Broken Bridge/Bad Intonation

[a00nick]

About half a year ago I bought a standard Fender P-Bass, which I love. I love the sound and feel of it, but I have been having some problems with it since I got it. These problems have been in the bridge. The Saddles will randomly drop flat agaisnt the bridge, completly messing up my action. It has gotten to the point where it will do this once a week, mostly on the E string, but occasionaly on others. I was playing a show at a big venue (cat's cradel) and my E string dropped completly flat against the fretboard on our second song. I had to play the rest of my set with the 20 dollar bass my friend bought at the thrift store. This made me mad so i thought I would do somthing about it so I took it to a local shop and got them to look at it and give it a real set up. It played great except all the saddles dropped the next week, meaning I wasted 30 bucks. After the set up I was getting buzzing on the first few frets (which had never happened before) so I put some paper under th strings in the nut to hold the strings a little higher as to avoid fret buzz. Given that can't be helping the birdge problem at all but it was all i could think to do.

The question I have is does anyone know how to maybe fix the bridge and saddles, or should I just go ahead and get a new bridge. Also, any ideas on how to fix the fret noise and why it started only after I got a set up done. I know that was a lot of reading, but I didnit want to leave anything out. Thanks very much.
~Nick

[tadawson]

Originally Posted by a00nick

About half a year ago I bought a standard Fender P-Bass, which I love. I love the sound and feel of it, but I have been having some problems with it since I got it. These problems have been in the bridge. The Saddles will randomly drop flat agaisnt the bridge, completly messing up my action. It has gotten to the point where it will do this once a week, mostly on the E string, but occasionaly on others. I was playing a show at a big venue (cat's cradel) and my E string dropped completly flat against the fretboard on our second song. I had to play the rest of my set with the 20 dollar bass my friend bought at the thrift store. This made me mad so i thought I would do somthing about it so I took it to a local shop and got them to look at it and give it a real set up. It played great except all the saddles dropped the next week, meaning I wasted 30 bucks. After the set up I was getting buzzing on the first few frets (which had never happened before) so I put some paper under th strings in the nut to hold the strings a little higher as to avoid fret buzz. Given that can't be helping the birdge problem at all but it was all i could think to do.

The question I have is does anyone know how to maybe fix the bridge and saddles, or should I just go ahead and get a new bridge. Also, any ideas on how to fix the fret noise and why it started only after I got a set up done. I know that was a lot of reading, but I didnit want to leave anything out. Thanks very much.
~Nick

I am assuming that you are having the typical problem of the screws in the saddles moving when not wanted. A tiny dab of blue Locktite threadlock, or clear nail polish will keep them from moving unless you want them to. Try a search for more detail - this is a very common problem on Fender bridges.

Regarding the fret noise, sounds like they set the action too low on the setup, at least for the way you play . . .

- Tim

[Chef]

Tim covered both points well here...

[a00nick]

do you think the paper in the nut could mess up the intonation, and would if I got a new bridge of a different make, would the screws not move around as much. If so, would there be a specific type of bridge I would need or would any 4 string bridge work with fender?