Am I going in the right direction?

[gonzorob]

A friend of mine recently dropped off his old el cheapo Ibanez GSR100Z because he bought it and played it for a year and then let it sit. He figured that I could use it as something to practice with/beat around on.

It had seen better days when I recieved it. Im not sure what the heck the guy did to it but the strings were lowered all the way to the frets and the neck had some slight forward bow.

I have decided that I want to get it into shape and take it to work to use with my headphone amp so I can practice on my breaks. First order of business was to clean the badboy and it needed it. Then I put on a fresh set of rounds and raised the strings off the frets.

At this point the thing was still full of rattles and buzzes I noticed that the E and A strings were practically laying on the first fret. So I loosened the truss rod a full turn and let it sit overnight. This morning I find the bass much more playable than before, but the strings are still pretty much on top of the fret.

Should I go another full turn or am I missing something?

[62bass]

Have you tried raising the saddles for each of the strings? Have you determined how much of a bow there is in the neck when the bass is tuned to pitch? Usually I would adjust the saddles for string height, then adjust the truss rod to get it almost straight with only a slight amount of relief, then adjust the saddle height again. It may take a bit of fooling around back and forth to get it right, but if the truss rod works as it should, you don't have any too high or too low frets and there isn't a hump in the fingerboard where the neck joins the body (common on some bolt on neck basses) you'll eventually get it right.

Somewhere there is supposed to be a sticky on how to adjust your action.

[JTE]

Fisrt, check it over completley and figure out exactly what's wrong before you start turning things.

How is the nut?

Check the releif (fret the E string at the first and last fret, and check the distance between the bottom of the string and the top of the 7th fret- there should be a little clearance but not much).

How does it feel in the upper frets? In the lower ones?

Are the frets in good shape and relatively level?

Then adjust the truss rod so the releif is right. After it settles, then start looking at the bridge. If it's still got problems at the first three or four frets, then see if the neck is not adjusting there of if the fourth fret is too high.

jte

[Solarmist]

Yeah I agree - check out the nut, and see if he did some "remodel" work on it first. On neck relief give it the credit card test. Check the action height. Intonation.

http://www.tunemybass.com/bass_setup/
http://www.fender.com/support/basses.php
http://garywillis.com/pages/bass/bas...tupmanual.html
http://www.sadowsky.com/media/suppor...bass_setup.pdf

[gonzorob]

Ok,

I raised the saddles before I started working on the neck. I just tried to eyeball the saddle height to be about the same as the saddles on my squier pj. That height feels ok on the Ibby. I did another full turn last night and this morning the rattling is much less evident as it was.

The nut looks ok, he only changes strings on it once during the 3 years he owned it.

As far as the frets, I know there is at least one spot where they seem to be higher than normal, but Im not to picky because this is just a practice bass. The fingerboard checks out ok.

I have been keeping a close eye on the neck while I am adjusting the truss. When I started the neck was dead flat. Now I can tell that the strings have put a tiny bit of bow in the neck. It is starting to feel playable.

I might go ahead and try to intonate it tonight. It just seems like the bass is very close to being "right".


Thanks for the help guys!!