Bass neck adjustment?

[Steve Conner]

Hi all,

I just bought a (very) used Westone Super Headless bass. The bird's eye maple top gave me huge GAS. It sounds great and plays easily, but has quite a lot of fret buzz, especially above the 12th fret. I'm wondering if the neck needs adjusted.

If I hold a string down at the 1st and 12th frets, I can see at least 1/16" of relief around the 7th fret. If I hold it down at the 12th and 24th, there is practically no relief. Most of the relief appears around the 5th to 8th fret area, and it almost seems to get less again past the 12th fret. Sighting down the fretboard, the neck shows no signs of warpage or sprung frets. However, the frets are all pretty worn.

Is this normal? I cranked the truss rod up a little, but it didn't seem to make any great difference, so I thought I would check with you guys before I crank it up more and break it How much relief should a bass neck have? Where should it be? Should I leave the truss rod alone and raise the action at the bridge?

Thanks
Steve

[Satamax]

Set neck, or screwed on neck? If the first, straignten the neck (loosening the strings!!!) With the the truss rod. And raise the bridge. If the later straignten the neck, same way as before and tune the angle of the neck. The bow in the neck about 1.5mm should be near OK, may be a bit less, like 1mm 0.8mm is better. The bow in the neck should come down the 12/16th fret usualy, but lower than this, it should be either straight of very slightly concave (never convex, as 12 fret hump is!) Realy it's all about triangulation, when planing a guitar, i trace teh body face, either flat or domed, thrace the neck with teh proper angle, trace the bridge, taking into account it's height, and trace the string. It usualy looks a shalow triangle with one end cut. The area between the 12th fret and the end of teh fingerboard should either be parallel to the string or open slightly. I'd say you need at least 4mm under the bass string and 3mm under the treble string around 12/16th fret. Check the Mimf forum, and ask your question there too, there's more experts there! But David Schwab gonna pop around to reply i bet!

Bye.

Max.

[David Schwab]

Max, you know me too well! Too much time on my hands while at my day job...

Firstly, anytime you need to tighten a truss rod, first bend the neck straight, either by hand, or better yet, use some clamps and blocks. Once you get the neck straight, tighten the rod. You don't want the rod to do the work.

I'd start by getting the neck straight with no relief and then get the action right at the bridge like Max said. If you find your lower strings fret out a bit in the middle of the neck, then slightly loosen the rod for a little relief.

Also, is this a bolt on? You might have two situations... the first is the neck angle, which you can change with a shim. You may need to do that after the neck is straight, either to raise or lower the over all action. The other thing is that bolt on necks sometimes develop a hump over the area where the neck bolts to the body. This is partly due to the tension of the neck bolts, and also from moisture seeping into the neck screw holes. Very often the fingerboard, and/or frets need to be leveled here.

A good fret leveling can make even brand new (factory made) basses play a lot better.

[Steve Conner]

Hi guys, thanks for the advice!

I tried bending the neck straight by hand like David suggested while tightening the truss rod nut, and it made it tighten a hell of a lot easier. I was able to take almost all of the relief out. I'll wait for a day or two to let it settle before trying to take out the last bit.

Once I had done that, I had to raise the bridge saddles a lot and redo the intonation. So the action is a good deal higher up at the high notes, about the 4mm Max suggested, and not so fast to play. But it now sounds a lot better, since it can be hit hard without so much funky fret buzz. I'm going to take it to a band rehearsal tomorrow and see how it holds up.

It is a neck thru bass, and a freakish looking one at that! I bought it for the looks and hoped I could get it to play well ;-) It has a load of knobs and switches, and funky Japanese active electronics with two 9v batteries and some 8-pin chip I never heard of. The pickups are humbuckers with what appears to be some kind of coil tap switch, though throwing it doesn't cause any extra hum. If you like, I'll post a picture when I get the chance to take a good one.

[David Schwab]

Originally Posted by Steve Conner

The pickups are humbuckers with what appears to be some kind of coil tap switch, though throwing it doesn't cause any extra hum.

Probably series/parallel then. That's always a good choice over hum/single, as there's more variation between the two sounds.

Sounds like you will have to level the fingerboard up on the top end on the neck.

Is it like this one? I remember these basses... very cool looking. Take some pictures!

[Steve Conner]

Yay, finally got some pictures. Another Super Headless owner also sent me a link to this http://www.westone.info/cats/1985headless/p3.html

[petemoore]

Make sure you have a good allen wrench/truss nut match, so you don't tear up the nut...
Relieve pressure, especially before twisting hard with the allen wrench [notice I alluded to twisting the nut only, a good hand can push evenly on the 6 walls of the nut, using only a thumb push the allen lever puts lots of off-axis pressure and will damage the nut with less pressure...
Then get used to and pay close attention to..every measurement and 'feel'...while trying out truss adjustment tighnesses...
yupp.. a nut which was requiring heavy twist to turn, can 'spin' when the stress is taken off of it....I cheat and have the body held, pull the neck down at the head [with strings tight] then test the tortion needed to turn the nut...not recommended...lol..but I can usually get an easier, quicker truss nut turn on it that way...just don't strip the nut...or break the rod !!!...it'll only pull 'so' hard, more than hard enough in most cases...get the stress off it while adjusting it to pull harder.

[guyfergy]

I have many basses and haven't played my Tobias for a long time. I took it out of the case and started to play it when I noticed fret buzz down about the 1st fret. I checked the neck and there wasn't enough relief. I losened the 2 truss rods all the way and let it sit for a few days but that didn't help, the neck was too straight. I had light gauge strings on it , .040 on the G string. I changed the strings and put .050 G string set on and let it set for a few days. It was a little better so I tightened the truss rods up just so that they were putting a little tension on the neck. It's been weeks now and I was hoping that the heavier guage strings would give it some front bow so that the rods would have needed some adjustment but no change. I'm worried taht this neck seems to want to have back bow instead of front bow and I have no clue why this happened to my bass in the 1st place. Is there somethign else I can do to correct this. I bought this bass brand new and have taked care of it like a baby. It's never been exposed to extreme temp changes or anything like that. Can you help?

[Steve Conner]

Not really. I ended up taking this bass to my local luthier and he set it up for me. I recommend you do the same, a Tobias is a pretty nice bass and you don't want to mess it up.

To me, 1st fret buzz (as in, the string buzzes on the 1st fret when it's played open) says that the nut slots are too deep, or the 1st fret is too high and needs dressed. Both jobs for a luthier, IMO. Adjusting the bridge and truss rod will mostly affect the action higher up on the neck, it will hardly affect the 1st fret action at all.

I'd also suggest contacting Tobias customer support and ask them what to do. You might get warranty service or something.