#bass setup

Setup :: 2002-03 Fender Precison Bass Special [9.2 lbs] An early 2000's P bass in for a setup.  No major issues, just a few tweaks.  Love this semi-transparent seafoam-ish finish.

A neck-through early 80's Japanese Yamaha PJ (note the reverse P pickup) in for a neck strip and refinished with Tung oil.  There is some nice birdseye figure in this neck that didn't really show until I stripped the thick poly and started to apply the oil.  During the setup I found many uneven frets so a level, crown and polish was required to get the action super low for this player.  With older guitars, often the screws are an odd assortment of non-originals.  This was missing a few pickup screws that needed to be replaced with the proper metric ones.  The bridge pickup even had a coarse wood screw holding it in place.  Thankfully the pickup threads were not damaged (somehow) and cleanly accepted a new screw.  The side-mounted output jack plate also fell victim to the random screw swapping so I replaced them all with a matching quartet.

Video of the fret level and neck strip from the vlog below. https://youtu.be/3XXDmhjqFfg

Output Jack & Setup :: 2004 Squire P Bass [8.0 lbs]

Tweak While You Wait :: 1989 Sadowsky Jazz Bass [8.8 lbs]

2012-13 Fender Precision Bass Special Deluxe Series :: setup

Hey guys,

I hope you’re all well.

Want to set-up your own guitar/bass?  Want it to play better?  Wondering what all of those terms like truss rod, action and intonation mean?  Don’t worry; you’re not alone. 

When I picked up the guitar, I was (and rightly so) ignorant to the idea of setting up a guitar so that it was as easy to play.  As my skills and ear developed though, I found that I wanted to know what the technical terms meant, and why my acoustic guitar buzzed when I fretted certain notes and so on.

Over the years I’ve accumulated quite a bit of basic knowledge.  Recently though, and thanks to the fantastic book by Dan Erlewine and a fret levelling kit (amongst other things) from gmchandcraftedguitars.com, I have built on my knowledge and would like to share a few basic terms and things you can do to improve your guitar’s set-up.  As I learn more, I’ll post more.  Deal?  Sweet.  In this part we’ll look at what a set-up is, as well as learn how to change strings the correct way on an acoustic guitar.

1)  What is a set-up?

Number one was going to be how to change strings, and though that’s one of the best tasks you can learn to do yourself, it really falls under the whole idea of ‘setting up’ a guitar. 

A guitar set-up simply means that a number of maintenance tasks are carried out prior to and post changing the strings in order to get it to sound and play the best it can in regard to your playing style.  Remember: the easier a guitar is to play and the sweeter sound, the more rewarding your experience will be when playing it.  A set-up usually consists of:

Carefully removing old strings

Oiling the fretboard (if an open grain wood like rosewood), cleaning the frets/fretboard, cleaning the body and hardware (if an electric guitar)

Changing to new, fresh strings

Sighting the neck and adjusting its relief as required

Checking/rectifying any high frets

Checking/rectifying the height of the nut

Checking/rectifying the saddle (if an acoustic)

Checking/adjusting the guitar’s action

Checking/adjusting intonation

When you consider all of the different types of guitar out there, such as electric guitars with tremolos, archtop guitars and so on, you can see how this might get interesting!



Anyway, let’s keep things as simple for now and let’s learn how to re-string an acoustic guitar.

2) How to re-string an acoustic guitar

Re-stringing an electric guitar is generally easier than an acoustic.  Why?  Because whereas most electrics have fixed metal bridges/tailpieces that hold the ball end of the string in place.  An acoustic relies on a wooden bridge and removable bridge pins that hold the ball end of the string in place.  In short, it’s more fiddly and easier to get wrong.

You will need:

a) A guitar b) A new set of strings c) Clean rags/polishing cloth d) A pair of metal snippers/pliers

Optionally: lemon oil, 0000 wire wool, metal cleaner/polish (I use my Zildjian cymbal polish - it’s excellent on frets!) and a compact mirror with a light.



Step 1 - Remove the old strings

Loosen the strings until you can unwind them from the tuning pegs and slide them out of the slots. Be careful here not to scratch the gloss/wood on your head stock. Next, turn your attention to the bridge. Six or twelve bridge pins (12 if a 12 stringer) will be holding the strings in place. First, see if you can pull the bridge pins out with your fingers. If this fails, pull the strings to one side, stick your hand in the soundhole and under the bridge pins. Using your fingers, push the pins out one by one. Try to avoid using pliers if you can.  Set the pins to one side and discard all but one of the thicker strings (you’ll see why in a bit).

Step 2 - Cleaning / oiling

Once the strings are off, inspect the fretboard and the bridge and make sure everything’s in good shape. Also inspect the bridge pins to make sure they’re in good nick. If you have an open grain fretboard (rosewood, ebony etc), get some lemon oil (widely sold), and give the neck a couple of squirts and work in in using a rag. Clean the fretboard and the groove between the fret and the fingerboard using your rag and oil you sprayed. Next, spray some on a clean part of the rag and clean the bridge (again only if a wood like rosewood).



