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truss rod adjustment???

V

voodoo92

Jun 14, 2009
217
2
Brisbane, Australia
#1
Gday. I am building a fretless 4 for myself and i just put the whole thing together for a trial run before paint and found yet another problem of the many thousands i have already found. the strings are hitting the fingerboard all the way down the neck. I have a reasonabily small nut only about 1mm high maybe, and i had also tried raising the saddles all the way up. i tried this on the E string and i almost got rid off it hitting. but this is no where near good enough. will adjusting the rod make my problems go away by raising the headstock end a little or would it not work at all? alternativly i might have to take a little cut of timber off of the neck pocket closest to the pickups to change the angle of the whole neck... not something i really want to do. so would adjusting the rod work for what i need?
thanks all

Adam
 
#2
voodoo92 said:
Gday. I am building a fretless 4 for myself and i just put the whole thing together for a trial run before paint and found yet another problem of the many thousands i have already found. the strings are hitting the fingerboard all the way down the neck. I have a reasonabily small nut only about 1mm high maybe, and i had also tried raising the saddles all the way up. i tried this on the E string and i almost got rid off it hitting. but this is no where near good enough. will adjusting the rod make my problems go away by raising the headstock end a little or would it not work at all? alternativly i might have to take a little cut of timber off of the neck pocket closest to the pickups to change the angle of the whole neck... not something i really want to do. so would adjusting the rod work for what i need?
thanks all

Adam
Click to expand...

No. This has nothing to do with trussrod adjustments.

You could make the neck pocket deeper, or shim the neck so that the angle is appropriate.
 
#3
I vote for starting off w/a neck shim.

There's informatiion on how to do this on the Fender website, but the abridged version is...

Take the neck off the bass. Cut a strip from a business card that is about 1/4" deep (6.35 mm) and the width of the neck pocket at the back (closest to pickups). Lay that strip in the neck pocket, put the neck back on and readjust string height.

Good luck.
 
#4
Bobster said:
I vote for starting off w/a neck shim.

There's informatiion on how to do this on the Fender website, but the abridged version is...

Take the neck off the bass. Cut a strip from a business card that is about 1/4" deep (6.35 mm) and the width of the neck pocket at the back (closest to pickups). Lay that strip in the neck pocket, put the neck back on and readjust string height.

Good luck.
Click to expand...

This will only drop the strings closer to the neck. The shim would have to be located at the other end of the neck pocket to raise the string height. Another thing to consider is that the nut may have to be redone to achieve the proper string height for open strings.
 
#5
That's absolutely right. Don't know what I was thinking.

So, raising the nut is a possibility (you should be able to put a spacer under the nut (business card, card stock) as a test.

Shimming the other end of the neck pocket

different bridge w/more saddle adjustment
 

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