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Archive for November, 2011

From 1870, European governments were becoming increasingly anxious at what they perceived as the growing threat of socialism and working class movements. Reasons for this fear derived from the myth and example of the 1871 Paris Commune, the growth in International Working Men’s Associations, universal suffrage and the growth of an industrial workforce. The urban working class had begin organising themselves in an attempt to achieve better conditions.

There were two methods by which they organised themselves. Firstly, parliamentary seats were sought and won and reforms were achieved in the political arena. Secondly, improvements were sought by strikes or revolution. Many people become confused by the concepts of communism and socialism. Both political philosophies aim to create a classless society where the means of production, distribution and exchange are owned by the community. They differ in that socialists maintain that they can achieve such an objective through democracy while communists insist that this is impossible. In Marxist terminology the terms have a further difference where socialism is regarded as a transitional phase between capitalism and communism when society is governed by the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’.

Marx advocated the abolition of private property and the establishment of a society where the community owned all the means of production. He believed that a working class revolt against its capitalist masters would be the means to effect this transformation. The German philosopher, Hegel was a major influence on Marx. Hegel contended that events evolved dialectically, to explain this concept he employed the terms thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

Most guitars basically have three areas or parts that need to be set up. One of the critical adjustments is to do with the neck of a guitar. Constant string tension could cause the neck to warp. Overexposure to weather changes or faulty workmanship could also lead to this effect.

Warping happens when the wood of the neck bends in an undesirable way along the fret board. This very largely affects the instrument’s playability. When the strings become harder to fret, the neck may need adjustment.

To check if the neck has warped, the strings must be removed from the bridge without moving the tuning keys. Thereafter, a yardstick should be laid across the neck. If it does not lie evenly across the frets, the neck is in need of adjustment. If the guitar has a warped neck, it must first be determined if the concern is mild or worse still, if it is a case of the neck being badly twisted.

A correction of a warped neck is usually done by adjusting the truss rod. The truss rod could be located in a few different places in different instruments. The adjustment of a truss rod is done using a hex wrench and turning the nut in the clockwise direction. A word of caution here is that it must be done very gradually. A quarter of a turn is generally advised and the next move should happen only after rechecking. Though this could sound easy, a slight wrong move could create damages beyond repair.

Ideally, a guitar’s fret board should be relatively straight. A warped neck will make the action too high and pressing down the strings will take more effort than possible. Tightening of the truss rod corrects the warped neck. There generally is no need for removing the strings while adjusting but a cautious approach must be adopted. A guitar with an outrageously warped neck calls for an expert hand and is very expensive but this kind of a situation is usually not so frequent. Some experts make use of heat treatment to fix a very badly warped guitar neck.