Re: Small bass starter packs

Jay S <Spamit@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"edspyhill01" <edspyhill01@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:626b466a-1802-4be8-8ba6-e17b33ab25d1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Anyone here do their own bass setups?

I do. Over the years I've had to learn.

I do as well. Adjusting the action and intonation is pretty easy to do
- especially these days when electronic tuners are inexpensive.

Not that I have to tweak every single time, but there are occassions when I
reach the other side of the Rocky Mountains
that my bass has been unplayable and needed at least a truss rod adjustment.

That happened we I flew to Korea, the action seemed fine when we arrived
but it started getting worse ever so slowly and I wasn't sure at first
if I was imagining things.. By the end of the week it was getting
really quite difficult to play. I should have adjusted the truss rod,
but was too scared in case I made things worse. When I got home I tried
gentle adjustment of the truss rod and got it back to normal quite
quickly and easily.

Since then I've happily adjusted the truss rod on various instruments.

Intonation needs to be checked/adjusted whenever you put new strings on
(or as the strings are getting older). Different strings may also
require a different action. The truss rod may need adjusting after
changing strings (especially if guage or brand has changed) and also
possibly seasonally.

I think learning to do a basic setup (action, intonation, relief) is a
useful skill for any player to learn - especially if (like a few of the
people on this list) you experiment with lots of different strings, live
in an area with large seasonal climate differences or travel. It's a
bit like basic maintenance of your car - checking and filling windscreen
washer water, putting air in the tyres etc.

Much of the tasks involved in a basic setup are pretty easy things to do
on most electric bass guitars. The action is just a case of adjusting
some screws, intonation is a case of adjusting a few more screws, or
maybe moving the bridge if it is floating - and any electronic tuner
will get you pretty well setup. To get the 8 string bass intonated I
downloaded a software strobe tuner - which did get a better result -
peterson offer a software tuner for the iPhone/iPod for something crazy
like $10 - when I finally replace my ageing iPod with one of the new
fangled ones I'll be getting that particular app. Adjusting the truss
rod is pretty easy too (assuming it is accessible) and as long as you're
patient and don't go wild turning the rod it's hard to go wrong (I did
once go absolutely crazy turning the truss rod on someone elses cheap
crappy guitar, not really knowing what I was doing, and even that didn't
break).

The only thing where you might go horribly wrong is cutting nut slots -
and if that happens new nuts, especially plastic ones, are not
expensive.

As well as the meat and potatoes setups I've also done two fairly major
instrument modification projects - the electric mandolin and the eight
string bass. In both cases I started with an existing instrument. The
acoustic body of the mandolin caved in - when I bought it there was a
factory installed pickup and the one reinforcing bar for the top had
been cut through to fit it. For that project I made a solid body, cut a
new nut out of brass, made a compensation bridge from brass and
installed a hofner bass pickup which had a coil tap modification made to
it.

For the 8 string bass project I did consult with a professional luthier
- but did everything myself except cut the final nut - this included
levelling the frets to fix a rising tongue problem and positioning and
intonating the replacement bridge. I had cut an intitial nut - and it
worked well enough - but I don't have the proper files and I really
wanted a nice nut for this bass - and the the new bone nut is quite
excellent so that really was money well spent.

--- Derek

--
Derek Tearne - derek@xxxxxxxxx
Vitamin S - improvisation from Aotearoa/New Zealand
http://www.vitamin-s.co.nz/

.

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