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3 bolts vs 4 vs 5.... etc.

#21
I just got a brand new G&L 2000. It has six bolts. What I noticed as I was setting it up for my style, (very LOW action) was that the neck was higher on the "E" side than the "G" side in the pocket. I noticed this by actually looking down the bass from the bridge towards the head stock. You could see a slight tilt of the neck upwards on the E side. So, I took the neck off and low and behold, there was a bunch of loose wood shavings and a piece of sandpaper!! in the neck pocket of the bass body.:eek: I cleared all of the debris out, cleaned up the pocket a bit and re bolted on the neck. Perfect fit now. I had to lower the e and a string saddles and am very pleased. And now I can "feel" the resonance of the strings better through the bass. So much for quality control! :D But the main thing now..........:bassist:

It rocks.
 
#24
I would have taken a pic or vid of that. lol

Anyway, aside from using inserts and bolts for a more secure fit without the chance of striping out like you can do in bare wood i dont see any difference. That reason alone is enough for me to prefer at least 4 bolts and inserts (not that 3 wouldnt work)
 
#28
I have a 90s G&L and it had a dead note at D# on the G string. It came with standard three bolt system so I thought a six bolt update AND threaded inserts would correct the dead spot...Nope . It is still there , the neck is very solid feeling but I don't think any of it was necessary.
 
#31
Aspidites said:
How often do you see a loose neck that cannot be corrected by tightening the neck bolts?
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Depends on what you are paying for your basses! Most of my SX basses seemed to have ratty ill-fitting pockets with screws at angles. Tightening those doesn't seem to help much unless you clean them out and re-drill screws etc.

If you are buying reasonably decent basses, sure you wouldn't ever see or expect a problem.

Basically once the connection is tight, then more doesn't add anything to it. So on my G&L basses I did NOT put inserts on the 6 neck bolts. Just made sure they were tight. Now the BRIDGE which is held on by just two screws and is known to commonly lift up if you don't string through-body got inserts. Fixed that problem. (which is a "connection" problem but not a neck problem)
 
#32
Jawknee said:
I have a 90s G&L and it had a dead note at D# on the G string. It came with standard three bolt system so I thought a six bolt update AND threaded inserts would correct the dead spot...Nope . It is still there , the neck is very solid feeling but I don't think any of it was necessary.
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This is what I found too. One of my SX basses had a slight dead spot before fitting the neck pocket and adding inserts. Afterward the bass felt very nice and solid with great tone, but the dead spot didn't change one bit!
 
#36
Joe Smithberger said:
FWIW my background is in Mechanical Engineering. I know more than a little about how parts fit together and manufacturing tolerances, having designed Aircraft Components for 12 years. Here is my take on the bolt/neck pocket thing:

Fender basses traditionally have a relatively loose (by machining standards) fit between the neck and neck pocket. This means that the stability of the joint is determined by friction between the two parts. That connection is amazingly tight through the bass (in the direction of the bolts). However, it is not as tight rotationally and may be the reason for some misalignment of strings-neck-pickups-etc on those instruments. A tighter neck pocket IMO would have more to do with reducing misalignments and less to do with acoustic coupling. Once the neck finds it's place (under string tension etc) it shouldn't move. That may affect tone but maybe not like you think.

With the same tolerances and pre-set gap a 6 bolt neck would be better rotationally due to more friction and also the interaction of tolerances of six vs 4 or 3 bolts. If Fender spaced the 4 bolts further apart and lengthened the pocket, it would also improve alignments.

A precision sliding neck pocket joint may be a obvious design choice, and not a problem for CNC machines at all, but will have other repercussions in manufacturing due to different expansion/contraction characteristics of wood types and grain directions. In other words they may make perfect parts today and half of them won't fit next week when the humidity changes. I'm not saying that the pocket can't be tighter than it is, it's just that the mass manufacturing (in several locations) that a company like Fender does kinda forces them to make every neck fit every body. Making a substantially tighter fit would increase the hand work required to sort and fit parts together. I would like to see it but that would affect their bottom line.

IMO if you are interested in maximum coupling and alignment perfection, you need to look at set necks and neck-thru designs or go to a smaller maker who is willing to fit each neck to it's body. Obviously guys like Mike Tobias do a great job with that.
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Great post, thank you.

I take it to mean this: a three-bolt design, when executed properly, may be sufficient. However additional bolts provide additional stability.
 
#37
Fuzzbass said:
Great post, thank you.

I take it to mean this: a three-bolt design, when executed properly, may be sufficient. However additional bolts provide additional stability.
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I thought my brother's 78 jazz bass sounded that way because of the age and the wood. By chance one of the guys in my search for a "similar bass" was the original owner of my brother's bass, and he had recorded with it back in the late 70's. When he played it on the record, albeit he didn't slap when he played, that bass sounded the same new. I know old wood contributes to the sound, but there has to be something to that 3 bolt neck of the 70's I've not heard nor felt it duplicated I have a 77 and my brother is selling me his 77 maple. (lol wouldn't give up that 78 though...lol)

Also the newly made MM jazz basses have a 3 bolt and they are still missing that....mmmmph!
 
#38
Temcat said:
Dunno if this is relevant here, but a three-legged stool is generally more stable than a four-legged one, because three points always share a plane. Shouldn't then a three-bolt neck joint give a better contact than a four-bolt one, provided that the two contact surfaces are level and all the bolts are tight?
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Nope.

mongo2 said:
Fender also used 3 bolts (actually one machine screw and two wood screws) on Jazz basses in the mid '70s to early 80's.
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Yeah, but that was CBS ;).

audiomitch said:
Yeah, but if you used titanium bolts...
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It would be really expensive.
 
#39
mongo2 said:
Fender also used 3 bolts (actually one machine screw and two wood screws) on Jazz basses in the mid '70s to early 80's.

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I had a 1970's Telecaster Bass with that same 3 bolt setup too. I never had a problem with it, though I'll admit to having been a Neck through guy for several years now(probably for reasons that many here will see as myth, so I won't get into them lol). More recently I've decided to have a 5 string fretless built by Tom clement. It's a bolt on and after doing some soul searching and thinking about how many Great basses I've played with 4 bolt and even three bolt necks, I've realized that his 5 bolt connection will be MORE than adequate, especially with the precision with which he routes the neck pocket.
 

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