This makes no sense at all. Why would the necks bend only when you don't play them?
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This makes no sense at all. Why would the necks bend only when you don't play them?
Here's the complete list of guitar/bass manufacturers who ship their instruments detuned:
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Cool you go ahead and do that.
What amazes me about these kinds of posts is how people vehemently argue their positions usually by pouring cold water on the opposing positions.
Do these music manufacturers actually DISAGREE with me (I also love the use of capital letters to argue- as if yelling makes you more right)?
Or do they ship instruments tuned because there is a negligible difference and the best presentation when you are selling a new axe is for it to be playable out of the box?
I don't know. And you don't either! If you did you would direct me to some authoritative information on just how bad it is to ship a bass with the strings slackened.
I maintain that to each his own. I have heard both sides argued. And to me the detuning argument was much more compelling. It's pretty logical to detune for safety sake if you think about it. If you put bridge cables on a bass and tuned it high enough the neck would snap. But a neck had never snapped without strings on it.
Live and let live. That's all I got.
Are you saying you completely loosen the truss rod as well for shipping?
They don't. It's a combination of changing conditions and the strings pulling the neck towards a bow. In NYC apartments have 2 HVAC settings- on and off. In the winter it's brutal in basses. Super arid and warm. Wood shrinks and necks bow. Detuning mitigates the bowing.
I also think some basses just like to bow while others are really stiff.
Like I said this works for me. YMMV.
It's a valid consideration if your bridge is NOT fixed to the body of your instrument. Hofners come to mind.
This "only remove one string at a time" comes from Violin, and of course Double Bass. The string tension not only keeps the bridge in place, it also keeps the sound post in place. These are of no concern to slab-players.
Yes; too many folks don't realize that shipping is not anywhere near as inexpensive as it used to be. I read occasionally about people complaining that shipping from an ebay item, for example, was too high, but most of the time those shipping costs are actually quite realistic, particularly, when it comes to high value and/or heavy items.
Edit: spelling
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So you are not removing tension from the neck then. Either that or I misunderstand the function of a truss rod.
buldog5151bass
Kibble, milkbones, and P Basses. And redheads.
Violins are shipped tuned tuned to pitch. I would suspect they are more fragile than a Gibson.
As the OP I got home and finally got through all the posts. Wow, 8 pages. I had no idea that this was such a hot button topic. I wanted to thank each and every one of you for your considered and heartfelt input. It stands to reason, that we are all speaking from our own experiences here, and that is the essence of what TB is all about. Tell is like it is - or tell it the way your experiences tell you it is. Same thing. After all, in the end maybe that is all we really have - our experiences.
Is there really a right or wrong? Maybe a cool and not so cool? I don't think a lot of basses have been permanently damaged either way, but I learned a few things in this thread. Hopefully, we all did. I also think pulling a bass out of the box and experiencing the exact setup the builder intended is a pretty cool concept. I appreciate that even though it got lively and maybe even heated at times, everyone kept it pretty respectful. We need to respect each other on TB, there are enough problems in the world - and there is certainly no harm in making an honest attempt towards setting an example to folks from this little world we have here.
I don't mean to discourage further dialog, if you have more to add, post away. I just wanted to weigh in and let everyone know that even though I fell behind - I was most certainly following along and enjoying this thread very much....
Is there really a right or wrong? Maybe a cool and not so cool? I don't think a lot of basses have been permanently damaged either way, but I learned a few things in this thread. Hopefully, we all did. I also think pulling a bass out of the box and experiencing the exact setup the builder intended is a pretty cool concept. I appreciate that even though it got lively and maybe even heated at times, everyone kept it pretty respectful. We need to respect each other on TB, there are enough problems in the world - and there is certainly no harm in making an honest attempt towards setting an example to folks from this little world we have here.
I don't mean to discourage further dialog, if you have more to add, post away. I just wanted to weigh in and let everyone know that even though I fell behind - I was most certainly following along and enjoying this thread very much....
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Doner Designs
Steve Doner
- Jun 2, 2012
- 5,784
- 6,819
- Disclosures
- Doner Designs is an alias for Steve Doner
If you loosen the strings there is actually more potentially damaging force exerted on the neck by the truss rod. The string tension is offset by truss rod tension when properly set up and tuned to pitch. I never loosen strings for shipping, storage or anything else. When I swap necks for a long period of time I loosen the truss rod by approximately a full turn.
Hope not. Talk about a solution out in search of a problem.
Note: somebody did it better and put it in the bridge rather than the tuning keys. Still questionable how much it's needed. But unlike Gibson's entry, this one actually seems to work.
I don't know if I even want to bother getting into this argument, but I have to disagree with the majority of you.
I am a pro Luthier with many years in this business, and I'm also a retired mechanical engineer. I loosen the strings on all my basses before I ship them. Not fully slack, but down a couple of turns. The reason is simple....to reduce the potential damage from shock loading. If the bass is up to tune, with the neck in its fully loaded state, and it gets dropped, the overall loading through the neck structure will be much higher than if the strings were left slack.
With the strings tight, the momentary shock loads from impact are added to the normal loads in the neck. So the stresses within the neck will be much higher than normal. With the strings slack, the net loads that the neck sees are much less.
It's all about protecting the structure from the shock loads when the box impacts the ground. The same reason why you put crushable material around the bass and the case.
Is it absolutely necessary to loosen the strings before shipping? No, of course not. Many or most basses are shipped up to tune, and make it there successfully. But to me, loosening the strings is a very simple way to reduce the risk of damage. So I do it. And I can't see any downside to it.
I am a pro Luthier with many years in this business, and I'm also a retired mechanical engineer. I loosen the strings on all my basses before I ship them. Not fully slack, but down a couple of turns. The reason is simple....to reduce the potential damage from shock loading. If the bass is up to tune, with the neck in its fully loaded state, and it gets dropped, the overall loading through the neck structure will be much higher than if the strings were left slack.
With the strings tight, the momentary shock loads from impact are added to the normal loads in the neck. So the stresses within the neck will be much higher than normal. With the strings slack, the net loads that the neck sees are much less.
It's all about protecting the structure from the shock loads when the box impacts the ground. The same reason why you put crushable material around the bass and the case.
Is it absolutely necessary to loosen the strings before shipping? No, of course not. Many or most basses are shipped up to tune, and make it there successfully. But to me, loosening the strings is a very simple way to reduce the risk of damage. So I do it. And I can't see any downside to it.
I've ordered new basses from Spector and Carvin recently, both were shipped directly from the company tuned to pitch.
I have worked at FedEx for over 20 years. I have never heard this as being our policy. Never. I don't know who the "WE" was he was referring to, but it was not FedEx.
A sample size as small as 250, or even 400 shipments, isn't sufficient to establish correlation between string tension and something as rare as a neck breaking during shipping.
You're attribiting the fact that none of your shipments have experienced neck breakage to the fact you always ship instruments detuned. But there's nothing in what you've done to establish they're related so far. Your sample is too small.
Your opinion is using logic similiar to the thinking of the guy who always kept a mongoose in his city penthouse - to keep the cobras away. When friends pointed out there were no wild cobras in the city, the man with the mongoose smiled and exclaimed "Really? Wow! This little mongoose is even more effective than I thought it would be!"
I always tell my cat as I'm leaving for work to make sure not to let any hippos or elephants into the house while I'm gone. I've NEVER seen ANY yet when I've come home. Damn, he's good.
