I won't play my AXIS for 6-12months... Shall I downtune ?

[vincentm77]

Hi everyone,
I won't play my Music Man AXIS (version with FR tremolo) for a while, 6 months, maybe 12 months.
Obviously I will let it rest in its case, in a controlled environment

Shall I also downtune the guitar ? Eb or D ?!

Is there any recommendation as to how to optimally store a MM electric guitar ?

According to Neck and storage questions , it is not even recommended to downtune the guitar..

Thanks
Vincent

 

[Astrofreq]

I wouldn’t detune the guitar as I wouldn’t want the neck to ‘get used’ to any other tension than where I would normally want it

 

[Sweat]

Nope so stupid when people think down tuning or loosening the strings is good

 

[dibart77]

No! Keep the neck under the standard tension it expects. Forever. Never ship a guitar tuned down. Never tune it down to rest. You want it to stay in equilibrium.

 

[nervous]

I will echo the others advice of leaving it tuned to standard pitch with the addition of a personal experience.

Both my '97 and '99, when strung with a hybrid set of EBMM 2241 9-46 strings, has barely enough pull on the neck to pull it into enough relief with little to no engagement of the adjustment wheel on the truss rod. And it's a one way rod so string tension is a critical component in generating the required relief. So, when I had my '97 disassembled for restoration and the body was out to paint for several months I stored the unattached neck adjusted to flat. On the reassembly the neck was very stubborn in recovering into the correct relief and because it's a one way rod there was little I could do except lightly 'exercise' the neck, string it up and hope that the reapplied string tension would eventually help the neck recover. It did but was an uncomfortable period sitting and hoping.

When I did my '99 a couple years later I built a jig of sorts with the correct scale length using the bridge and strung up so that the neck would have normal string tension applied for the year it would ultimately live off the body. From the necks POV it had no idea is wasn't on the body. And when reassembly time came for that one it was like it was never removed, no issues and set up was a breeze.

So string tension is important to keep everything 'normal' in my opinion.

 

[Stratty316]

I rotate my guitars out. Living in the Las Vegas Desert I have found that certain guitars like the summer better and certain guitars like the winter better. I always leave them in the case tuned. My first indicator that something is wrong is if I pull it out 3-6 months later and it's not in tune.