Getting the Facts about Ski Jumps

[Gianni "Orlandez" Orlati]

You cannot fix a ski jump with a shim. Some have had success with a heat treatment, some with cutting down the upper frets, and others by re-planing the fretboard. If you try to correct the problem with a shim you are only rotating the problem, but it still exists to the same degree. The kink is still there.

Correct but the overall fretboard shape may (conditional compulsory) allow for amore comfortable setup based on the particular requirements/preferences of the bass player .. this is what I see on my Franken-P made with an Am. Pro P-body and an Am. Std. J-neck provided with the highly-revered D) Posiflex graphite rods:

The neck has got a small upward angle starting from the heel area (it’s difficult to highlight more than that in a picture but the angle is there, although almost undetectable).
Is this one of the visible effects of the ski-jump? Don’t know but this makes getting a flat fretboard profile a difficult task, although the angle seems to be small, and it forces me (I’m studying fast, chromatic licks on the instrument of Davisean derivation, hence I need a flat neck and a low action) to crank the truss-rod probably too much.
The result is a nice S-profiled neck, that was dealt with with great wealth of details in the thread.
In this case, a full-length shim should alleviate the the issue, I guess and I’m going to try a 0.25 deg. Stewmac shim soon (Coronavirus aside).
The issue may otherwise be due to a bad coupling between the flat faces of the neck and of the heel pocket (since they come from different basses) and not classifiable as a ski-jump but I have to say that the same issue also characterises my fully stock AO ‘60s J-bass.

The one above is instead a picture of the side of the heel joint area of my Elrick Evo Expat, 4-strings bass.
The joint length is much more than that of the standard Fender joint and I TV has got 5 screws instead of 4.
The neck is a multi-laminate maple one with a double-acting truss-rod.
The neck exits the heel joint area substantially flat, and, in fact, setting it up to my liking or a much easier than in the case of my Fender basses.

Suggestions, comments and considerations will be highly appreciated, thanks .

 

[Turnaround]

As I said, a shim, full pocket or otherwise, will not fix a ski jump. It will only rotate it, but it will still be there.

 

[Gianni "Orlandez" Orlati]

As I said, a shim, full pocket or otherwise, will not fix a ski jump. It will only rotate it, but it will still be there.

Well, i thought I was clear in stating that a shim will not eliminate the problem at the beginning of my previous post (unless due to different causes rather than a permanent deformation of the neck profile - this a Sybilline statement, but who can understand it, will understand it), maybe you didn’t read it with the necessary attention.
Anyway, aside from the fact that the issue, in my case, is not so important (albeit a bit disturbing), before allowing somebody to grind, plane etc. any piece of timber on one of my basses (I didn’t have very positive experiences locally, in this regard), I will give a cheap shim a try to see what happens.
In case nothing happens I would have wasted 5$, but, if it will allow the neck to recover a bit of the small, unwanted rotation at the heel, then, it will be money very well spent.

 

[Turnaround]

A shim cannot help. Check the diagram below. The black line is the neck with a ski jump. The red line is the string. No mater how you rotate the neck the string-to-neck geometry remains the same. The only thing that will help is to straighten the neck.

 

[_Obra_]

A shim cannot help. Check the diagram below. The black line is the neck with a ski jump. The red line is the string. No mater how you rotate the neck the string-to-neck geometry remains the same. The only thing that will help is to straighten the neck.

View attachment 3751356

I agree completely.
Only difference between pic no. 1 and pic no. 2 is that at 1, it buzzes but action is too high, ant at 2, it buzzes but action is low and more comfortable to play.

 

[Turnaround]

I agree completely.
Only difference between pic no. 1 and pic no. 2 is that at 1, it buzzes but action is too high, ant at 2, it buzzes but action is low and more comfortable to play.

If by the term "action" you mean the distance from the string to the fretboard - they are the same in both cases.

 

[_Obra_]

My experience with this issue is that without shim, bridge saddles are all the way down and can not be lowered any more, but the action is too high (yes, distance between top of the fret and bottom of the string).
With shim, angle of the neck changes and alowes bridge saddles to move upward and string action to be slightly lower, but the buzz on the upper fret stays
The instrument is to vintage and too expensive to try to do some radical fretboard operation on it. My local luthier already lowered the upper frets level
Solution for me is either to play with to high string action without buzz or with small shim, lower action, more comfy to play but with some buzz on upper frets, and to keep instrument originality.

