How often do you need to (re-)setup your bass?

M

MortenAP

Dec 15, 2017
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#1
My experience is mostly gathered as s guitar player during 40 years but also playing bass on/off. Recently focus has gone to bass playing.

In 2015 I bought an Ibanez SR500 Brown Mahagony which I love for its playability and great sound no matter what I plug it into - just dial the onboard active tone controlls.

But.... after a year or so I realized that intonation was gone far off and neck was banana shaped. And frets were sticking out giving me wounds on my left hand. Did some adjustments myself and had a luthier work on it too.

Now again some years after I realized that neck was now gone to straight and action was ended being set way to high.

I have been playing a Tokai Stratocaster for 35 years and a Fender American Strat for 10 years and I have NEVER redone any setups.

Is it poor wood quality on my bass or just a fact because all my guitars have maple necks with skunk stripe and 'darkwood' fingerboards while the Ibanez bass has a Jatoba/Bubinga 5 piece neck?

I live in Denmark and we do have some seasonal changes in humidity, but I think changes are much bigger at other places of our planet - and it does not affect my guitars.
 
#2
MortenAP said:
My experience is mostly gathered as s guitar player during 40 years but also playing bass on/off. Recently focus has gone to bass playing.

In 2015 I bought an Ibanez SR500 Brown Mahagony which I love for its playability and great sound no matter what I plug it into - just dial the onboard active tone controlls.

But.... after a year or so I realized that intonation was gone far off and neck was banana shaped. And frets were sticking out giving me wounds on my left hand. Did some adjustments myself and had a luthier work on it too.

Now again some years after I realized that neck was now gone to straight and action was ended being set way to high.

I have been playing a Tokai Stratocaster for 35 years and a Fender American Strat for 10 years and I have NEVER redone any setups.

Is it poor wood quality on my bass or just a fact because all my guitars have maple necks with skunk stripe and 'darkwood' fingerboards while the Ibanez bass has a Jatoba/Bubinga 5 piece neck?

I live in Denmark and we do have some seasonal changes in humidity, but I think changes are much bigger at other places of our planet - and it does not affect my guitars.
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All guitars need regular setups. Wood changes with the weather. The two instruments are setup basically the same even though a bass guitar has much thicker strings. Bass setups are just more finnicky because the larger strings need more space to vibrate. Take some measurements of your guitar now and in six months, I bet they shift a little too.
 
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#3
I have an SR370 with a 5-piece maple and rosewood neck. It has moved a little in autumn, bending back causing buzz, so I had to loosen it a bit but it was minimal. Frets remained as they always were in the rosewood fingerboard.
I had to adjust a couple other basses in a similar way along the year but never ran into problems. That old and cheap Harley Benton B-400 FL (130€ price range) never moved beyond half a turn on the truss rod. It's about 15 years old. It's maple too.

My guitars do not seem to move as much.
 
#8
Ibanez’s have thin necks, and unless that neck is quarter sawn, which I’m sure it’s not, it will be more prone to movement.

I had a Tobias growler that absolutely never needed adjustment. My American jazz with posiflex rods still needs a little tweak now and again.

Just have a truss rod wrench on hand and adjust as needed and it won’t get to the banana point.
 
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#9
buldog5151bass said:
Call me a snob, but I think better made more expensive instruments are more stable.
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Call me a cheap poor sod but my Ibanez Mikro that you can get for 180$ from new has the most stable neck I ever had on any bass or guitar I ever owned, and I owned some instruments that costed over 1000$.

While generally there will probably be a bigger chance of a high end bass having better wood, cause the pieces are carefully picked and undergoes proper quality control, truth is that there is no way to predict how a given piece of wood will act over time for certain, even high end basses can turn out unlucky and have highly unstable necks and a cheap budget instrument by chance can have the most stable neck you ever seen.
 
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#10
JohnArnson said:
Call me a cheap poor sod but my Ibanez Mikro that you can get for 180$ from new has the most stable neck I ever had on any bass or guitar I ever owned, and I owned some instruments that costed over 1000$.

While generally there will probably be a bigger chance of a high end bass having better wood, cause the pieces are carefully picked and undergoes proper quality control, truth is that there is no way to predict how a given piece of wood will act over time for certain, even high end basses can turn out unlucky and have highly unstable necks and a cheap budget instrument by chance can have the most stable neck you ever seen.
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The micro is a short scale yes? That may help too.
 
#11
craigie said:
The micro is a short scale yes? That may help too.
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True it does have less tension on the neck from the strings, relatively speaking.

Still my specific Mikro does really have an incredible stable neck, and the tension shouldn't really change on how humidity and temperature effects the actual wood in general.
 
#14
mrb327 said:
Being shorter scale isn't just the tension, but also the length of the neck. Less length to bend or move
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I might have been unlucky with my guitars, I don't know, but it's even more stable than those, as I already mentioned.

And relatively speaking, wouldn't the changes in the wood be the same no matter how long or short a neck is, I mean on a longer one obviously there's more wood that change, but those changes will also be distributed over more mass, the same amount of wood of a specific piece of wood would change equally, right, not more just because it's a bigger piece, just the same changes everywhere over a larger area?

Not sure if I got this right, but appears to be the logical answer to me.
 
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#15
JohnArnson said:
I might have been unlucky with my guitars, I don't know, but it's even more stable than those, as I already mentioned.

And relatively speaking, wouldn't the changes in the wood be the same no matter how long or short a neck is, I mean on a longer one obviously there's more wood that change, but those changes will also be distributed over more mass, the same amount of wood of a specific piece of wood would change equally, right, not more just because it's a bigger piece, just the same changes everywhere over a larger area?

Not sure if I got this right, but appears to be the logical answer to me.
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I will assume that a piece of wood (= the neck) will bend in the same way no matter if it has been cut to a short scale or a long scale.

And so the relief from the bending will be bigger on a long scale (like a bass - the blue string) than on a short scale (like a guitar - the red string):

The banana.png
 
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#17
In an overly simple idea:

Bending a 12" paint stick is harder than bending a 36" yard stick. So the same would apply to a neck. albeit at a much less significant ratio with the difference only being the scale length
 
#18
mrb327 said:
In an overly simple idea:

Bending a 12" paint stick is harder than bending a 36" yard stick. So the same would apply to a neck. albeit at a much less significant ratio with the difference only being the scale length
Click to expand...

That's also why modern single cut designs are more stable. Less neck sticking free of the body, so it's a shorter (unsupported) lever to bend.
 
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#19
As I've said before, if it stiffness your linguini. Of course you can find a cheap instrument that works well. But I figure I will play my Lull consistently for over 30 years, and my Fender (which I bought used) for over 50. I have no intention of selling either until I am unable to play (and if no one in my family plays bass). I'll happily pay the extra $1400 for the Lull - that comes to less than a dollar a week extra. They are wonderful instruments, and in the combined over half century of gigging both regularly, in the fickle weather of New England, I have had to adjust a neck exactly once.
 
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#20
Basses have a longer neck and more tension on the strings than guitars. Both those things make them more prone to movement. Still, with good construction, they can be pretty stable.
You should expect to have to dial things in if you change string gauges or models. Some necks in places where the humidity varies need to be adjusted a couple of times a year.

I have Warmoth roasted necks with graphite reinforcements. About as stable as wood necks get - a minor tweak if I change string gauges. They’re great, but like any wood neck, not perfect.
 
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