Andrew signed up for a day of our one-on-one guitar tech training. The proud owner of several nice bass guitars, Andrew brought his brand-new Fender USA P-J Bass guitar, thinking that’d make this a quick & easy class.
Andrew was wrong.
We began by checking over the guitar carefully, end-to-end. We noticed the beautiful finish, the fact that the 4mm truss rod adjustment nut was at the heel of the neck rather than at the headstock, and we noticed a peculiar thing – the p-bass pickups were installed upside-down!
I wish I’d taken photos of all the issues with this guitar, but honestly at this point, I had no clue that we’d have so many problems that this would deserve a blog article.
Then we tuned the guitar and Andrew was surprised to learn that we have a particular method of tuning that makes the process quicker and easier than he was used to.
Nearly all techs agree that checking neck relief is the first step after tuning a guitar. But do you know when you have the right amount of relief?
String Action Gauges
Most techs either “eyeball” the gap or they use a string action gauge. Few people have eyeballs calibrated within a thousandth of an inch accuracy, so most use an action gauge. Sounds simple, right?
While training guitar techs – some with more than a decade of “experience”, I’ve found that they don’t realize that these gauges are not so simple to read.
If you don’t understand that your eyes must be on a particular plane, and how to get that exact same plane every reading, then you’re likely to read the same guitar with the same gauge and get different results each time!
It takes an average of a full week to train a tech to accurately and consistently read a gauge. As if that wasn’t enough of a problem, string action gauges will differ by up to ten-thousandths of an inch or more – between gauges of the exact same make and model bought at the same time!
So far, the most accurate string action gauges I’ve found are the Fret-Guru gauges, and even they vary by up to five-thousandths of an inch!
This is a topic that deserves its own article and so we’ll write one for GuitarsDoneRight.com since it will be of interest to all stringed instrument techs, not just those around Clearwater.
Setting Neck Relief
Since we didn’t have a week to train Andrew how to read a string action gauge, we gave him a couple of our special, home-made gauges to use and he discovered that his brand-new Fender USA bass guitar had more then twice the relief that it should have.
As neck relief grows, the headstock becomes a bit higher vis-a-vis the plane of the neck. This provides a bit more leverage and the neck begins to bend gradually faster. We all know what happens when you bend wood for a long period of time, right? That’s why it’s so important to keep your truss rod “tuned” to the proper amount of neck relief.
Andrew thought he’d have to remove the neck or loosen the strings in order to adjust the truss rod, but neither was necessary. The tool that Fender supplied with the bass – a short 4mm allen wrench with a comfortable handle, handled the job nicely.
Nut Slot Heights
Our student was surprised to learn that two of the nut slots were too low and our test light confirmed that B & e open strings were buzzing on the first fret!
When nut slots are high or low at just one end, it’s often due to the factory erroneously milling the nut shelf at an angle rather than flat.
We explained the process of removing a Fender style nut from the end using a heat gun and nailset after carefully scoring the finish covering the ends of the nut, but Andrew opted for filling and filing the low slots, so we guided him through that process.
We explained the importance of using proper nut files and especially using the right size files. Then we showed Andrew how to angle the back of the slots to match the angle of the strings’ path to the tuner posts.
As a final touch, we showed him how to round the rear edge of the slots to prevent tuning snags. That’s where you turn your tuner key but the pitch doesn’t change, so you turn again and “ZING” now the pitch is sharp!
That’s usually caused by the string binding on the sharp back edge of the nut slots and by the fact that factory nut slots are filed flat, not angled, thus putting greater tension at the binding point.
More Problems
Of course, we found problems with saddle heights, intonation, etc., but by the time we finished – five and a half hours after we began – Andrew was very happy with his bass and with all he had learned, including how to properly wind strings onto his tuners.
Please note that we are not picking on Fender! We find similar issues with new Gibsons, Gretsch, MusicMan, PRS, etc.
If you’d like to learn how to set up and repair guitars, or just sharpen your setup skills, check out our monthly guitar setup workshops (group) and our one-on-one training sessions where you choose the day(s) and topic(s).
If you have a new or used guitar and want to ensure its long lifespan and/or get it playing its very best, bring it to Hank’s Guitar Shop for expert guitar setups and repairs.
