I am an older newbie bass player. (39 years old almost 40) I have always been into music and played in a garage band back in high school but never really learned much but how to play a few songs. I guess I'm having the old mid life crisis so I took up bass again a few months ago and since I have a little money these days I've become the poster child for G.A.S. I've bought quite a few nice basses. Nothing over $750 so not really extravegant. I've been taking my basses over to have them setup by a luthier who is also a bass player. Everything has been nicely done and not too expensive but nothing has been exactly to my liking. I've always been afraid to tinker with them myself because I'm not really a handy person when it comes to do it yourself projects and I didn't want to mess anything up. I got my Fender Jaguar setup and he told me on the phone how well it was playing and he thought I'd be really happy with it. Well, it was ok but not exactly the way I wanted it. So after reading some different setup threads I decided I was going to try my hand at setup. After all I have several different basses and if I really screwed the pooch it's not like I wouldn't have something else to play. I made a small truss rod adjustment, adjusted the action down quite a little bit, and adjusted the intonation. The strings were right on the edge where I was getting just a little bit of clackiness and buzz so I went back up with the action a little bit and WOW! I've heard people talking about having a fast neck and I guess I never really knew truly what that meant. I think I hit the setup for me pretty good. I guess it's really true that everybody has their own setup that is good for them. Since my luthier is a bass player I guess he was setting them up for what felt good to him. I had tried making a pickup height adjustment on an Ibanez I have and something was not right because I stripped the screw head and buggered another one up really bad even though I had a nice sharp screwdriver that was the right size so I have not been a total success but I will never be afraid to make some adjustments on my basses again.
Sorry for the long post but I was kind of proud of myself and I wanted to share my small success. Mods if this is not in the right place I appologize.
True words. What you learn to do with you own two hands ain't no small success
Something similar happened to me when I changed the pickups; the screws stripped after only two adjustments - they're not doin' them like they used to Maybe you can find better quality ones and change them.
Regards,
Adrian
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You are what you is - I.R. Baboon
Maybe you can find better quality ones and change them.