 

[Gianni "Orlandez" Orlati]

A shim cannot help. Check the diagram below. The black line is the neck with a ski jump. The red line is the string. No mater how you rotate the neck the string-to-neck geometry remains the same. The only thing that will help is to straighten the neck.

View attachment 3751356

The sketch is basically correct although based on rotations of rigid bodies whereas we aren’t dealing with rigid bodies; we should be able to account for the kind of neck deformations we’re dealing with (anelastic = permanent/semi-permanent or elastic = recoverable), nor we can’t neglect the behaviour of the heel’s joint.
I should, first of all, accept the fact the necks of my basses are affected by a state of irrecoverable deformations, and this may be the case, but, then, it shall be noted that, by changing the angle formed by the strings with the horizontal, the lever arm of the compressive action exerted by the strings onto the neck at the nut will also change.
A shim at the heel will reduce the strings’ action lever arm and, hence, the moment at the neck heel’s neck-to-body connection will also be reduced, causing in turn a reduction of the elongation of the connection screws under tension and/or of the screws’ slippage inside the relevant holes.
This will cause a beneficial reduction of the joint opening, albeit the above effect may not be so important.
In my case, however, the neck ski-jump (if it is so) is very small as well and, maybe, the installation of a shim in conjunction with the recovering of part of the neck’s strain following its reinstallation may have an overall positive effect on the strings’ action.
As stated previously, the trial will only cost a few dollars.
An invasive intervention on the fretboard and frets will cost more than buying a new neck likely; the matter then is why Fender haven’t improved their design, as somebody stated.
Well, they did it with introduction of the 5-bolts neck; my Am. Elite P-bass neck is quite straight, although I prefer other instruments for different reasons.
I’ll soon buy a wenge neck with an ebony fretboard from Warmoth; I’ll see how it goes.
Meanwhile I’ll try up the Stewmac’s shim.

 

[Turnaround]

You seem to be missing the point. If your action is as low as it will go without buzzing on the upper frets, changing the angle of the neck to the nobody will help nothing. Once you put the shim in you will need to raise the saddles again until there is no buzzing on the upper frets. That will put you right back where you started but with the whole geometry rotated a bit. Nothing is gained, not fret clearance, not stress angles, not reduction in ski jump - nothing. If, on the other hand, you weren't getting buzz in the upper frets and you wanted to lower the action further but the saddles were bottomed out, then rotating the neck-to-body geometry would allow you to gain a bit of adjustment at the saddles. But lowering the saddles will not be useful if you are already experiencing buzz on the upper frets - ski jump or not.

 

[Turnaround]

Part of the problem about ski jumps is understanding what exactly they are. They are often described as a lifting of the heel end of the neck, but that's precisely what a ski jump isn't. The heel doesn't lift - it's screwed to the body. What is lifting is the nut end of the neck with the bend happening between the 12th fret and the body joint. Let's take a closer look.

Here's a photo of a neck with a typical ski jump.

The black bit at the top is a straightedge laid along the top side of the fretboard at the butt end. Under the straightedge you can see a gap at the left and what appears to be a rise to the heel end. It appears the the heel is rising. It's not. It's the part of the neck that's out of the picture to the left that is rising. The butt end of this neck is sitting on a flat block - the end is not rising up, it's flat on the block.

If we examine fretboard where the ski jump is supposedly happening we will find it's flat too. Have a look at the red line in the photo below:

If anything the surface of this part of the fretboard dips slightly at the very end, but none of it is rising. The problem is that the left end of the straightedge is resting on the part of the neck that is rising, out of picture to the left.

Now one could argue that it doesn't matter which end of the neck is rising - it's just not flat anymore. But there are two very important aspects to consider that do make a difference, and that determines how the condition can be treated.

Firstly, it would seem that if it's the free end of the neck that is lifting we could correct it with a truss rod adjustment. Unfortunately it won't work. The truss rod has no effect on the area beyond the 12th fret, mostly because that area of the neck has the largest cross section resulting in the most rigidity, and because it is bolted to a flat surface. The area between the 12th fret and the body is where the bend is occurring.

The second important aspect of this condition when it comes to treatment is that it cannot be improved with a shim, as you will have undoubtedly come to understand if you have followed this thread. The problem is occurring outside of the neck pocket, so it's not possible to treat it inside the pocket. That would be like trying to stop a nosebleed by applying pressure to the arm.

