Truss Rod Redux - but on fretless?

[BeenDown139]

as it takes a little while for a neck to get to where the TR is telling it to go; do 1/4 turn and let it sit for a day or 2 and you're less likely to find yourself going back the other way a little later.

that's one thing i forgot to mention in my last bloviation is that i'll give the truss rods 1/4 to 1/2 turn in the direction i think they need to go, tune it to pitch and wait for a day or two before i put the truss rod cover back on.  some others may cringe at this next step, but i've found it helps to position the neck of the bass over my knee at the 12th fret and gently bend the neck (right hand on the body, left hand on the nut (not on the headstock!) in the desired direction.  just a little dab will do it!  You want to be helping, not forcing.  i've found that this is an iterative process, sometimes it takes a few days to get everything balanced out.

BTW played the fretless last night.  Sunday's tweak-fest seemed to have hit the bull's eye.  played along with Peggy Lee on "Fever".  All mwahh, no rattle.  i love that acoustic bass growl, makes life worth living.  The theme from "Pink Panther" is next.
  Wheee!

[JimmyJ]

Yes, my technique is more like BeenDown's than Peter's.  If I'm trying to flatten the neck I'll give the TRs (I have two) a 1/4 or 1/2 turn - kinda trying to match their tightness by feel - and then give the neck a strong tug or two in the direction the truss rod is pulling (as stated, nut-to-body, not including the headstock).  That can help the system find its balance without the overnight wait.  These sandwiched wood beams are super strong.  I think you'd have to run over it with a car to break it. The headstock joint naturally is the weakest point and the only place I've ever heard of one of these necks breaking.

Not to change the subject ... but my string changing method has taken a similar turn over the centuries.  I used to put a fresh set on the night before to give it time to "settle".  But now, as soon as they're on I'll press down hard on either side of the bridge and the nut, and at the tuning pegs - to teach the strings where to bend - and then I'll pull the center of each back and forth like I'm shooting arrows.  Tune it back up and it stays right there. 

Jimmy J

[cozmik_cowboy]

I also will give new strings a tug; I never had thought to do the "SG players' poor man's whammy" trick, though.  Next set-up, maybe I'll give it a whang.

As a side note to Jimmy's string-changing the night before:  My friend Jim Post used to have (and may still have; haven't seen him in about 35 years) an endorsement deal with GHS, which included unlimited strings (acoustic guitar in his case); he changed the wires every fool set.  His tuning seemed surprisingly stable (he was using a Gurian at that time).

Peter (who just noticed that the first paragraph of his last post came out as______________  instead of his carefully crafted verbiage - and it's too late to edit & try again)

[BeenDown139]

footnote to this adventure:

so it's been an unusual cold crappy long drawn out damp seattle kind of spring here in the mile high city.  haven't seen the sun in a week or so.  fire up the fretless to greet the dawn with on saturday morning, check the tuning and the whole bass is sharp by almost a 1/2 step.  try to play a song and the A string is nothing but rattle up and down the neck, the others getting there.  out come the tools and it took a 1/2 turn on each truss rod to get some relief back in the neck.  Played it a little while yesterday, it's still got a little ways to go, probably tweak it again tonight.  My bass corner is in the most exposed room of the house which probably doesn't help matters.
i've owned 4 fretless basses over the years, all of them neck-throughs, 3 of them alembics and i've never had one that goes as wonky as this one does when the weather changes.  good thing she's so pretty and sings like she does when she's happy or it would've been off to the home for wayward basses with her long ago.

BTW, new strings get tuned to pitch, then i hook my finger under them around the 12th fret, tug it up off the neck about an inch or so, re-tune and they pretty much stay put after that.  i've seen guys actually cringe when i do that.  wouldn't recommend it for an instrument with a headstock repair.

[edwin]

Different basses react to weather differently. My Starfire doesn't care about weather at all and will stay in tune everywhere in the US. My David King fretless 5 is much more reactive, so when I was touring, I had to adjust the truss rod depending on where I was in the country. Simple enough to do and the neck was designed with a double titanium truss rod, so it worked perfectly.

[BeenDown139]

i keep a hygrometer near the basses, most of the year it's an arid 20% or so.  the last couple of weeks it's been pushing 70% so i guess it's no real surprise that both basses are reacting to it.  it took another 1/2 turn on both truss rods to get some relief in the neck, i could now probably stand to lower the action a little bit, but i played it last night and it made the hair on the back of my stand up, so gonna leave well enough alone.  the damp dreary weather's moved out so i'll probably be doing this in reverse in a week or two.  might as well leave the truss rod covers off.

...designed with a double titanium truss rod

now that's impressive!

[BeenDown139]

now that it's been hotter than a 2-dollar pistol and dry as a bone here in the mile high city for the last couple of weeks, here we are again.  pick the fretless up to work on some songs last night and the whole bass is flat by about 1/2 step, the action's so high that i can slide my fingers in between the strings and fingerboard ( > 5mm at the 12th position).  sight down the neck and it's bowed like we're going to the archery range.  both truss rod nuts are loose as a goose.  what's really strange is the night before it played just fine.  so out come the tools and away we go.

this bass really makes me crazy.  i gotta wonder sometimes if this is why the previous owner was in such a hurry to let it go at such a substantial price cut.  i was seriously entertaining thoughts of separate living arrangements myself, except that neck-thru unlined 5-string fretless basses appear to be scarcer than hen's teeth.  after she was dialed in she played like silk and sang like a bird.  so we kissed and made up.  again.  sure glad we're not out on the road together, one of us might not survive the trip if ya catch my drift.

this set of strings has about 6 months of pretty good wear on them, gonna take them off and boil them this weekend (might as well do both basses while i'm at it) and lemon-oil the finger boards.  nothing like the smell of freshly lemon-oiled bass necks on a hot summer day.  yes indeedy, sweety!

[MuseChaser]

Man, am I glad this thread was still here!  I got called at the last minute to fill in at a gig tomorrow, pulled out my sadly neglected Epic for the first time in almost a year, and ... it played awful.  No relief in neck, A and E strings were buzzy and dead sounding with no sustain... grrr.. and I couldn't remember all you kind folks had taught me a few years ago.  Found this thread, and... BACK IN BUSINESS!  Sounds and feels great again. 

Thank you all, again, for the help you gave me a few years ago!

[pauldo]

😎

[gtrguy]

My Epic 5 needs an occasional truss rod re-tweak for some reason. None of my other bass guitars does, though.

[BeenDown139]

well if the humidity's changing around here then the truss rod wrench is coming out.

the fretless essence is my harbinger of atmospheric changes - the worst of the lot.
the SII is affected, but to a much lesser degree.  perhaps it's the difference between the low and high end of the product spectrum?  i dunno.  i had to check with the curator over ar the Expired Equine Flaggelation Society and she informed me that this particular creature has been worked over again and again in another thread somewheres.  kinda like my bad knees.  can't do nothin about it except complain.  or have it replaced.

another reason my truss rod covers spend the summer in the bass parts storage bin.