Tuning/Fret Warped Neck Nightmare...

1937Scott

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Hi. Sorry this is long, I need to vent, but I'm reaching out for help...

I'm posting this out of desperation more than anything. I am a fairly experienced Uke player, I have close to ten ukes. I can do my own set-up, but I am far from a luthier. All of the luthiers in my area are guitar guys, but I have had some repairs by them that were acceptable.

Here goes:

I love little ukes, and I have had a Kala all solid acacia Pocket Uke for months now. It's perfectly intoned, I just had to lower the nut a little when I got it new. It sounds GREAT C tuned, and I play it as such.

I found out that Kala no longer makes any of the Pocket Ukes in solid wood and I saw a solid mahogany new for sale at a shop in Hawaii. (NOT H.M.S.) UAS forced me to buy it, and the day it arrived the tuner for the E string was completely loose and couldn't be tuned. I tried to tighten the tuner and the screw was completely seized up. I almost blew a blood vessel trying to tighten or even loosen it up. No luck. The strings that were tight enough had buzz, at least the C and A ones did.

I took it to the shop to be fixed, as it was the only solid mahogany for sale in the U.S. and I was willing to repair it. A week later my local luthier had it working, and I saw he had 'dressed' my frets in a few places. The buzzing was now only on the E and A strings, but it was there even when strumming open.

I looked down the fret board from the saddle up and could see that the nut angled down lower from G going to A..... I took pictures. The string grooves in the nut for C, E, and A were more like scratches than grooves. It looked way too low from that angle, so I figured that I needed a new nut. I proceeded to hand made one from solid bone. As I was lowering and adjusting the new nut, and while the strings were still WAY to high, I got buzzing on the E and A strings. I looked, and it appeared the saddle was too low as well. So I stopped on the nut for the time being, and cut and hand made a new saddle from solid bone. I left the new saddle intentionally too high to for the time being.

I returned to lowering the NEW nut, and the buzz was still there with the saddle set VERY, VERY HIGH!! I stopped again, and took a long, critical look. Guess what? (You experienced guys are probably laughing and/or shouting at this post by now, but I had to live it.....) The NECK was bent/arched, and slightly twisted down going toward the A string!!!!! I had not been looking for it before... Keep in mind, the neck on a Pocket Uke is only five or six inches long!! Obviously, this had been that way from the FACTORY, as evidenced by the shallow string grooves in the nut.

So. I carefully dressed the frets where I was getting drag and string contact. Then I carefully set it all up, lowering the nut and saddle both making it playable.

I now have NO string buzz!! Yippee!!

Guess what??

Intonation sucks!! I can tune it C or D, it doesn't matter. PERFECTLY tuned open strings sound fine. (By-the-way, I tossed the Aquila strings and put Worth clears on.) However, here is the point and purpose of this entire post; Certain frets, at or near where the bow and twist in the neck are hideously out of tune when played. I can play it back-to-back with my solid acacia and it's absolutely awful. It sounds much, much worse out of tune than a Grizzly Uke kit. I oughttta know. (I built one back in January for fun.)

Is there anything I can do to bring it in tune? I have three solid days work into this, plus the money in repair to my guitar shop. I just want it to be playable.......and it just makes me sad.

I am unfamiliar if there is anything I can do that will bring it back in tune, or if this is a lost cause. Please let me know....

Desperately yours,

Scott
 
Weerpool!

You must send or PM me his info. I can assure you the nut and saddle are as good as it gets-they look great. And fit better. I'm willing to get it fixed if it can be....thanks, buddy!
 
Perhaps you expected more than you should have. One of the problems is you've got a pocket uke. You've no wiggle room. Bent neck and no room for adjustment equals no acceptable outcome. After all the work you've done on it, return it and consider yourself very lucky if you get a laminate replacement.
 
I suppose I didn't make myself clear in the original post. I knew when I got it that I was lucky to get my hands on one since they are discontinued in the solid mahogany. (Or any solid wood, for that matter.)

Thus, I was--and still am willing to make whatever repairs necessary to keep it and not send it back. I did not whine or come here before I had exhausted all means available to me, as I am not trying to complain. I am trying to see if there was any way possible to fix it rather than give up and/or send it back.

I will contact Kala tomorrow. But before I was going to do that, I'm pretty sure this is the tree to bark up...UU is the best resource I know of for help with ukes, and I'm glad it's here.