So what are the treatments? There are 3 common ones:

1. Bend it back. This treatment uses heat and clamping pressure to remove the kink. I've heard plenty of reports where this corrected the condition and the treatment seems to be permanent. I have also heard of many cases where the kink returned after a while. And why wouldn't it? The stresses that caused the kink in the first place (string tension) are still there, why wouldn't they just kink the neck again? So one should consider adding extra reinforcement in the area where the bend occurs.

2. Shape the area of the fretboard past the twelfth fret to be in the same plane as the area below it. It's easiest to describe this as planing out the "rise" at the butt end, but as I have pointed out that's not where the rise is happening. We could leave this area alone and cut down the rest of the neck to be in the same plane as the butt end, but that is highly impractical, so from the standpoint of this repair we will treat it as if the butt end is rising.

3. The third treatment is a variation on the second. Here we cut down the frets in the upper area rather than planing the fretboard. So long as the ski jump is not too severe and there is sufficient crown height to the frets in that area, this can be just as effective as planing the fretboard.

As with the heat treatment method it is worth considering adding additional reinforcement to the neck in the upper area to prevent further kinking. However it may not be necessary. In many cases the wood will kink just so far and doesn't kink further. You may get lucky.

There is also a work-around for the ski jump condition. It doesn't fix the problem but rather sets up the bass in the best possible geometry to cope with the existing condition. It is a compromise id far less than ideal, but with give the best possible outcome without resorting to the 3 treatments above. To arrive at this compromise it's best to change the order we do things in the setup process.

Normally in a setup the relief of the neck is the first adjustment made. Following that we adjust the string height at the bridge. When dealing with a ski jump it can be more effective to reverse the order. Here's why.

The geometry of a setup with a normal neck (no ski jump) can be thought of as a triangle.

Point A is where the string meets the nut. The line AB is the plane of the fretboard extended all the way to the bridge. Point C is the top of the bridge saddle, and the line AC is the string. We're ignoring the height of the string above the fingerboard at the nut since it is not significant to the ski jump problem.

The red arrow is where the 12th fret is located (half way between the nut and the bridge). The blue arrow is where the neck joins the body, and the yellow arrow is where the butt end of the neck is.

For most people a bit of relief in the neck is useful to keep the strings from buzzing on the frets closest to the nut. So that means the line AB is curved. In the diagrams I'm exaggerating all of this for clarity). But we know that the truss rod has no effect beyond the 12th fret so the curve stops there. So actually our relief looks like this:

If we add the ski jump to the digram we get this (remembering that the ski jump is actually a bend between the 12th fret and the body joint):

If we lower the bridge to get the action at the 12th fret to a reasonable height we could end up with this:

There's plenty of clearance at the 12th fret (where we usually measure string height) and there's plenty of relief in the neck. But if we fret anything past the 12th fret the string will be laying on the upper frets - buzz!

So the setup method in this condition is to set the bridge height first. Lower the bridge until playing in the area between the 12th fret and the butt end of the neck buzzes. Then raise the bridge a bit at a time until we can play the area between the 12th fret and the butt end of the neck cleanly. Once you have found that spot the bridge is optimized for the upper registers. Leave it there. Then move on to adjust the relief until the rest of the neck plays as cleanly as possible. It will be a compromise, but you are likely to find that the best overall playability is when there is little to no relief. I say it is a compromise because if it weren't for the kink the overall action could be set lower, but this is the best you will get while the ski jump condition still exists.

 

[Joshua]

Dude, we don't pay you enough.

 

[TomB]

Part of the problem about ski jumps is understanding what exactly they are. They are often described as a lifting of the heel end of the neck, but that's precisely what a ski jump isn't. The heel doesn't lift - it's screwed to the body. What is lifting is the nut end of the neck with the bend happening between the 12th fret and the body joint. Let's take a closer look.

Here's a photo of a neck with a typical ski jump.
View attachment 3752812

The black bit at the top is a straightedge laid along the top side of the fretboard at the butt end. Under the straightedge you can see a gap at the left and what appears to be a rise to the heel end. It appears the the heel is rising. It's not. It's the part of the neck that's out of the picture to the left that is rising. The butt end of this neck is sitting on a flat block - the end is not rising up, it's flat on the block.

If we examine fretboard where the ski jump is supposedly happening we will find it's flat too. Have a look at the red line in the photo below:

View attachment 3752839

If anything the surface of this part of the fretboard dips slightly at the very end, but none of it is rising. The problem is that the left end of the straightedge is resting on the part of the neck that is rising, out of picture to the left.

