Bingo.
You can't idiot proof basses in a store. If a bass is off from factory spec, cool, maybe somebody should look at that but factory spec for many folks is too high. You can't set basses up for fast action because most players can't handle that.
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Fender factory setups - why so high?
- Thread starter shewhorn
- Start date
Bingo.
You can't idiot proof basses in a store. If a bass is off from factory spec, cool, maybe somebody should look at that but factory spec for many folks is too high. You can't set basses up for fast action because most players can't handle that.
When you (Fender, in this case) mass-produce instruments, there's not as much time to set them up exactly right, it just takes more time than is allowed to get all of them out the door. When a lot of them get shipped out in a cardboard box and sit on a cold FedEx truck (especially in the Winter) they are going to need a neck adjustment anyway by the time it arrives.
Fender might be the most popular name out there in terms of units shipped but they also don't have the time to do the job right. They leave that up to a good setup tech, if one is available or the customer knows how to set up the instrument.
Fender might be the most popular name out there in terms of units shipped but they also don't have the time to do the job right. They leave that up to a good setup tech, if one is available or the customer knows how to set up the instrument.
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Fender factory specs are 5/64 on the G (Sadowsky says 4/64) and 6/64 on the E (Sadowsky has the same). So Fender's suggested setup specs are within the range of what Sadowsky would call low.
Now this article doesn't seem to mention the amount of relief he would like in the neck. I think Fender's specs put just a touch too much relief but still I think their suggested specs aren't in the range of what I would call high.
Fender factory specs are 5/64 on the G (Sadowsky says 4/64) and 6/64 on the E (Sadowsky has the same). So Fender's suggested setup specs are within the range of what Sadowsky would call low.
Now this article doesn't seem to mention the amount of relief he would like in the neck. I think Fender's specs put just a touch too much relief but still I think their suggested specs aren't in the range of what I would call high.
What is "right"? Therein lies the rub.
A neck that isn't a ski ramp that needs two turns of the rod to straighten it out upon arrival, frets that poke out and can cut your hand, intonation that isn't even close to close, dirty frets and fretboards, necks with more waves than Lake Michigan, loose electronics, you know just a few that I've seen over the last few months from Fender.
Truktek2 said:
That's even worse! Original analogy was way better. If your car is pulling to the right, you need a lot more than just a small turn of an Allen wrench to fix it.
Why are we acting like performing a set up on a bass is this huge ordeal?
Everyone has their reasons. I've built every single PC I've ever owned and I consider that pretty easy yet some people are terrified to do the simplest thing like upgrade RAM or a hard drive. That's fine with me as people in the industry I work in are willing to pay me to consult. While changing a drive is easy, and while installing RAM is easy, sometimes making the right choices in a backup system might require a little more research. I have experience with this and that's some of the value that I offer to my clients when they hire me to consult. All they have to do is write a check and BANG, their problems are solved fast and efficiently.
My instructor has been playing bass professionally some 30 years or so. He teaches at Berklee College of Music full time, and gigs quite a bit. He also teaches outside of Berklee and one of his students is a rock star in a very major band that every single person on TB has heard of, the point being that the guy KNOWS his stuff. I'm sure he can set up his own instrument quite competently. Now consider that he has a wife and a kid and with his busy schedule I'm guessing the last thing he wants to be doing when he has free time is setting up his basses.
Another point I'd like to make is that everyone thinks they can be a rock star. I need to elaborate a bit. I have two businesses, a wedding photography business and a fine art printing business. While anybody can buy an expensive camera and have all the fancy tools, you can't buy experience. I don't care how much money you spend on equipment, I can do an objectively better job documenting a wedding with a point and shoot than you could with a $6000 DSLR because I have nearly 10 years of experience specifically shooting weddings. I've heard many a couple regret their decision to let Uncle Bob cover their wedding photos. As for printing... you can buy an inkjet and get decent results out of the box but, I literally have thousands and thousands of $$$ worth of hardware and software for calibrating my machines. I'm not using an out of the box setup. I have the tools and experience to do a better job than most photographers can do out of the box and for many pro photographers it's far more cost effective for them to pay me to deal with fine art prints than it is for them to do it themselves. Another analogy... I could go buy all of the equipment here:
gear
... but it wouldn't make me sound like Steve Ray Vaughan. Experience counts for something. I've setup guitars before and I can do an okay job but a guy like Jim Mouradian can do a better job than I can on a full setup. His decades of experience are always going to trump my several years of experience. He's in demand... his setups are $85 and there's currently a little over a 1 month wait for an appointment to bring your instrument (where it's there for about 3 to 4 days). There's a couple of very major acts that have full time guitar techs on staff who drop all their stuff off at Jim's shop when they go through Boston. If everyone could do the same job with the degree of experience and skill he has, it's unlikely he'd be so darn busy.
