My old Fender laminate was returned from my friend who borrowed it for a few months and today I noticed the action is extremely high. The truss rod seems to be almost totally turned clockwise.
The only info on truss rods on the net seems to be directions for making minor adjustments.
Can someone please help me "reset" the truss rod to neutral settings so I can then tweak it to my liking??
Sounds like your Fender is in need of a neck reset. The truss rod only adjusts the neck "relief" or curvature (back bow or forward bow). It will not help with neck angle. Take a straight edge ruler and lay it edge down on the upper frets of the neck. If the straight edge doesn't come flush with the top of the bridge and points to the middle or bottom of the bridge, then the neck has collapsed into the body, which causes the high action at the upper frets.
A guitar tech friend of mine said there was a cheap neck reset possibilities for guitars not worth the $200 - $400 neck reset. He said if you had a nice thick bridge, you could sand it down from the top. Then deepen the saddle slot with a dremel tool to get it lower. Sounds like a recipe for a split bridge to me though.
If you think it's the truss, AND if you can pardon the source, there's a 5 minute video on this link (the second one down which says, "Help, my strings are buzzing" in which none other than the infamous Denny Zager shows how to adjust a truss rod - only he uses it to raise the action. It's about 3 1/2 minutes into the video - you just have to crank the opposite way from what he does. Just do a little at a time.
http://www.zagerguitar.com/help/ (http://www.zagerguitar.com/help/)
If the neck is curved, especially alot, then turn the hex nut the other way. the neck should straighten right away.
a proper neck should be almost but not quite straight. a very slight bow is the norm. try this first , then talk about a reset. the ruler is a good way to tellif you have any real neck problems.
A good test for neck relief is to place a capo at fret one and press down on the low E string at fret 14. Then observe how much space there is between the bottom of the string and the top of the sixth fret. If you can slide a business card in the space, your relief is okay. If there is too much space there, you should turn your truss rod counterclockwise to flatten the neck. If you have no space at all, you tighten the truss rod to give the neck more relief. This will affect action, but it is NOT the way you deal with action issues. Adjusting nut and saddle height is how you deal with action. That is my understanding anyway.
It sounds like you need to see a pro to make sure just what the problem is. As others have mentioned, you don't use the truss rod to adjust action. Don't do anything to the guitar until you are sure what you want to accomplish.
E. Shoaf
Thanks for everyone's input. A pro would probably charge me more than the cost of the guitar so I want to solve this myself. I just want this old laminate for alternate tunings.