Now one could argue that it doesn't matter which end of the neck is rising - it's just not flat anymore. But there are two very important aspects to consider that do make a difference, and that determines how the condition can be treated.

Firstly, it would seem that if it's the free end of the neck that is lifting we could correct it with a truss rod adjustment. Unfortunately it won't work. The truss rod has no effect on the area beyond the 12th fret, mostly because that area of the neck has the largest cross section resulting in the most rigidity, and because it is bolted to a flat surface. The area between the 12th fret and the body is where the bend is occurring.

The second important aspect of this condition when it comes to treatment is that it cannot be improved with a shim, as you will have undoubtedly come to understand if you have followed this thread. The problem is occurring outside of the neck pocket, so it's not possible to treat it inside the pocket. That would be like trying to stop a nosebleed by applying pressure to the arm.

So what are the treatments? There are 3 common ones:

1. Bend it back. This treatment uses heat and clamping pressure to remove the kink. I've heard plenty of reports where this corrected the condition and the treatment seems to be permanent. I have also heard of many cases where the kink returned after a while. And why wouldn't it? The stresses that caused the kink in the first place (string tension) are still there, why wouldn't they just kink the neck again? So one should consider adding extra reinforcement in the area where the bend occurs.

2. Shape the area of the fretboard past the twelfth fret to be in the same plane as the area below it. It's easiest to describe this as planing out the "rise" at the butt end, but as I have pointed out that's not where the rise is happening. We could leave this area alone and cut down the rest of the neck to be in the same plane as the butt end, but that is highly impractical, so from the standpoint of this repair we will treat it as if the butt end is rising.

3. The third treatment is a variation on the second. Here we cut down the frets in the upper area rather than planing the fretboard. So long as the ski jump is not too severe and there is sufficient crown height to the frets in that area, this can be just as effective as planing the fretboard.

As with the heat treatment method it is worth considering adding additional reinforcement to the neck in the upper area to prevent further kinking. However it may not be necessary. In many cases the wood will kink just so far and doesn't kink further. You may get lucky.

There is also a work-around for the ski jump condition. It doesn't fix the problem but rather sets up the bass in the best possible geometry to cope with the existing condition. It is a compromise id far less than ideal, but with give the best possible outcome without resorting to the 3 treatments above. To arrive at this compromise it's best to change the order we do things in the setup process.

Normally in a setup the relief of the neck is the first adjustment made. Following that we adjust the string height at the bridge. When dealing with a ski jump it can be more effective to reverse the order. Here's why.

The geometry of a setup with a normal neck (no ski jump) can be thought of as a triangle.

View attachment 3752925

Point A is where the string meets the nut. The line AB is the plane of the fretboard extended all the way to the bridge. Point C is the top of the bridge saddle, and the line AC is the string. We're ignoring the height of the string above the fingerboard at the nut since it is not significant to the ski jump problem.

The red arrow is where the 12th fret is located (half way between the nut and the bridge). The blue arrow is where the neck joins the body, and the yellow arrow is where the butt end of the neck is.

For most people a bit of relief in the neck is useful to keep the strings from buzzing on the frets closest to the nut. So that means the line AB is curved. In the diagrams I'm exaggerating all of this for clarity). But we know that the truss rod has no effect beyond the 12th fret so the curve stops there. So actually our relief looks like this:

View attachment 3752929

If we add the ski jump to the digram we get this (remembering that the ski jump is actually a bend between the 12th fret and the body joint):

View attachment 3752937

If we lower the bridge to get the action at the 12th fret to a reasonable height we could end up with this:

View attachment 3752943

There's plenty of clearance at the 12th fret (where we usually measure string height) and there's plenty of relief in the neck. But if we fret anything past the 12th fret the string will be laying on the upper frets - buzz!

So the setup method in this condition is to set the bridge height first. Lower the bridge until playing in the area between the 12th fret and the butt end of the neck buzzes. Then raise the bridge a bit at a time until we can play the area between the 12th fret and the butt end of the neck cleanly. Once you have found that spot the bridge is optimized for the upper registers. Leave it there. Then move on to adjust the relief until the rest of the neck plays as cleanly as possible. It will be a compromise, but you are likely to find that the best overall playability is when there is little to no relief. I say it is a compromise because if it weren't for the kink the overall action could be set lower, but this is the best you will get while the ski jump condition still exists.

