What else can I do to make this play better?

[cassanova]

I was over at my buddies house for several hours today trying to give his bass the low action that he desires. It was a mile off the board. I ran into something I've never had happen before.

First thing I did was sight down the neck and noticed a considerable bow in it.

I lowered the bridge saddles. Actually, I bottomed them out and then decided to work from there. The action was still incredibly high.

Then I took the allen wrench and and turned it clockwise to tighten up the rod and add some tension to the neck. The neck looked much straighter, so I retuned, raised the saddles as needed to eliminate excess buzz. The action is still a mile off the board.

Long story short, I repeated the neck adjustments and got the neck as straight as I could, the truss rod was so tight that i couldn't turn it anymore without fearing that something would snap. So at his request I didn't do anymore with that. Though the neck is much much straighter than it was before that. The problem is his action is still a mile high. We also put a shim in and that didn't yield desired effects either so at his request we took it out.

I told him I'd come here and post about it in the hopes that others would be able to guide us. I've never had to tweek a neck that much to where it felt like the truss rod or something in the neck would snap.

Its a slightly older Ibanez GSR GIO 4 banger.

I don't know what else to do to make this thing playable for him.

[ByF]

Without seeing it, or having some measurements of the neck relief or action, it's hard to say. But here are some general remarks.

If the neck is bowed, you should try to fix that first, before you mess with the bridge. If the truss rod is maxed out and can't straighten the neck, you need to investigate that first. You might need to put a washer under the truss rod nut to get a little more motion out of it.

After you've gotten the neck straight, check the nut. Maybe lowering the nut would make it more playable? Do the fret at third, tap at first fret test. There should be just a sliver of space under string at the first fret, when the string is fretted or capo'ed at the third fret. The thickness of a sheet of paper is about the minimum, but no more than three sheets of paper. Standard "notebook" paper is about 0.003 inch thick; that makes a good feeler gage, unless you have real feeler gages. If the nut is too high, you can either sand some off the bottom, or deepen the slots. Proceed very carefully, either way you go, because you don't want the nut too low.

After you've got the nut and neck fixed, you can try the bridge again. If you still don't have enough adjustment in the bridge, you might try a tapered shim under the neck. The idea is to tilt the neck back slightly, to bring the strings closer to the neck.

Good luck,

Ed

[cassanova]

Oh, crap, I should've mentioned that in my first post. We did try a shim.

Even after the truss rod was maxed out and shim installed the action still needed to be raised to eliminate excessive buzz. I found this very odd because it was still unacceptably high to begin with.

The first few frets weren't too bad. Actually, they were pretty low. Bout the width of a credit card maybe just a shade higher but still quite low. It started to get bad around the 7th fret and by the time you got to the 12th fret and higher it was off the charts. I could slip my pinky under the strings near the highest registers of the fret board. If I had to approximate the gap it was at least a 1/2 inch off the board.

We didn't try filing the nut down and to digress a moment, when I took the strings off, the nut actually fell off the bass, IMO/IME I don't think filing the nut down would enable that much of a difference, too much would have to be shaved away but its still worth trying I suppose.

[Bricesedge03]

what model of ibanez is it? I have a gsr that was my first bass. I mess with it all the time. It has always had a higher action to get no fret buzz.

[ByF]

How much relief is in the neck? Put on a capo at the first fret, fret the G string at the fret closest to the end of the body (~ the 17th fret), and try to slip a credit card under the G string at the 8th fret. Don't worry about the nut or the saddle until you get that figured out.

Don't worry about the nut falling out. After you get everything adjusted, you can glue it if you want--some people don't bother.

And you did mention the shim in your first post; I was suggesting that when you shim, use a TAPERED shim, to tilt the neck back slightly.

Ed

[cassanova]

Don't know how much relief is in the neck. We didn't use gauges or anything to measure. Truth be told, neither of us ever have and have always been able to set the action on our basses quite nicely without using them.

Might be a stupid question but why are the gauges, capo's, etc, so important? IMO/IME, setting up the bass to play well is all about how good it feels in your hands to play IMO and in my 23 years experience I've never needed those things to set my basses up with very good low action. However, I've also never encountered a problem like this one either so thats why I ask that question.

If the rods maxed out, neck still has slight bow, and strings still sit 3/4 mile off the board, then aren't using feeler gauges a moot point?

We tried the tapered shim route today and it didn't really make much of a difference, in the upper registers the actions still a good 3/4 mile high but in within the first 7 frets it did get lower.

We both got so frustrated that we both took the bass to the local shop and he said "you'd be better off buying a new bass."

Which leads me to my next question. Can necks warp so badly that they become unrepairable and unable to get good low action?