Good point but how often do you change the type of strings you play? Most people settle on something and use that for a long time. I'm going to be doing some string experimenting soon and I'll do some basic adjustments myself but once I've settled on something the bass goes to Mouradian Guitars for a setup.
I agree but that doesn't mean you HAVE to do it yourself all the time. I usually change the oil in my car. It takes 10 minutes and it's pretty darn easy but ya know.... sometimes I just don't feel like doing it (especially when the temp outside is *** below zero, I'll gladly pay someone else to do it
).Cheers, Joe
Benjamin Strange
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- Dec 25, 2002
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This proves my earlier point - they are recommending higher setups so they don't have to do quality work.
Remember, it's a FACTORY - they're not crafting individual works of art, they're punching out units. You can't expect it to be perfect at a factory production level.
Yep. If the store doesn't maintain the setup it is pretty hard to blame Fender...
Of course, that's correct. An expert tech is a valuable resource for any musician. I've gone to several for doing things out of my "comfort zone" like extensive fretwork or fingerboard re-leveling. They have the tools, know the little tricks, and can get your bass as dang near perfect as it can be... no argument there.
But the BASIC, get it close setup stuff, string height, pickup height, close-enough-for rock-n-roll intonation, neck relief... these are really good things to know how to do yourself, adjustments so simple that you'd be a bit embarrassed to watch a tech turn two wrenches and hand it back to you... this is just stuff you ought to know how to do... even if you choose NOT to do it yourself.
But the BASIC, get it close setup stuff, string height, pickup height, close-enough-for rock-n-roll intonation, neck relief... these are really good things to know how to do yourself, adjustments so simple that you'd be a bit embarrassed to watch a tech turn two wrenches and hand it back to you... this is just stuff you ought to know how to do... even if you choose NOT to do it yourself.
Which begs the question... what does the least common denominator like? Just from my limited sampling (which could entirely invalidate my premise that Fenders come from the factory with a high setup) Fenders are set up very high, typically double to triple the height of say, an Ibanez SR bass. Regardless of the instrument (Fender, Ibanez, Warwick, Spector, MM, Rick, Gibson, etc.) I always find a lower setup easier to play. Acknowledging that the lowest setup isn't always appropriate depending upon playing style it's possible that I'm working on the incorrect assumption that most people would prefer to have an action that's as low as practically possible for the type of music they play.
So I could ask, is that not the case? Fender's published setup specs are quite good however, I've never actually seen one that came from the factory setup to their own specs.
(snip)
I agree with you 100% but again, the question is from the point of view of the manufacturer. It's about selling as many basses as you can and increasing shareholder profit and with that said, I'm working on the assumption that most people will not know this (ETA "this" being requesting the store to do a setup if it seems a bit out of whack or not what you'd expect), or think to ask this (or have the experience to know that a bass is capable of a much better setup, they just pick it up and know if they like, or dislike it as it is).
Cheers, Joe
I'm not so sure... not that "blame" really needs to be placed upon anyone though. You could only do that if the instruments did indeed come out of the factory setup to Fender's published specifications. I'm going to say that I don't think any of them do. Perhaps the highest of the high end do (I've never played a high end, new Fender bass) but everything I've played $1500 and below has for the most part had factory setups are inconsistent and (at least IMO) very bad. Other manufacturers can and do consistently deliver instruments to the showroom floor with a much better setup, so from that, we know that consistent quality control in that respect is indeed possible (and possible under the economy of mass production as well). It's not that Fender can't do this, but it would appear to me that they're simply choosing not to do this. I can't say that it's right or wrong, but to me it's definitely a curios decision.