Wonderful instruction that post! Mods, this thread should be a sticky.
Now, I'd have to go back through the thread to recall, but did we debunk the theory that the screw holes led to either differential stresses or differential moisture levels? I recall reading the theory but not the discussion. Thx.

 

[Turnaround]

Dude, we don't pay you enough.

How about a 10% raise?

 

[TomB]

Hey, you can have 15%, why not?!

 

[Joshua]

 

[Turnaround]

View attachment 3753002

Strike averted.

 

[Turnaround]

Last time I checked this test was May. Now in December I have checked again and still no bend in the neck heel.

Checked again today - no change.

In case you have lost track of what this is about, it's a test I am performing to see if a shim can cause lifting bend in the heel of the neck. I've set up a neck that did not have a ski jump by bolting it to flat plate with a shim under the heel of the neck. I have also added the equivalent of string tension on the neck - actually jacked the headstock up with far more stress than strings would ever put on the neck. I used the truss rod to mostly correct the resultant upbow - it won't correct it all because of the amount of stress I introduced. Every month or so I take it apart and check to see if there is any bend in the heel of the neck. So far it remains flat after just over 1 year.


LATE EDIT: The neck is developing a ski jump - i.e. a kink is developing between the 12th fret and the body joint. I am not surprised - I'm really exerting a lot of upforce at the headstock, it's more than the truss rod is able to deal with, and clearly it's more than the neck can handle. BUT, and this is the important part, the heel of the neck (the part that fits into the body pocket) remains flat. So the shim is not a contributor to the ski jump - it is not causing the heel to distort.

So here's another view of what is occurring. Because I am applying a lot of upforce to the headstock (simulating the effect of string tension) the neck has to bend somewhere. Without the truss rod that bend will be distributed along the length of the neck. But since the truss rod is doing its best to prevent bending along the length of the neck, the bending occurs where the truss rod has little effect - i.e. past the 12th fret. The result is a kink in that area, just what we have been describing in this entire thread.

 

[jchrisk1]

Part of the problem about ski jumps is understanding what exactly they are. They are often described as a lifting of the heel end of the neck, but that's precisely what a ski jump isn't. The heel doesn't lift - it's screwed to the body. What is lifting is the nut end of the neck with the bend happening between the 12th fret and the body joint. Let's take a closer look.

Here's a photo of a neck with a typical ski jump.
View attachment 3752812

The black bit at the top is a straightedge laid along the top side of the fretboard at the butt end. Under the straightedge you can see a gap at the left and what appears to be a rise to the heel end. It appears the the heel is rising. It's not. It's the part of the neck that's out of the picture to the left that is rising. The butt end of this neck is sitting on a flat block - the end is not rising up, it's flat on the block.

If we examine fretboard where the ski jump is supposedly happening we will find it's flat too. Have a look at the red line in the photo below:

View attachment 3752839

If anything the surface of this part of the fretboard dips slightly at the very end, but none of it is rising. The problem is that the left end of the straightedge is resting on the part of the neck that is rising, out of picture to the left.

Now one could argue that it doesn't matter which end of the neck is rising - it's just not flat anymore. But there are two very important aspects to consider that do make a difference, and that determines how the condition can be treated.

Firstly, it would seem that if it's the free end of the neck that is lifting we could correct it with a truss rod adjustment. Unfortunately it won't work. The truss rod has no effect on the area beyond the 12th fret, mostly because that area of the neck has the largest cross section resulting in the most rigidity, and because it is bolted to a flat surface. The area between the 12th fret and the body is where the bend is occurring.

The second important aspect of this condition when it comes to treatment is that it cannot be improved with a shim, as you will have undoubtedly come to understand if you have followed this thread. The problem is occurring outside of the neck pocket, so it's not possible to treat it inside the pocket. That would be like trying to stop a nosebleed by applying pressure to the arm.

So what are the treatments? There are 3 common ones:

1. Bend it back. This treatment uses heat and clamping pressure to remove the kink. I've heard plenty of reports where this corrected the condition and the treatment seems to be permanent. I have also heard of many cases where the kink returned after a while. And why wouldn't it? The stresses that caused the kink in the first place (string tension) are still there, why wouldn't they just kink the neck again? So one should consider adding extra reinforcement in the area where the bend occurs.

2. Shape the area of the fretboard past the twelfth fret to be in the same plane as the area below it. It's easiest to describe this as planing out the "rise" at the butt end, but as I have pointed out that's not where the rise is happening. We could leave this area alone and cut down the rest of the neck to be in the same plane as the butt end, but that is highly impractical, so from the standpoint of this repair we will treat it as if the butt end is rising.

