Truss Rod Noise???

[Riffmeister]

I have played about 3 or 4 different Jackson imports in my local store, and when depressing the trem bar, there is a popping sound in the neck, is this normal?

On one of them, it seemed that the nut wasnt screwed down and was moving when the strings went slack and back, but the other three, it seemed as though it was the truss rod making the noise.

My songs Friend got a Kelly and it also made this noise. My soloist never did that, so I don't know if this has to do with bolt on necks are if there are just defects in these guitars, which I would think was too much of a coincidence for them all to be like that.

[MakeAJazzNoiseHere]

Probably the nuts on all of them. You can't always see it move.

Unlock all three lock nut clamps and see if it still does it.

[bainelaker]

You see this problem on a lot of Jackson, ESP, and Ibanez bolt-ons in stores these days. The neck wood shrinks and expands, leaving a little wiggle room with the locking nut. It's an easy fix, loosen the nut, pull the bar back tight (raising pitch) and re-tighten. Ibanez EDGE users will know what's up.

[atarilovesyou]

You see this problem on a lot of Jackson, ESP, and Ibanez bolt-ons in stores these days. The neck wood shrinks and expands, leaving a little wiggle room with the locking nut. It's an easy fix, loosen the nut, pull the bar back tight (raising pitch) and re-tighten. Ibanez EDGE users will know what's up.

This problem has just started on one of my Deans...I thought it was the truss rod too, but after reading this thread I loosened the nuts. It turns out it's the low E locking nut; when I loosen it off, and dump the bar, there's no noise (like a metallic click)...but when it's on tight, it makes that noise when I dump and then raise it. I flipped the piece around, no change.

So, more experimenting showed that if I loosen off either of the two bottom nuts, the sound goes away. I tried to pull back the bar while the nuts were loose and retighten, but that did nothing.

Am I going to have to get the nut drilled back on or something tech-ie like that? That noise is brutal annoying!

[atarilovesyou]

After some more searching, I found that it was the screws that hold the actual nut to the neck. Mine has two top mounted screws, so I carefully tightened them...and it worked! Woohoo!

The screws were barely even loose, so it's strange that such a small amount of movement made such a noise when dumping the bar.

Anyway, just in case anybody might wanna know!

[warlok]

I'm 99.9% sure that's what MAJNH and blainelaker were talking about. Loose nut mounting screws..

[dg]

Sometimes just tightening them once solves the problem permanently, but I've had guitars that repeatedly loosen back up. The solution there was to add a sliver or two of toothpick to the screw holes to keep them tight. This issue is one of the reasons that some people prefer through-mounted locknuts. I still think the weakening of the neck outweighs the advantage, though.