I guess I lied? Third time, not exactly a charm, but...

[vanstry]

Okay, so I strung it up, the D right now thunders the loudest, and the E doesn't. Think I'll need to pull the pickups out and put more foam behind them to raise them up a little higher. The G string doesn't want to stay on the neck when I play closer to the bridge, and looking at it, I suspect I'm going to have to file the notches into the nut down a bit more.

The intonation is way off, but I figure I should fix the pickups and the nut first. The neck relief looks okay (well to my untrained eye). I haven't yet taken the time to actually measure things yet. I figure I should let it settle in a bit first. I may shim the neck to bring the action down a little. But it's definitely going to need a lot of setting up.

 

[vanstry]

I tell ya, this bass just keeps on giving me issues.

The KSM foundation bridge I put on it is bad. Chatters on the E string and the A string if you pluck it too hard, and it gets worse as you move up the neck. Company says to send it to them and they'll replace it. So yeah, between shipping and another set of strings, I guess I'm looking at another $60 bucks.

Right now I'm thinking of just tossing it in the trash and buying a babicz bridge, as I've never had a problem with one of those. Going to show it to the guy who suggested the KSM bridge in the first place, see if maybe he knows what's wrong with it. Personally I think it's a machining error, and wonder if I put a thin piece of something in there it might lock it down. But it's kind of annoying to have to fix something you spent a fair bit of cash on.

So yeah, the bass is cursed.

 

[Cagey]

Y'know, something you need to have in mind when you decide to build/assemble your own guitar/bass is that there's more to it than getting out a screwdriver, a soldering iron and a few rattle cans of paint and having at it. Even "kit" instruments aren't really models that you just put together according to some defined/enumerated instruction set, and most parts suppliers (like Warmoth, StewMac, LMII, et al) don't sell kits - they sell parts. It's up to you to deal with making everything work together.

Many parts are intentionally sold/configured less than ideal for final use, as they have no idea how you're going to finally use them. Some adjustments to application are almost always necessary, and by "almost always" I mean 98% of the time or better. Everybody has their own idea of what works well, feels good, sounds right, etc. So, slop and adjustability are built into the design.

I could go on, but suffice to say that building/assembling an instrument is not a trivial task. You're going to have problems. The challenge, then, is learning how to overcome those problems. If that's not the challenge you set out to confront, that's ok. Lotsa folks out there will deal with details for you. It's a problem you can just throw money at and have resolved painlessly. But, if you wanna do it yourself, you have to be prepared for failure. I'm sure you're old enough to have learned by now that failure is one helluva teacher. Failing is no fun, but if you give up because failure reared its ugly head, then you don't learn anything. The only people who don't make mistakes are the ones who don't do anything at all.

Every instrument is haunted. It's one of those things that give them personality. Rather than threaten the poor thing with banishment to the Blasted Lands, be its master. Refuse to fail. Learn by your mistakes, and review those of others. Everybody hates to fail, so be aware that most folks don't want you to fail, and will help you avoid it. You'll be much happier in the end.

 

[Cagey]

I guess I'm just surprised at some of the things I'm seeing in what I thought was a much more settled industry.

It's nowhere near as settled as you might imagine for an industry that's been around for 70+ years. Being an engineer myself, I blame it on "artists". Kind of a warped Schrödinger's cat sort of thing: simultaneously sensible and nonsensical  :laughing7:

 

[BigSteve22]

Every instrument is haunted......

You ain't just whistl'n there, Bro. Tweaking has become a way of life for me. Stable or not, both my Strat and Tele "Modern" necks have both had the relief change overnight at some point. No biggie, just a quick turn with an allen wrench, but..... And, no matter how good things are, there'll always be a chance they could be just a little bit better!

Kind of a warped Schrödinger's cat sort of thing......

Sounds like my cat: Neither alive nor dead until I walk into the kitchen, then he magically appears at my side...... 

 

[Cagey]

That's strange. I wonder if the neck mount is wonky somehow? In my experience, Warmoth's "modern" construction necks are rock solid. I've got 10 year old examples here that have never needed to be touched.

As for cats - I'm a huge fan of the orientals. Siamese and Burmese for me. Nothing like cats at all. Whole different animal. Although, it's been a while since I've had one now. I miss that a bit, but I don't miss the hairy house.

 

[BigSteve22]

That's strange. I wonder if the neck mount is wonky somehow?

