A few notes:
1. Planing has been used for years. I remember a fantastic small industry that developed in New York city around the non-adjustable Martin neck. Towards the end of the sixties the East Coast artists needed necks that could be used for string bending and light playing. Guys like Maury Muehleisen who played lead for Jim Croce wanted REALLY low action with bending ability. The cottage industry was bringing the actions down by planing them.
2. There are situations that can only be handled with planing, such as a compound bow. A compound bow exists when the treble and bass sides aren't bowed by the same amount. With this condition you can had a back bow on the bass side and perfect relief on the treble side. I'm not aware of fret wire that allows differential compression so planing is the only option.
3. I've heard the arguments that a neck that is planed can become unstable. You'd have to take a lot of neck material for that to happen. In logic, reducing all conditions to the extreme is called the argument reductio ad absurdum, and is considered a classic fallacy. I've got a forty-year-old Gibson Les Paul that had a compound bow. It was planed twenty years ago and the work hasn't made it rubbery or unstable. In fact, it has played better since the planing than it ever did before. The same with a forty-year-old Conn dread with a Nato neck that was planed twenty years ago. A good tech or luthier will tell you whether or not the procedure will remove too much material. Choose a good workman and he'll keep you within bounds.
Bob
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