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estebanana -> RE: carbon truss rods - are the needed? (Feb. 28 2011 23:48:45)
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If you have good wood you don't need a CF rod. A few guys are putting them in as a matter of course these days, but select your wood well and have no worries.
If you have to do a repair on a guitar that has a whippy neck or it has bowed wildly, one of the repairs is to use Carbon Fiber rods to discipline the neck. I've done it a couple of times and found it useful. It saved a few medium quality classical guitars from the dumpster.
As a repair process, my feeling is that I'd rather go though other forms of getting the neck back in order before I resort to a CF treatment. The method I have used is to rout a groove in the neck under the fingerboard and press the CF rod, quite tightly fit, with epoxy. Then clamp it in the position it needs to be in while the epoxy cures. You can do the same think in new construction and end the CF rod just before it gets to the nut, letting it run out of the neck bock on the sound hole side.
I've used the 1/4" by 3/8" rectangular rod. People have been using this for repair work on older instruments too like mandocellos etc. where neck resets are not practical course of action.
CF will not really make the neck lighter, in fact you should summon up the incomparable Anders E. for his thoughts on neck lightness. He has some good ideas and observations.
In this case I would say fear not to spare the rod, as the guitar will be unspoiled.
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