My recent experience in taking a beat up and unplayable Foundation back to being a great bass was great fun and I tried something new to me that may be useful to some of you. If you have already heard part of this story, please excuse an old man. We tend to repeat ourselves.
The bass came to me in the original case. I bought it off Reverb for $175 plus shipping. It is a scratched up red bass with rosewood fingerboard, super ferrite PU's, two piece neck, scroll lettering on the HS and no micro tilt. EDIT: 58Kites let me know that the micro tilt was probably under the neck plate and it is. I think the neck plate has been changed.
The bass had a lot of forward bow when it arrived and it sounded terrible and the controls did not work properly. The electronics problems were easily corrected since I own another Foundation with Super Ferrites and could compare wiring. The hot and ground on the neck PU were reversed and the output jack was connected to the opposite end of the tone pot rather than the PU output. Those two errors were corrected and the bass sounded fantastic.....but played terrible.
I removed the truss rod cover and found the truss rod nut cavity filled with some kind of glue. I believe it was hot glue. ???? No, I can't imagine what that was supposed to do. Similar to a dog's solution to some problems....pee on it and then cover it up. The bass also had a set of .050 to .105 strings on it which didn't help.
I chipped out the glue and found the truss rod nut buggered up. Finally was able to remove it after heating it with my soldering iron. Ordered a new nut, lightly lubed the threads and the bearing surface and found that with it very tight there was still too much relief with a set of .040-.100 strings on it. I find most basses play their best with almost no relief. This one required the bridge saddles to be very high to keep it from fretting out on the higher frets.
So, to recap, here I am with an inexpensive bass that has too much relief in the neck, a very tight truss rod nut and does not play very well.
I thought about it for a day or two and decided to try something I have not done before. I clamped the body to a table with the neck hanging off the table edge. I took a guitar strap and hung it off the head stock and then put 16 pounds of weight in the strap. This was done with the strings loose. I then took a hair dryer and heated the neck and concentrated on the area where the neck meets the body. I heated it several times and left it with the weights hanging on the HS for two days.
I removed the bass from my makeshift neck jig and it was pretty much straight but still had too much forward bow when tuned to pitch. I loosened the strings again and decided to try tightening the truss rod nut. I found it much easier to turn and was able to give it about half a turn (yeah, that is a lot but the neck needed a lot of adjustment) and the nut was still not overly tight. I again tuned it to pitch and the neck was dead straight....no relief.
I left it tuned to pitch and after a day it settled in with almost no relief. YAY! I was able to do a normal set up and now the bass plays great and sounds fantastic.
I hope this info will be of use to any of you that may have a bass with similar neck problems. As you know, a properly fitting wrench is essential for making adjustment on a bass and so many Peavey basses have damaged truss rod nuts because it takes a thin wall socket to properly fit these older basses.
JK. I need some extra grit for a song or two (maybe more) and it was between this and the Sansamp Geddy Lee. I SHOULD'VE bought from GC instead of Ebay best price to save $25 bucks. GC has the BEST return policy. (Bill's Music also has 30 day return policy. Just checked.) Darn !!! I don't want to think like that. The ink isn't even dry yet.
....he's a Pimp.
