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This is probably going to seem like a dumb question to y'all, but as a noob I've gotta ask. I'm going to attempt my first build (solidbody electric) in about a year. I don't have the time right now. What I do have right now--and what I'm NOT likely to have in a year when I'm ready to build, because of circumstances I won't go into--is money. So what I want to do is get all the parts right now (electronics, etc.), so I've already got them when I need them (and won't be able to afford them). Thankfully I have a relative with a fully outfitted shop, so tools aren't an issue.

I'm going to create the body from the ground up with a blank or a couple of pieces glued together & planed. However, the one thing I don't want to try, at least on my first build, is the neck. For this first go-round I'll get me a Warmoth. As with everything else, I want to buy it now while I've got the spare cash. But I fear the potential for warping as the neck sits around for a year before I get to the project. The danger may be heightened by the fact that I want a scalloped neck. One plus is I'm in dry Arizona, so not as much humidity variation as elsewhere, and also I've heard elsewhere that roasted maple is more stable than non-roasted woods, so I'd get a roasted maple neck. .

But still. Dry climate & roasted maple notwithstanding, would my Warmoth scalloped neck nevertheless run the risk of warping? (Obviously what I'm worried about is across-the-fret, side-to-side warpage, not lengthwise along-the-neck movement which is taken care of by the truss rod).

Many thanks in advanced for allaying my worries or preventing me from making a mistake.

No problem.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

There is no such thing as side to side warping.

Edit: At least that I have ever seen.

Remember that the necks sit around at the factory before you order them. Then they sit around until you start building with them. Then they sit around the whole time they are a guitar. As long as it is stored in an appropriate environment, it doesn't matter if it is on a completed guitar or sitting and waiting to be on a guitar.

Wood does move depending on conditions and cut but if it is a well made neck and you don't subject it to abusive conditions you will be okay.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

I'm currently putting together a guitar with a neck that I bought at least 4 years ago. I have noticed a tiny bit of sharp fret ends from the humidity cycles that it has gone thru (my shop is not humidity controlled) but that is part of doing the frets. Otherwise the neck is nice and stable and soon will be a guitar.

If you do get a roasted neck be sure to read the instructions included about reaming tuner holes to fit. There have been several reports on another forum of people cracking their roasted necks - Ken Warmoth cautioned about this in an interview and said they include instructions. I've neve encountered a scalloped board - might be a little trickier to level. Again, Warmoth said that they expect the end user to dress the frets but knows that most don't bother.

Good luck with your build.

Just make sure the truss rod is loosened.
Necks don’t “warp” but they bow due to an unbalance of string tension vs. truss rod tension.

Unless it’s a bad piece of wood.


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Necks do warp so much so that a decent percentage of our business is because a neck and it's wood has moved because it's now in different relative humidity than it was built in. We see most of the set-ups that we do in the months of Jan - March here in Michigan due to a neck drying out.

You are in a very dry place and Warmoth necks and others are manufactured with controlled climate with higher RH than Arizona.

With all this said it likely will change sitting around for a year with zero attachment to a body and/or strings to help encourage it to not move in the dry climate where you are. What we see over and over again is dimensional change that causes a back bow and a shrinking of the neck from side to side as well which is the cause of "fret sprout" a very common thing on a dry guitar. The wood shrinks but the metal frets don't hence the fret sprout.

If what you build is going to stay in your climate forever you may be simply acclimating materials to what you have there. You will need a double action truss rod for insurance and you will need to learn how to take down fret sprout.

But yes not only might it move I would expect it.

If what you build may be sold to others you should invest in controlling your humidity to an acceptable level for where you intend your creations to land someday.

Think he may mean twist.

Warmoth does an excellent job selecting and milling their woods. There should be no major movement over the year, provided you store in a cool place, avoid extremes and ensure that the 2-way truss rod is in the middle position with no tension in either direction.


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Hesh, are you saying that body attachment and string tension would encourage the neck to not move? I think we would all expect some amount of movement as it changes climate/conditions but I think the question is if waiting to start the build is an issue.

The neck will probably narrow causing the fret ends to need attention. I don't think we are saying that will be any different whether it is a guitar or just a neck. The neck will likely move/bow to some degree. I would think that string tension would alter how that movement presents itself but it seems to me that this issue will need to dealt with no mater when the guitar is built (climate control, truss rod adjustment. . .). Are you saying that building the guitar right away (or waiting to acquire it until he is ready to use it would offer some advantage? It doesn't seems so to me, but you have handled many, many more instruments than I have. My gut feeling is not rooted in practical experience.

I suppose one could also make the argument that having the neck acclimate to its new conditions before building with it and adjusting the geometry, fret work and set-up could have merit. Or, maybe not.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

The string tension counteracted by the truss rod does put the neck into a more stable state that will be less prone to humidity change induced movement. Whereas a neck with no tension undergoing an extreme change in humidity levels will undoubtedly move if left to sit for an extended period of time. Hopefully, that at least sounds plausible.

That's a good point Barry, and I wasn't really looking at it that way. I was not really considering the truss rod as being hardware resisting the string tension and providing some degree of stability.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Hey Bryan - Good thinking on your part but you are a little off on what I should have been more clear on. A neck on a guitar with strings on it as Barry said is supported by the structure that results from string tension and a countering truss rod and the rest of the structure, wood, etc. I'm also saying that a new neck thrown on a shelf in a non-climate controlled environment in an extremely dry or wet climate is likely to move a lot again because nothing is stopping it AND.... no one is noticing either. When we take that same neck and build the guitar the very acts of playing it will spawn needs to set-up it up, adjust that, adjust this until it settles down. I had an American Strat that did this for five years and my place is strictly climate controlled. Anyway what's notable to me is that the climate, Arizona where the neck is now was not the RH it was built at and if it's extremely wet or dry it's more likely to move.