As an aside, lemon oil isn’t actually oil from a lemon - they add the lemon scent in!

Either leave the excess oil to soak in and nourish the wood or clean it off with a clean rag. Next, I like to give the frets a polish.  0000 wire wool is great for this, but if you don’t have any of that, and you don’t have any metal cleaner around, a clean rag is better than nothing! If you have wire wool and a rosewood board, rub the frets horizontally. Don’t use wire wool on maple boards without masking off the fretboard first as the wool may scratch the finish.

Now I like to clean the rest of the guitar. Glass cleaner is excellent on polyurethane/gloss type finishes. These finishes seem resistant to just about anything and glass cleaner leaves a streak free, shiny finish. On natural wood guitars, damp a rag with warm water (not too much!) and give the wood a wipe down removing any dust under where the strings would have been. Don’t use anything other than a clean, damp rag on natural finishes and make sure it’s not too wet.

Use common sense when applying lemon oil. A little goes a long way and you might not necessarily need to use it every time you change strings. If the fingerboard is a light shade of brown and appears dry, give it some lemon oil.

Step 3 - Secure the strings at the bridge end first

Under the bridge is a bridge pad. This is a piece of wood glued to the bottom of the bridge to add strength. It also houses the ball end of string which is held against it using the bridge pins. The ball end of the string should end up fitting snuggly in the groove of the bridge pin, up against the bridge pad. There’s no excess string under the bridge - they’re up tight against the pad in the groove of the bridge pin slot. See this illustration:



Many techs like to add a curve to the string at the ball at this point or even wrap it round some dowel for some serious curve so that the string slides over the bridge and sits nicely on the bridge pad. You can do this by holding the string and bridge pin so that recessed part of the ball end is facing you. You can then loosely wrap ball end of the string round your finger to add a curve. Note that you don’t want to kink the string here - just add a natural curve in its form.



If you have the mirror as mentioned earlier, stick it under the bridge so you can sight the bridge pad by looking at the mirror through the sound hole. Stick the ball end of the string in the hole making sure the ball end is vertical and the ‘O’ of the ball end is horizontal.  



Make sure that the ball end ‘winding’ is out of sight in the hole. Whilst holding the string in the hole with your left hand, grab a bridge pin with your right hand and insert it in the hole. Don’t push it all the way yet - just push it enough to hold the string where it is.  

Now, whilst using your mirror, make sure the ball end is in the groove and is up against the bridge pad. You might need to fiddle a bit but you’ll get there. Once it’s there, push the pin in so it’s snug and holding the string in.  What we don’t want is to tune up to pitch and have the string windings at the ball end digging into the bridge or slipping up from the pad up through the bridge.  Generally if you’ve got the ball end where it should be there’s no string to slip through.

I’ve noticed on some budget guitars that the winding shows whether you like it or not.  This is usually because the bridge and pad depth isn’t enough.  In this instance the strings will only slip come what may, so I’d put up with it and get yourself a better guitar when you can.



Next we turn our attention to the tuning pegs at the head stock. There are quite a few methods to stringing the guitar at the tuning post, but I like the method whereby you put the string through the post, loop it over itself, then tighten her up so that two or three winds trap the string in place. Here’s how we do it:

Tip: use the string you saved earlier to practice the technique outlined below. If necessary, and if the original wind makes it difficult, cut the string so you have a straight bit to play with.

a) Turn the tuning peg so the holes are vertical. Put the string through the hole and draw it all the way through so there’s no slack. 



b) With your left hand holding the string you’ve fed through the peg, use the right hand to pull some slack (about two frets worth) back through the hole.

c) Now, using the slack you’ve pulled back, you want to bring the slack up and around to the right of the tuning peg, trapping the string that you poked through the hole in part a. Once you’ve done this, pull the string tight with your right hand, then kink the excess up with your left hand.



d) Now, whilst keep the string tight with your right hand, turn the peg counter clockwise. You’ll see the string gets trapped under the two or three winds (you may want/need to supervise the second wind so it goes under the string and traps it)



e) Bring the string slowly up to pitch. Once done, get your snippers/pliers and trim the excess string back

f) Repeat these steps for the A and D strings (the top three thickest strings). When you do the bottom three, the G, B and E, you’ll want to bring the loop round the left of the tuning post and turn the tuner counter-clockwise.



(Note that the string here is not the high E and is used just to illustrate the concept! Your string will be a lot thinner than the one here).

Once you’ve done this and snipped off the ends, you can bring the strings up to pitch and play them in. Installing the strings in this way will ensure that your guitar sounds better (the strings are anchored correctly at the bridge end transmitting all of the tone to the body/soundboard), stays in tune better and avoids irritating string slippage that naws away at the bridge.