric tomorrow, I'd be long dead before I stopped seeing 5/16" truss rod nuts. And don't even get me started on allen wrench adjusters. Is that a ⅛" or a 4mm? 3/16" or 5mm?

In reality, it's usually not a really big deal and you get a feel for this after a while. You can mostly default to imperial for US-made instruments and metric for pretty much everything else but there are exceptions. For ages, I'd been meaning to make a big table of what guitar needed what adjuster but the Music Nomad folks beat me to it and did it much better. Check out http://trussrodwrench.com for lots of great info if you're ever confused by what adjustment tool to use.

So why all the the truss rod tirade? Well, it's a tale of two Matons. Maton is an Australian guitar builder, making some very nice instruments (often with interesting local hardwoods). Check 'em out.

If you buy a Maton today (or anytime since 2004) you'll find its truss rod adjustment buried away in the end block. It's a bit of stretch through the soundhole but you can get yourself on of their adjustment tools with a long reach and a nice 8mm socket on the end.

Deep adjustment locations like this can be awkward but it's not too tricky to locate an 8mm socket onto the nut. Hurrah!

Get yourself an older Maton and you'll find its truss rod adjustment buried away in the same place in the end block. The adjustment nut, however, is very different. It's square. It's a bloody square! It's a ¼" square nut. Gah!

The first time I worked on one of these things, I was perplexed and then annoyed. I didn't have a square nut-driver or socket. Most people don't. After swearing for a few minutes, I had an idea and got lucky.

The smaller sockets in my socket set have a square recess where they attach to the ratchet. Turns out, it's the perfect size to fit over the square Maton nut. So, I grabbed a long 5mm allen wrench and popped the 5mm socket head onto the end. I was able to get my improvised square socket over the adjustment nut easily enough. Brilliant.

Using a socket backwards to utilise the square portion that usually attaches to the ratchet wrench

So, if you ever find yourself needing a square adjustment, you might get lucky and find that flipping a socket over will do the trick.

Now that's done, I continue my campaign for world domination so I can standardise global truss rod adjusters. Also, any maker requiring the neck be removed just to adjust the truss rod will be tried for crimes against guitar repairers. They will be judged harshly. (Except for the guitars I made like that. Those are an homage to vintage authenticity and it's not even slightly because it's easier to do it that way. Ahem.) Oh, and the Lowden folk…? Their truss rod adjustment will earn them ninty years of hard labour setting up Floyd Roses.

This article written by Gerry Hayes and first published at hazeguitars.com

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