So my real intent commenting here is on the idea that I would think that any aftermarket neck not built in AZ RH is going to be moving at least for a while, perhaps some years.

So available options would be:

1) buy the neck and get it mounted to a body, string it up then do the finishing and wiring later,
2) buy the neck and clamp it to a stable flat surface or beam, or
3) put your money in an interest bearing account until you are ready to start the build.

I would go with #3.

Let's see Barry.... My current savings account is making .05%. A Warmoth neck is about $300 average. That means about 15 cents a month. How long should you think Ironword should wait to cash in his huge fortune?

Or maybe he should buy the neck now, as a hedge against inflation - which is going up like gangbusters with no stoppage in sight.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Well, I guess a can buried in the backyard would work about as well.

Thanks Hesh for your crucial expertise. Unwelcome knowledge is usually the most important kind.

Chris Pile, yes, other than my own personal situation the inflation is an important issue, and the problem with Barry's ultimate solution is that at some point during the intervening year, some other important purchase will need to be made, and up comes the can. And please, nobody lecture me about priorities or self-discipline; when money is in short supply, there are always more important and "necessary" things to spend money on than one's initial hobby guitar-build, so the money will be spent on those more important and necessary items, and the guitar will not be built. When I say I have the money right now, I don't mean that I'm comfortably well off. I mean that I barely have enough to get the supplies above and beyond my normal living expenses (with a slight emergency cushion of ca. $500, which I always try to maintain). Me having an extra $1500 in the bank is an anomalous situation and it won't last. Some sort of emergency will inevitably occur--major car breakdown, minor medical emergency etc--and that money will evaporate. But if it has already been used for guitar-building parts which have little resale value, I'll figure out some other way to deal with my car or my broken arm because the money simply won't be there. But if it is there--well, those of you who live more or less on the edge will know what I mean. Once again, the dough will probably be used up for some genuinely important expense, but if the money just isn't there because it's already been used, the important expense will have to be taken care of in a different fashion because there's no other choice, necessity being the mother of invention & all that. Probably only those who live below the lower-middle-class income line will be able to appreciate these realities. I find that those who are decently well off, making ca. $40,000 a year or so with a family of 3 (adjust upward for more members or exceptional medical needs), just don't get it. So if you fall into that category and you feel the need to preach, I will courteously ask you to refrain.

Anyway, a lot to think about. If I do decide to purchase instead of risking Barry's can solution (which IS a significant risk, as I've outlined above), which would be better, his other string-up-to-temporary-body solution or his clamp-to-stable-surface solution?

Never bought a neck from Warmoth but frequent their site just to look around.

Thought I'd check warranty info and it looks like finished necks are supported with a warranty for 2 years.

So looks like your plan is good to go.

I haven't used a lot of terrified (pun intended) wood but my research tells me it moves about half as much as its non-forged in fire brethren. So you are building in some stability there. If you want more, maybe consider a two-way truss rod.

A good piece of neck wood, shouldn't bow, crook, cup or twist, (warp in other words) once properly dried but organic materials can disobey "rules" of nature.

Prices of instrument woods and parts are going up in price steadily so I think your plan to buy now is good.

I rough out neck blanks in batches and typically have necks bandsawn as close to final shape as possible hanging out in the shop for a year or several. Of course they get a final once over or an occasional rejection notice but they usually survive numerous humidity extremes before being attached to an instrument. Doesn't hurt them at all unless the wood is just not good.

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Brian R, Wood Mechanic
N8ZED

Me too

Marcus by Goldman has an on-line savings account that is coughing up a massive .5% right now. Oh joy And we may be seeing inflation 8 times that over the same period. Ain't life great...

No clear answers, good arguments on either side with Cocobolo and Hesh right here at the end. Still vacillating on what to do, but many thanks for all the advice.

Wood changes dimension across the grain, not along its length.

So it’s very possible to have wood warp that way. This is one reason multi laminate necks are more stable. They reverse each lamination so if one wants to warp to the left the other will pull to the right.

It’s uncommon though, and usually shows up as a twist.


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Thanks for the reinforcement, David. I saw this about a year ago in a pawnshop guitar that I didn't vet carefully enough--great price, significantly less than the ebay-checked market value, then I got it home to do my home-brew setup and found out just why it was so steeply discounted. I didn't know that the technical term for the problem is "twist", but holy moly it was twistin' 20 times more than Chubby Checker ever did. So yeah, it happens, and if you look the problem up on youtube (as I immediately did) you'll find some really elaborate steaming solutions which don't permanently work. They'll straighten out the neck for a year or two, then it twists again. Apparently once it happens, you really just have to toss that neck.

I have repaired a number of twisted necks and I don't think of it as side to side warpage, but I concede that it could be described that way. They are not repaired them with steam but by application of heat to soften glue joints. The necks I have repaired have not twisted completely back after a few years, however, there may be some slight movement back. One of the worst necks that I worked on was twisted by extreme tightening of the truss rod which was very unusual. I made a discussion of this repair over on the MIMF a couple of years ago.

Thanks for the clarification. As I noted, it was a while ago and I remembered the videos I saw had something to do with heating up the wood, so I just thought "must have been steam", though I guess it could've been just using an iron along the fretboard. Whatever the method, it seemed pretty extreme to me at the time! I do remember clearly that at least one clip I saw did say that the neck he worked on was good for a while--one or two years--and then twisted back again, whereupon he gave up on it. It was a good advertisement for bolt-ons (I seem to recall the guitar in question as a set-neck archtop, though I wouldn't bet the farm on that memory either).