Shannon, first of all, if I were you I'd listen to Phil long before paying any attention to me, I'm positive he's way smarter than I am
BTW, really nice bass ... I didn't know that they made it in a lefty, plus I really like that color. They did jump the price a little, though
I'm glad to offer some details about how I set up my Z6. A lot of this information is kind of generic in that it applies to all basses, but I'll try to keep the commentary restricted to the Z6NT. I should also say that I'm not a tech guy, but after having played a fairly large number of basses over the 40+ years I find that this process works well for me. I'll bet there are a lot of others here that might disagree with the way I approach things.
First, you'll probably need to immediately replace the strings when you get the bass. One of the big trade-offs with Rondo stuff is that they put some pretty bad strings on the basses, although I understand that they have started to increase the quality of the string sets. That definitely was not the case with my bass.
Poor quality strings cause way too many inconsistencies and make it difficult to figure out whether the bass is set up properly and in tune. I put LaBella flatwounds on the bass, a string type I've been using for years that works well for my style of music/playing. I have also used TI flats, but I prefer the rigidity of the LaBellas. I dont use roundwounds, Im sure others can give you better info about them.
I adjust the intonation first. I use a bass tuner (since I don't trust my ears anymore) to see if the neck is in tune. If you need some details about saddle adjustments and tuning, there is some cool setup advice by Gary Willis here
Invalid Link Removed or you can link to the same site in the setup forum (also some good info on the Mr Gearhead link). BTW, the saddles are adjusted by loosening the small allen head screw located on the side of the individual saddle, kind of hard to see at first.
My bass didn't need any adjustment to the truss rod. The bass has two trussrods installed in the neck. Rondo provides an allen key for the neck adjustment, the key itself is a poor quality piece of junk, so youll probably want to get a new one a hardware store. They also give you another allen key for the saddle adjustments (for string height and length), also a POS. The nut had two pretty sharp edges that I had to sand down, as well.
I had to spend a lot of time making adjustments to the height/length to eliminate string buzzing. At first I thought the frets werent level, but all of the standard fret level check techniques indicated the frets were fine. Overall the frets were well dressed on the bass. This was the longest part of the set up for me, and lot of back and forth.
I didnt really check the electronics all that well when I got the bass. At first, I noticed that the bass and treble controls didnt seem to do anything at all. The only effect I heard was maybe a tiny increase in volume, and I wasnt even really sure about that. I checked the cavity and everything looked cool, so I assumed that the pots were just cheap and thats why they didnt work. I mostly play flat, so it really didnt matter to me. About a month later, I opened the back again and really looked closely at the wiring
. sure enough, two bad connections. Quick soldering and whammo, perfect treble/bass controls. Be sure to really look closely.
My opinion, and it's just my opinion, is that Brice holds their pricing down by sticking really cheap strings on the basses and doing virtually no set up. But once you get the bass set up right, it is really amazing how good an instrument this bass is.
Sorry this was so long, but there is really no easy way to explain what needs to be done. If you're not comfortable setting up the bass yourself, go to a tech guy. And be real careful with the truss rods .....
. Here's the pic:
I like my action middlin'.
