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Hey guys!

A friend of mine has a Washburn guitar that has a dip in the neck from the 10th fret to about the 17th or 18th. Is there a way to fix this or should the neck be replaced completely?

From what he is telling me it drops down at the 10th and comes back up so that the sound at every fret from 10 to 17 sound the same.

Pull the frets, plane the fingerboard, and then refret.
Or smash the whole thing to smithereens.
Your choice.

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

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The truss rod might just need to be properly adjusted (even some brand new guitars need to have the truss rod adjusted)

If it's only bad at only one end of the neck, usually a truss rod adjustment won't be enough.

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

Certainly sounds to me like a severely bowed neck. The bow is so severe that the strings when pressed down from the 10th to the 17th fret are bottoming out on the 17th fret.
You could try tightening the truss rod (nothing to lose there), but I don't think it'll help much. And I doubt there'd be much fretboard left after planing it level.
I vote option 2 (smash the whole thing to smithereens).

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

I think you meant loosening the truss rod, right?

From the description of the problem( drops down at the 10th and comes back up so that the sound at every fret from 10 to 17 sound the same.) it sounds to me like a forward bow, not a back bow. In which case, you would tighten the rod to straighten the fretboard. But perhaps I misread.
If it's a back bow, the chances of correcting the problem by loosening the truss rod nut increase greatly.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

I read it backwards. I was thinking it was a backbow because I don't think I've ever seen an up bow cause a fret buzz.

It almost sounds like all he may need to do is straighten out the neck and raising the action. This wouldn't be the first guitar I saw where the owner completely botched the bridge setup, and then tried to fix the action with the truss rod.