What end of the bass should you eye the neck from?

Bluebard

Bluebard

Oct 21, 2014
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#1
Hey bass dudes,

So when I go to eye the neck of my bass to see if it's straight, what end of the bass should I be looking down the neck from? From the headstock, or from the body? I find that the straightness of the neck looks different depending on what end I look down.
When I look down the neck from the headstock, it seems to have a hump around frets 5-7, and to have relief (an u-shaped bow) between the seventh and highest frets.
When I look down the neck from the body of the bass, the whole neck looks pretty bowed, with relief towards the middle of the neck.
So even when I seem to get the neck to look straight from one end, it tends to look either humped or bowed from the other end (with eyeing from the headstock tending to have a humped look, and eyeing from the body tending to have a bowed look).

Does this problem sound at all familiar to you guys? Do you know why I'm getting this discrepancy? From which end of the neck should I be judging its straightness?
In other words, when tightening / loosening the truss rod, from which side of the neck should the proper truss rod setting look straight?

Thanks guys!
 
#4
Well, I guess I want a little bit of relief but not too much relief... I'm want to have a straight neck before tightening the strings to be in tune, which will make for a little bit of relief once in tune.
But that still leaves me with having discrepancies between how the neck looks from either end of the bass, which would make it difficult to judge how much relief I actually have.
The straightedge is a good idea, but unfortunately I don't have one at the moment. Any ideas for what end to look down for now, until I get a straight edge?
 
#5
I look from both sides, to check for twist or bumps. You can tell a lot about the fretwork that way, too.
Relief can look different depending on the looking angle. So, I press the strings at first and last fret and visualy inspect the distance.
 
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#6
Use your strings as a straight edge. Just push one down or use a capo on the first fret, then push down at the last fret. Look at the relief by spotting the space between the strings and frets up and down the neck. If there is no space then it needs some relief. I look for about 1mm on both sides of the neck.
 
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#7
I look from both ends.

What I like to do is hold the bass under a light at angles until the fret edges glitter. Then they look like little road marker reflectors...and you get a real good view of what's going on.

A lot of the time necks aren't perfectly bowed. They will be straighter at one end than the other etc etc etc.

Also one side of a neck can have more bow in it than the other side.
 
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#8
sissy kathy said:
Use a straight edge and take the optical illusions out of the equation. The strings make a perfectly acceptable straight edge.
Click to expand...

Oh, yeah. Lighting & reflections will skew your perception. More than a few pros I've met have installed fluorescent fixtures horizontally along the backside of their work stations for optimal illumination.

Riis
 
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#10
Bluebard said:
I'll try the trick with the two capos to turn my strings into a straight-edge
Click to expand...
no need for all that, just hold the string down at the first and last frets and look under it over the middle frets.

it's marginally more useful to look down the neck from the last fret than from the nut; the frets being closer together up there where they're closer to your eye will lay out more evenly, getting farther apart as they get farther away so the gaps appear similar.

still, +1 to looking from both ends but primarily relying on the straightedge check.
 
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