[ByF]

The measurements are important because if you don't know what the problem is, you don't know what to fix, and nobody here can help you. If you had measured the relief in the first place and discovered that the neck was twisted by 3/4 mile, you would have known that that the bridge adjustment or the shim wasn't going to help.

Yes, if your bass is in good shape you can set it up by feel. I do it all the time with mine.

And yes, necks can warp so badly that it is not economical to repair them. That's not to say impossible to repair, but how many $100 bills would you throw at an old Ibanez?

Ed

[cassanova]

Originally Posted by ByF

The measurements are important because if you don't know what the problem is, you don't know what to fix, and nobody here can help you. If you had measured the relief in the first place and discovered that the neck was twisted by 3/4 mile, you would have known that that the bridge adjustment or the shim wasn't going to help.

Yes, if your bass is in good shape you can set it up by feel. I do it all the time with mine.

And yes, necks can warp so badly that it is not economical to repair them. That's not to say impossible to repair, but how many $100 bills would you throw at an old Ibanez?

Ed

Makes sense about the neck twisting and that's something that neither he nor myself thought about.

Looking back on it all, there has only been one other bass besides this one that I wasn't able to achieve desired results on. It was an ex's Squire Affinity P bass and the action on it was as bad as this one. All the other basses I've done set ups on were in good shape, was able to adjust the rod and saddle to get very good action out of them.

When I get paid this week I guess I shall go buy gauges, capo, and other tools. BTW, how would you know if the neck is twisted?

[becker4567]

check the bridge....alot of hi-mass bridges put the strings way up there. The cheapo stock bent metal Fender bridge gets the strings prettly low.

[cassanova]

Its not the bridge. Even when we bottomed the saddles out the action was still very very high.

[rreed]

I have a cheepie GSR200 bought early this year, very similar issue that I can't dial out of it. Not so high that I can slip my (small) pinky under the strings (wow) but even being a beginner and spending the past several months monkeying w/ the setup (then again once summer set in) I can have low action w/ so much buzzing the bass is unplayable or action so high that it plays okay sans buzz but there's about a good 1/4" or so b/t the strings and the fret board.

I hate it (the "condition" not the bass). I've played w/ the same bass at GC that has much lower action w/ little or no buzz. This is why people say to buy the one you try at the store and not ordered like I did. My neck also has a lot of bow that I spend a lot of time chasing all over the place; too much or not enough and I can never get it right. Being an ignorant beginner I also do not use any measuring devices, I've just been trying to go by feel or do whatever I can to get the action as low as I can and still be able to play it.

Also, I play very aggressively digging in very hard (metal).

[JLS]

Have you tried back clamping the neck, to see if you can get a little more trussrod function?

If the visible relief is significantly different when you capo/hold at F1 & F12, and F1 & final fret, you could have a "ski jump"; these don't respond to trussrod adjustments.

[rreed]

Originally Posted by JLS

you could have a "ski jump"

I've lurked on here a bit before/after I 'Friended my Ibanez and never heard this before--that doesn't mean much--but I'd say that's exactly what mine is doing. It's straight from the heel up to a good half to two-thirds up the neck then around the last quarter/third or so of the neck near the top it curves outward. It's extremely difficult at best to get the neck "straight" but even when I do it's again extremely difficult at best to try to saddle the buzz out of it.

My stock strings are done (esp. w/ the E having some "sand" in it from being broken apparently) so when I pick up the winder that I forgot while picking up my new Blue Steels today I'll try the setup all over again and see what I can do w/ mine. One of the many things I gather from this site is that cheapy basses = cheapy necks that don't often setup well.

[Solarmist]

Originally Posted by ByF

How much relief is in the neck? Put on a capo at the first fret, fret the G string at the fret closest to the end of the body (~ the 17th fret), and try to slip a credit card under the G string at the 8th fret. Don't worry about the nut or the saddle until you get that figured out.
Ed

+1 - This is important, and step #1

Setups should be done in the correct order - then move to the next.

1) relief
2) saddle height
3) intonation

[cassanova]

Originally Posted by JLS

Have you tried back clamping the neck, to see if you can get a little more trussrod function?

If the visible relief is significantly different when you capo/hold at F1 & F12, and F1 & final fret, you could have a "ski jump"; these don't respond to trussrod adjustments.

We did that tonight and it worked to our advantage. The action is now only slightly high compared to what it was. But at least its playable.

[rreed]

I just restrung mine (stocks in favor of medium Blue Steels) and my neck found itself straight and a lot of the high action + buzz went away in favor of far greater, sharper sound w/ the new 'Steels. I've also tried playing closer to the bridge which has made a big difference but even playing in my old position (over neck pups vs. bridge pups) is still less buzz so apparently new (and thicker) strings helped.

I haven't tried lowering my action yet w/ the new strings and playing closer to the bridge (the latter of which works for some stuff but not all) but probably will after another day or two.

Just a couple thoughts.