Roasted vs Standard necks - Stability?

[drTStingray]

I have Musicman basses with lacquered maple necks, painted maple necks, oil and wax finished maple necks, oil and wax finished roasted maple necks and one with a graphite/phenolic neck!!

 

My main player is a 2018 Stingray Special with the roasted maple neck (it has an ebony board). I have found over the years that all of the basses may need minor adjustment when the weather changes significantly (such as into summer, with higher ambient temperatures) and into winter (where the ambient temperature may fluctuate significantly) especially if, like my Stingray Special, the bass is left out available to play and is out in the centrally heated/non centrally heated home environment, and gets transported to/from gigs quite regularly and is exposed (in a gig bag) to in car temperature and the temperature in a venue/during the gig (where the neck gets exposed to sweaty hands)! 
 

My observation with this main player bass is that the roasted maple neck currently varies very little. It did require a minor truss rod tweak when the weather changed after the summer (to be fair it had a very low action as well). However it doesn’t even go out of tune from one venue to another currently. So I have no problem with the roasted maple neck in this context.

 

I don’t think the other basses I have exhibit different characteristics than this.

 

From my observation, ultra low action will exhibit buzz at the end of the summer/beginning of the winter, requiring a minor tweak of the truss rod (which is, of course a very simple activity on a Musicman). I don’t think there is any difference exhibited between painted, lacquered, oil and wax, or roasted oil and wax necks with Musicman basses - as someone has already said, if the neck’s wooden it will exhibit to some extent the standard effects of temperature/ humidity on wood - AND if you have a very very low action this is likely to become noticeable through minor fret buzz at the start of winter. 

[Mickyk]

On 26/11/2025 at 10:01, Belka said:

https://www.talkbass.com/threads/roasted-maple-stability.1432896/

 

There's a decent thread from the other side on the topic here. To summarise, roasting can improve the stability of  less stable woods, like figured maples, but it won't make them stronger - apparently it's typically overdone and actually makes necks weaker/more brittle overall. 

 

I'd imaging the MusicMan neck movement issue could be down to the wax/oil rather than sealed finishes, as it seems to happen with both their roasted and unroasted necks. Warwick necks are also known to move a lot. 

 

Roasting probably does make a lot of sense for companies shifting a lot of units such as Sire/Harley Benton  - it's a way to provide a stable neck without having to dry wood out over years, or to be picky about wood selection, but in the long run, properly dried high quality wood is probably a better bet - The likes of Alembic, Ken Smith, Fodera etc. generally use kiln dried timber that's been left for years in their shops for any signs of movement, and then slice them into laminates. Obviously that kind of approach isn't feasible for mass production, so roasting is a good alternative.

Woods dont need years to dry out,they are kiln dried.Hardwoods tend to take a lot longer because of the density of the timber in question,all hard woods are different as well.By Kiln drying Timber it refers to the  concentration of RESIN within the wood the denser the wood the longer it has to spend in the kiln in what we called to "Dry" the Timber.We do this by weighing the Wood then in the kiln which opperate by steam and fans and periodically test the timber with moisture meters and again weighing the Timber til it reaches a certain point of dryness.A couple of examples Mohagany takes longer usualy to dry than Hard Maple as its a more denser timber.

Bottom line is ?"How do i know this about timber",well i worked in the Timber industry for 25 years manufacturing hardwood and softwood flush firedoors.

Roasted maple takes on average a month to dry the resin tops.