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How many revisit their setup after a few weeks?

J

JoeWPgh

Dec 21, 2012
3,716
2,781
#1
Hi all. I've been repopulating my stolen herd recently, so I've been doing a lot of setup work. What I'm finding is that after I setup a bass with the lowest possible action (which is to say, clean and no fret buzz), I can go back after a week or 3 and get it surprisingly lower. How many of you go back and 're-tweak' your setup after it's had a good settling in period?
I just re-tweaked my new American Deluxe Jazz (2 weeks after it's first sting change/setup), and the thing is now just ridiculously easy and fast. The thing was nice out of the box. The string change/setup made it even nicer. The re-tweak has made it simply an incredible instrument.
 
#2
JoeWPgh said:
Hi all. I've been repopulating my stolen herd recently, so I've been doing a lot of setup work. What I'm finding is that after I setup a bass with the lowest possible action (which is to say, clean and no fret buzz), I can go back after a week or 3 and get it surprisingly lower. How many of you go back and 're-tweak' your setup after it's had a good settling in period?
I just re-tweaked my new American Deluxe Jazz (2 weeks after it's first sting change/setup), and the thing is now just ridiculously easy and fast. The thing was nice out of the box. The string change/setup made it even nicer. The re-tweak has made it simply an incredible instrument.
Click to expand...

I always revisit a setup. I find that especially when you get a new bass that has been shipped or the strings loosened or when weather has changed a lot and you do a setup, there is a certain "settle in" time for everything in the bass to stabilize. So you do a setup to get it as best you can and then a week later you go back and give it all a final tweak after everything has settled to where it wants to be and results usually are awesome and then tend to stay that way.

Nothing magic. Just Standard procedure!
 
#3
I find that after a setup, things change over the next week or two. I am able to re-tweak all of my adjustments, most of the time I am able to get the string height much lower than I was able to the first time. I recheck it again after another two weeks and make any minor adjustments necessary. Usually there is very little change required the third time. However, time, weather and temperature keeps all instruments in a constant state of change. Once you have it set up properly, only minimal changes are required to keep your bass very playable.
 
#5
I just recently learned how to do my own setups and I'm finding that I an constantly tweaking things. It seems like before when I used to get setups done professionally, everything was pretty stable, but now it seems like I always need to tweak something. It could just be in my head or I could just be doing a lousy setup, who knows?
 
#7
Maybe once in a blue moon. My basses seem pretty stable. Or maybe I'm not that picky?
Actually I'm sure I am. If I have a bass that I love the way it plays, all's good, if I can't get it there, it get's sold. To me a bass is just a tool.....but I like great tools! I really don't obsess about much with my gear. My 3 basses all "play like butta!".
 
#8
Yes I do as well. I like the action a bit higher as I find the tone of higher strings fits my taste a bit better, a little less thin. I will admit to hitting the strings kind of hard though, maybe thats why I prefer it high. It's always a game of tweaking.
 
#10
That happens to me ALL the time. I setup one of my basses and it plays great and I think I have the action as low as possible with no fret buzz, and the truss rod right where I want it. Then, about a month later, I'll pick that one up again and I there is still a little more room for adjustment. My guess is that is it has to do with temperature, humidity, and the neck settling in to the changes.
 
#11
Joe, the OP, was a great help to me on getting a neck shim right. Like others here, I've found that, on NBD, I crank and tweak as far as but, given a week or two, there's room for further (I'm getting this with a used MM copy I recently picked up). After that, it settles. The VM tb you helped me with is now very stable.

Change of humidity etc may have something but I live on a relatively small island with not very great variations in weather (just shades of rubbish). I think it's more like the neck gets over its initial shock and then tries to go back to what you dialled out in the first place. Like taming a horse (I imagine; I have no equine management skills). The newer, cheaper and Far Easterner, the more revisits seem to be necessary in my limited exp.
 
#13
VeganThump said:
I just recently learned how to do my own setups and I'm finding that I an constantly tweaking things. It seems like before when I used to get setups done professionally, everything was pretty stable, but now it seems like I always need to tweak something. It could just be in my head or I could just be doing a lousy setup, who knows?
Click to expand...

I find that in winter, things change. Warmer weather and the neck relief seems to stay more stable. Just a personal observation on my bass and guitars. My music room door opens outside to my back yard, so keeping temps stable is darn near impossible this time of year.

As for rechecking in general...If I feel anything when I play or tuning is off up the neck, I take a look at everything. Takes me about 5 minutes.
 

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