3. The third treatment is a variation on the second. Here we cut down the frets in the upper area rather than planing the fretboard. So long as the ski jump is not too severe and there is sufficient crown height to the frets in that area, this can be just as effective as planing the fretboard.

As with the heat treatment method it is worth considering adding additional reinforcement to the neck in the upper area to prevent further kinking. However it may not be necessary. In many cases the wood will kink just so far and doesn't kink further. You may get lucky.

There is also a work-around for the ski jump condition. It doesn't fix the problem but rather sets up the bass in the best possible geometry to cope with the existing condition. It is a compromise id far less than ideal, but with give the best possible outcome without resorting to the 3 treatments above. To arrive at this compromise it's best to change the order we do things in the setup process.

Normally in a setup the relief of the neck is the first adjustment made. Following that we adjust the string height at the bridge. When dealing with a ski jump it can be more effective to reverse the order. Here's why.

The geometry of a setup with a normal neck (no ski jump) can be thought of as a triangle.

View attachment 3752925

Point A is where the string meets the nut. The line AB is the plane of the fretboard extended all the way to the bridge. Point C is the top of the bridge saddle, and the line AC is the string. We're ignoring the height of the string above the fingerboard at the nut since it is not significant to the ski jump problem.

The red arrow is where the 12th fret is located (half way between the nut and the bridge). The blue arrow is where the neck joins the body, and the yellow arrow is where the butt end of the neck is.

For most people a bit of relief in the neck is useful to keep the strings from buzzing on the frets closest to the nut. So that means the line AB is curved. In the diagrams I'm exaggerating all of this for clarity). But we know that the truss rod has no effect beyond the 12th fret so the curve stops there. So actually our relief looks like this:

View attachment 3752929

If we add the ski jump to the digram we get this (remembering that the ski jump is actually a bend between the 12th fret and the body joint):

View attachment 3752937

If we lower the bridge to get the action at the 12th fret to a reasonable height we could end up with this:

View attachment 3752943

There's plenty of clearance at the 12th fret (where we usually measure string height) and there's plenty of relief in the neck. But if we fret anything past the 12th fret the string will be laying on the upper frets - buzz!

So the setup method in this condition is to set the bridge height first. Lower the bridge until playing in the area between the 12th fret and the butt end of the neck buzzes. Then raise the bridge a bit at a time until we can play the area between the 12th fret and the butt end of the neck cleanly. Once you have found that spot the bridge is optimized for the upper registers. Leave it there. Then move on to adjust the relief until the rest of the neck plays as cleanly as possible. It will be a compromise, but you are likely to find that the best overall playability is when there is little to no relief. I say it is a compromise because if it weren't for the kink the overall action could be set lower, but this is the best you will get while the ski jump condition still exists.

Thank you for this post!
My friend bought his wife a bass that has a ski jump. She's a beginner, and I'm giving her lessons. I took her bass home to give it a setup, and I couldn't get it to not buzz above the 7th or 8th fret without raising the saddles to what I considered an unplayable string height. This is the first time I've seen this, however, I only work on my own basses, or kids instruments that need the help. I'm going to try the compromise solution, and maybe that will get her by until we know she wants to stick with playing bass. If it's not playable, then what? File the upper frets down? A new short scale neck would be more expensive than the bass is worth, IMO?

 

[Turnaround]

Go with the compromise setup and if that doesn't work you'll have to try to evaluate if there's enough crown in the upper frets to afford cutting them down a bit.

 

[Gianni "Orlandez" Orlati]

Thank you for this post!
My friend bought his wife a bass that has a ski jump. She's a beginner, and I'm giving her lessons. I took her bass home to give it a setup, and I couldn't get it to not buzz above the 7th or 8th fret without raising the saddles to what I considered an unplayable string height. This is the first time I've seen this, however, I only work on my own basses, or kids instruments that need the help. I'm going to try the compromise solution, and maybe that will get her by until we know she wants to stick with playing bass. If it's not playable, then what? File the upper frets down? A new short scale neck would be more expensive than the bass is worth, IMO?

No choices .. file the frets and, if this is not enough, the whole fretboard .. if this is two times the cost of the instrument then buy another one and hope that the neck will be made of wood of higher elastic modulus .. this is substantially the thread’s conclusion ..