I always felt like if I could teach myself to understand and do this, ANYBODY could !
I can not recommend enough the Dan Erlewine book that taught me how: The Guitar Player Repair Guide, available through
www.StewMac.com, as well as Dan's EXCELLENT set of DVD's covering a lot of the subjects in the book. Gary Wills has some great tips in his website as well about setup. I also go to the Fender website to see the Guitar/Bass setup pdf in their manual section (the same book that comes with most new Fender basses) for basic numbers for other basses.
I originally plowed into this as most guitar technicians (even VERY good ones) usually had NO clue WHY I'd expect a bass to play as easily as a lead guitar. 'Well, it's gonna rattle that low!' I'm nowhere close to an Entwistle 'behind-the-frets' mode. But I always felt like that if it was set up properly, the rattle was in my technique, my hands. And I got tired of shelling out $$$ and it STILL WASN'T playing the way I wanted.
I was right.
It just seemd that these basses were the perfect laboratory to teach myself this process. No separate neck, no bolts, no fixed nut, no separate tailpiece saddles. Everything I could do I could UN-do, without having to put on a new nut and start over, re-shim or un-shim the neck, no worries of losing too much wood unscrewing those neck bolts too many times while I was learning.
I turned the BRB into a log SEVERAL times at first, till the light came on and I got it. I thought I'd never get a sense of the interplay of nut, relief, and bridge height. You will go through this as well.
I'm no guitar tech. You DON'T want me around your axe with a soldering iron. But I GUARANTEE the BRB plays like butter, and yours can, too.
Thank You All for the Compliments !
J o e y
