roger bayliss wrote:Hank does say he did not go as far as truss rod adjustment in the article Jim. I would hazard a guess that the Fenders would ship with an allen key and Hank was able to adjust the bridge on the strat. Why would he need paper under the nut on a fairly new strat ? To me that means the strat must have had some adjustments made to the action for playability and sound. I cannot imagine a strat of that quality shipping with rattles and buzzing. Hank in his own words states he was capable of adjusting the action height. He also stated he did not touch truss rods.
It is possible that Fenders were equipped with an allen key on shipment (after all, they used to come with a little booklet which explained how to make action adjustments) but in my experience, Strats were routinely traded without any adjustment keys when s/h, which probably means they tended to be lost.
Similarly, in the second half of the sixties, the tremolo arm was almost always missing, as was the bridge cover. As a matter of fact, I have a little collection of original 1960s tremolo arms and bridge covers (don't ask...).
The real question, which people have tried to answer, is what condition causes rattling on the lower frets, thereby necessitating paper in the nut.
It has to be one of two things.
The obvious fault would be the nut slots cut too deeply. But that is unlikely unless Hank cut them deeper himself.
The other fault which causes lower-fret rattle - as I am sure you know - is an over-straight neck. Even a dead straight neck will have a certain amount of low-fret string noise when played hard and if the neck has a backward bow, the strings will rattle like mad when played open, hence the apparent need for raising the height of the nut.