Before steel strings became commonplace, most guitar necks were able to remain fairly straight under the low tension of gut strings without any reinforcement. But steel strings have much higher tension, and in order to counteract the pull, guitar manufacturers carved very chunky necks.
We’re not talking cool late-1950s profiles here – because necks from the early steel-string era can be an uncomfortable handful. Clearly, Gibson recognised this and company employee Thaddeus McHugh came up with a design for an adjustable truss rod.
