Hi guys!
I have been a proud owner of a Tony Franklin Fretless Precision Bass for about a year. I only really got comfortable playing fretless about 4 months ago, so I had kept the stock (round-wound!) strings on it until this January. Not wanting to screw up this beautiful axe in any way, I brought it to a local guitar shop to get the strings changed and they recommended a pair of flatwounds and stuck them on.
When I got it back, however, the bass sounded like complete crap. The (lack of) tension made it completely unplayable and gave it this abundance of string sound that is the antithesis of the tight fretless tone that I have grown to love about this bass. I brought it back to the shop and they apologized, said that they sometimes forgot to adjust basses when they restring. However, they then proceeded to microadjust each string, so that they were *slightly* tighter but on the whole it still feels entirely too loose. Unfortunately, this was during my holiday trip back home, and I am now back on the West Coast so I cannot bring it back to them again.
So my question is (sorry for all the pretense) -- does this sound like my bass needs a truss rod adjustment? I have looked up how to do this and it does not seem to difficult. I wanted to make sure before I start messing around with such a nice bass, however, that this is the likely issue and it is not something that I should leave to a qualified repairman. Does the tension tend to go down when moving from roundwounds to flatwounds? The change was just so drastic that I am worried that the problem might be more severe...
Anyway, thank you guys in advance. I'm hoping I'll be able to get this figured out over the weekend so I can gig with the TF this Friday!
Cheers.
P.S. To anyone who is looking at this bass, I highly recommend it. Its tone is absolutely marvelous and it gels very well with FX pedals (Eventide Space
)
I have been a proud owner of a Tony Franklin Fretless Precision Bass for about a year. I only really got comfortable playing fretless about 4 months ago, so I had kept the stock (round-wound!) strings on it until this January. Not wanting to screw up this beautiful axe in any way, I brought it to a local guitar shop to get the strings changed and they recommended a pair of flatwounds and stuck them on.
When I got it back, however, the bass sounded like complete crap. The (lack of) tension made it completely unplayable and gave it this abundance of string sound that is the antithesis of the tight fretless tone that I have grown to love about this bass. I brought it back to the shop and they apologized, said that they sometimes forgot to adjust basses when they restring. However, they then proceeded to microadjust each string, so that they were *slightly* tighter but on the whole it still feels entirely too loose. Unfortunately, this was during my holiday trip back home, and I am now back on the West Coast so I cannot bring it back to them again.
So my question is (sorry for all the pretense) -- does this sound like my bass needs a truss rod adjustment? I have looked up how to do this and it does not seem to difficult. I wanted to make sure before I start messing around with such a nice bass, however, that this is the likely issue and it is not something that I should leave to a qualified repairman. Does the tension tend to go down when moving from roundwounds to flatwounds? The change was just so drastic that I am worried that the problem might be more severe...
Anyway, thank you guys in advance. I'm hoping I'll be able to get this figured out over the weekend so I can gig with the TF this Friday!
Cheers.
P.S. To anyone who is looking at this bass, I highly recommend it. Its tone is absolutely marvelous and it gels very well with FX pedals (Eventide Space
)
