The Tale of the Maruszczyk Elwood 5a Absolution (Syfon bass)

[basexperience]

  On 10/04/2025 at 07:05, Aidan63 said:

is the original truss rod made of left hand thread bar ? Is it straight or curved ? Was the slot flat top and bottom or curved ? What's the tpi or thread pitch ?

Just trying to get my head around how it worked compared to say the original Fender truss rod design, as opposed to the more modern design type Martin is using to replace it.

I traded my Maruszczyk back through BD a good few years ago, never had any problems but it was incredibly sensitive to adjustment, forget your 1/4 turn adjustment, you'd move it just 5' and the neck relief would move by 5 thou 

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If you look at the picture, you can see the original rod is threaded so it tightens anticlockwise (the head was attached to the top of the rod as you see it in the picture, I think). It looks pretty straight to me in that pic. I can see why it *was* sensitive, the threading at both ends presumably means you get a lot of travel for a small amount of adjustment at the head. What I can say for sure, is that I knew all along it was a reverse action rod, and I never got the neck flat.

 

@Manton Customs - did the old rod channel show signs of compression where the rod was mounted internally? I'm curious, too.

Edited April 10 by basexperience

[Manton Customs]

Curved channel, straight rod, some compression around the anchor. 😃 

[basexperience]

I'd always rather have a rod which needs a little more turning to achieve the desired result (within reason) as this allows for finer adjustment - if you're a picky bugger like me who loves the neck totally flat with pretty much no relief at all, it makes all the difference. I'd also imagine a rod with a rather rapid adjustment might get "stiff" faster, as presumably you require more force per unit of relief (the forces here remain the same, it's kind of like gears on a car - I'd like first gear on my truss rod, not 3rd)

[Woodinblack]

My action is a bit to high on my elwood at the moment, it has put me off adjusting the truss rod!

[basexperience]

  On 11/04/2025 at 13:06, Woodinblack said:

My action is a bit to high on my elwood at the moment, it has put me off adjusting the truss rod!

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Don’t be put off - critical to me finding out I had a problem was discovering I couldn’t adjust things to my liking. I’d say it sounds like very small adjustments, then give it time to settle, and critically remember the anticlockwise reverse action on the rod. 
 

I’ve thought about this a lot, and I wonder if the old rod design could even get the neck as flat as I wanted it. I’d had the bass around 2 years at that point, and it had never been quite as ludicrously flat as I keep other basses… 

 

I can say that getting the bass fixed has been a great adventure in itself!

[basexperience]

I’ve had an update from Robin at @Manton Customs - neck is back together, everything is great, all that remains is the cosmetic job to ensure the new binding looks in keeping with the slightly aged binding on the rest of the bass (this thing has binding on all the edges!). So that’ll take maybe another 2-3 weeks. 
 

really looking forward to getting it back. Being able to play it like the Rikkers will be amazing.