Cheers, Joe
Perfection would not be the metric I'd expect them to hit. The basis for the question arose after comparing Fenders to other mass produced basses that can and do attain much tighter tolerances from instrument to instrument in their factory setups so it's definitely possible and that being the case, why has Fender chosen not to set their basses up to their own recommended specifications from the factory?
Cheers, Joe
I don't find this to be true. I have played just as many non-fenders that had terrible setups in stores IME.
Can we say for sure that they don't? Maybe but I'm not comfortable making that assumption.
Well...I was a Fender dealer for 12 years, and it was extremely rare to have a instrument come out of the box from the factory playing poorly. Sure, you could tweak them further if desired, and we did that to many of them....BUT...I can tell you from first hand experience with thousands of Fender instruments that the main problem doesn't lie at the factory ...it lies with the dealer. This isn't opinion...it's fact...knowledge gained from ordering and selling for many, many years.
BTW - most other major manufacturers come from the factory to specs as well. However, most dealers won't check setups after they've been on the rack for a few days, which is the most critical point.
i can vouch for this first hand, as i worked at the fender distribution center back in '04. they would expect an instrument to be looked over and set to specs in 3 minutes. each person had a quota of something like 45-50 instruments per 8 hour shift. i was too much of a perfectionist and spent more time on the instruments than they wanted, so they let me go.
I generally agree with the OP. lets compare basses to new cars.
If you test drive a new car right of the lot and the alignment was pulling to the left, and it was obviously misfiring on at most 5 of its 6 cylinders.
Why, you would say internally "this car is a piece of cr*p im not buying it!".
I havent tried a new Fender in years. Schecter seem to actually set up their basses splendidly- and Ibanez is up and down...
Some of the ownership is on the retail store- the assistant manager of the bass dept. would sell more basses if he or she performed a butter bass setup on each one instead of pining for that GC commission check!
If you test drive a new car right of the lot and the alignment was pulling to the left, and it was obviously misfiring on at most 5 of its 6 cylinders.
Why, you would say internally "this car is a piece of cr*p im not buying it!".
I havent tried a new Fender in years. Schecter seem to actually set up their basses splendidly- and Ibanez is up and down...
Some of the ownership is on the retail store- the assistant manager of the bass dept. would sell more basses if he or she performed a butter bass setup on each one instead of pining for that GC commission check!
According to Frog (lead luthier) at Elderly Instruments, Fender sends them out with the action high partly because it's easier for new players to play a high action without fret noise, but mostly because they expect the store to set them up for the customer. That's part of the price of the instrument, actually, is the initial setup.
Let's look at nukes comparison with cars. Just like a Fender, the dealership gets a car in with covers on the seats, no fuel, dirty, no accessories (floormats and the like) installed (all that garbage is in a bag in the trunk when the car arrives at the dealership). If you test drove a car straight off the truck, you'd think that manufacturer was horrid, and wouldn't ever want one of their cars. Why? Dealer Prep is part of the price, and the dealer is supposed to do it. Same here! Dealer Prep is part of the price of a bass, and they should do their job. Many (like Elderly) do a generic setup before putting the instrument on the floor, and then do it again when the customer buys it (if the customer wants a different setup than the generic one).
Let's look at nukes comparison with cars. Just like a Fender, the dealership gets a car in with covers on the seats, no fuel, dirty, no accessories (floormats and the like) installed (all that garbage is in a bag in the trunk when the car arrives at the dealership). If you test drove a car straight off the truck, you'd think that manufacturer was horrid, and wouldn't ever want one of their cars. Why? Dealer Prep is part of the price, and the dealer is supposed to do it. Same here! Dealer Prep is part of the price of a bass, and they should do their job. Many (like Elderly) do a generic setup before putting the instrument on the floor, and then do it again when the customer buys it (if the customer wants a different setup than the generic one).
GroovinOnFunk said:
Would it have been better had I said the car had two flats?
The original analogy of mirrors would be more along the lines of the bass being untuned. (an adjustment, not maintenance) My point being the setup doesnt have to be perfectly tailored to me, but come on, if I can't "roadtest" the bass I'm not buying. I can do my own setups proficiently, but why get it home and set it up, just to find I don't like the tone or the truss rod is maxed out?My local Fender dealer does set ups on every instrument and does free adjustments for life on every new one they sell...... guess where I've bought 3 basses, my G-K rig & most of my gear??? 
