Kay 5 string neck angle

[james condino]

I had an old Kay 5 string show up today that had many poor past repairs. The "indestructable" epoxy that the last repair person used to attatch the neck let loose, as did the bolts that he put in the heel. He also epoxied the back on. My favorite part is that he was so impressed with his work that he added his own giant signed restoration label to the inside. All of this from someone who charges incredibly high prices and brags about his expertise in vintage violin restoration... The amazing thing is that the bass is not an old basket case. It is pretty clean and in very good shape; correct hide glue repairs should have worked fine.

I'm not looking forward to cleaning up any of those, but my main question has to do with the neck angle. On most 4 string Kays, the factory neck angle and shallow overstand puts the bridge height at around 135mm. I've generaly found that increasing the overstand to around 40mm and / or kicking the neck angle back a bit so that the bridge height is closer to 155-160mm adds a fair bit of projection and winds up a better sounding bass.

Does the same thing apply to a five string, or is the extra tension too much stress on the ply box? The current owner uses a high C sting.

j.

[basswraith]

I worked on a 5 string Kay last year. Before I put a new FB on it I put a wedged shaped shim between the neck and FB. The result was that the bridge was 6.5" tall when i was done. That bass sounded like a million bucks and sold soon there after. Try it. I think the extra bridge height will make a positive difference. I should add that it was converted to a 4 string so the lower 5th string was not part of the final product.

Michael Hartery
www.bostonbassworks.com