I might have been expecting much, but keep in mind; I have a pocket uke that plays perfectly. Intonation is perfect all the way down the fretboard-as perfect as can be expected with such a small instrument. So I have a fair comparison for this whole venture. The fact that the neck is twisted is the root problem, and I'm sorry I didn't see it when I opened the box...
 
One basic issue may be that you've already voided the warranty by working on the instrument. Usually, and for good reason, a manufacturer will want to see the instrument with it's problem(s) in the condition in which you received it.

The other issue is that most experienced luthiers need to actually have an instrument in hand to properly diagnose problems and come up with a strategy for repair. You say "bent, arched, slightly twisted"... I'd have to see it to determine exactly what you mean. And...it's highly unlikely that that has anything to do with any intonation problems.

If you don't want to send it back to Kala...which is the most reasonable thing to do...then take it to a good luthier. Why hang onto something that doesn't work for you?
 
Rick,

I agree, I have little to no expectation of warranty coverage. I have been referred to at least one good luthier in my area and I am going to meet him as soon as I can schedule. I have the original nut and saddle, and Ray Charles, were he still with us, could easily enough determine that the original nut is not right. I didn't want to return it when I saw the first problems as I don't want to give it back....I want to keep it and play it.

I'll still try, and if I get it fixed I'll post an update.
 
Hi Scott, I just went through this same issue on one of my long scale custom ukes...not warping (and no buzzing) but an intonation problem and I learned from a master luthier that there could be a variety of issues going on so you might be into a quite of bit of time and expense beyond what the instrument is worth if it's even fixable. There are various things that will mess with your intonation or make the instrument be impossible to be intoned. Whenever you adjust something that affects distance between the strings as to where they vibrate you could have problems.

Adjusting a saddle lower which I have done several times shouldn't change things UNLESS you have a saddle where the string is touching the saddle in a specific spot and then when you change the height, it shifts the string to a different part on top of the saddle maybe moving toward the back. Thus if a string is coming in contact where it meets the saddle at the front part, and then you lower your saddle and the string is now touching the back part of the saddle, you just lengthened the string..maybe 1/32 of an inch?. That is just ONE example, and several luthiers who have "educated me" on this issue have demonstrated how this causes issues. In my case, I had to actually modify the nut by cutting the nut in such a way that the string moved back on the saddle so the point where the string started vibrating was moved back and the saddle we modified with a new saddle which we actually physically moved as there was room on the bridge luckily to do this.

However, spending a hundred bucks on an instrument that's worth thousands of dollars is probably worth fixing. I definitely wouldn't go to paying anything to try and fix something that's not super simple on a production instrument and agree you should contact the manufacture but I bet Rick is right and you voided the warranty by trying to modify it on your own. Unfortunately they may not be able to replace it but if it's that bad, you can take your money and put it into something else if they let you return it, or you might find a luthier who can fix it ( if it is in fact even physically fixable). Just my .02 as I know how frustrated you must feel. Once you're into fret issues and twisting, I'm not sure you can ever be sure it's going to be fixed. What's to say the neck won't continue to twist over time too?

Good luck,
 
All good advice. I agree, I'm very interested to see what a pro says.

The dealer I took it to for the original nut repair is a Kala Dealer. They offered to see if the fret could be replaced by Kala, rather than me pay. Of course, I passed, because I was sure it was the only problem. However, the warranty would have only covered replacing the tuner. It was fixed without replacing it, so I only paid for the labor of the repair. But the bent/twisted neck was overlooked by that shop...

I can't blame him, though, as I said in the original post-Who expects a neck to be bent or twisted when it's all of five or six inches long??

Yeah, I'm not going to go broke fixing it. But if it can be fixed, I'll do it if it can be done reasonably. I have saved the original nut and saddle. I'm happy to show them to the luthier.

I understand there is math involved with string height, fret distance, spacing, and all related between the nut and saddle. I get it. But that doesn't mean I know how to fix it when a single fret is out of tune.....

I've had big-name builders mock the guys who brace all of the necks in their ukes...like Glyph/Dave Means does, or a few others. One big-name builder scoffed at me and said, "I would NEVER brace a soprano ukulele, there is no need." Well, maybe there is. Of course, if the wood had been properly dry before building, maybe not-who knows?

Thanks for listening.
 
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