Beats me, Strat is standard mount with wood screws and the Tele has inserts with S/S machine screws. Both hand tightened as tight as I can get them, neither neck is shimmed. Both lost the relief about after six months of playing.  Just picked them up one day and everything was buzzing. Straight edge along the frets told the story: No relief. Went from about .008" to 0" over night. Don't know why, but it happened, twice. House has central air, pretty constant humidity, temp rarely above 75 or below 68.

 

[Cagey]

Hmm. A/C will pull moisture out of the air and dry things up. It's a crap-shoot which way a neck will bend if it gets too dry. Still, those dual-action truss rods tend to keep things in shape. I guess I would check the basement for gremlins. Somebody's adjusting your necks when you're not looking  :laughing7:

 

[BigSteve22]

Hmm. A/C will pull moisture out of the air and dry things up. It's a crap-shoot which way a neck will bend if it gets too dry. Still, those dual-action truss rods tend to keep things in shape. I guess I would check the basement for gremlins. Somebody's adjusting your necks when you're not looking  :laughing7:

Gremlins my a$$!, God damned cat.......  :evil4:

 

[vanstry]

So yeah, this one's my fault. The nut needed a little work to lower the strings. I figured that rather than use those old rat-tail files I've been using, I'd by some actual fret files. Problem is, the D-string one is thinner than the string (so's the G-string). Medium gauge flat wounds are I guess unpopular.

My mistake is that I forgot, and my eyes not being what they used to be, I didn't notice that the reason the string wasn't going low enough was the width, not the depth. So, ruined the nut. Call up the local music store, luthier tells me they got 'em. Great pop out the bad one (breaking it of course) and when I get there I find out he has no idea what a P-bass is. He only had J-bass nuts. Bought  a raw piece of plastic to make one (expensive as hell) and it's too thick to fit in the pocket :-(

None of the music stores in Sacramento sell P-bass nuts. Only J-bass. And so far, none of the online stores do either (well warmoth sells blanks, kinda hoping for a slotted one - Stewmac's search engine doesn't seem to come up with one, which can't be right, I must be putting in the wrong search request).

Anyway, kind of annoying, but only myself to blame on this one. Figured out the problem with the bridge and fixed it. Had the truss rod set fine, the bridge height, just needed to get the nut done an was going to do intonation.

Anyway, off to do some internet searches and see who has one and can get it to me for a decent price.

 

[mayfly]

Here ya go:

https://www.allparts.com/BN-2350-00T-Graph-Tech-PQ-1204-00-Nut-for-Precision-Bassreg_p_833.html

 

[vanstry]

It's curved. Warmoth's neck is flat. I need a flat one.

 

[Cagey]

...my eyes not being what they used to be, I didn't notice that the reason the string wasn't going low enough was the width, not the depth.

Yeah, that happens. Then you think you've hit a hard spot in the material, so you get too aggressive with the grind and end up with the slot too deep. Usually happens after you've already spent a big block of time getting the damned thing to the right thickness, width, and most of the slots cut nicely. It's enough to piss off a saint.

I'm surprised you're having trouble finding a replacement, though. Aren't P-Basses like the most common basses on the planet?

 

[Cagey]

See here.

 

[vanstry]

Nope. J-basses are. And the only slotted P-bass nuts I can find are all curved, and I need a flat one.

Which NOBODY online sells. They all sell curved ones. Cause real P-basses I guess use curved ones.

I guess I'm gonna have to cut my own, which isn't what I want to do.

 

[vanstry]

See here.

It's curved. I need flat.

 

[Logrinn]

This one looks to be flat

 

[vanstry]

This one looks to be flat

Yeah, I ordered one of those a couple of hours ago. Should be here by the weekend.
Which will be cool, because I can finish setting up the bass and -finally play it!-

 

[vanstry]

Okay, when we last left our intrepid (or maybe it's insipid?) hero, he was trying to find a new nut for his P-bass. Unfortunately, no one had one in his current home town, and because the warmoth pocket is flat and not curved, nobody on line did either. There WAS a place that had one that looked like it would work, and I paid for two day shipping to get it by Friday.

unfortunately, to this particular company, 'Two Days' actually meant 'Five or Six Days'.
Words were exchanged, and they're in a lot of trouble with Amazon now. In fact I think I got more money back than I spent on it.

Of course, this left me without a nut, and no sign of one showing up anytime this month.

So, after some whining and whinging on my part and a bit of a scolding by Aircap. This morning I went and bought me a piece of ebony from the only place in town that sells it, WoodCraft - who were open today, amazingly. By piece I mean 1 x 3/4 x 6 inches. So yeah, I needed to cut a 1.3" strip off the long side.

Now all I have currently is my old table saw, which I really need to get a new blade for. Haven't touched it in about 4 years since I started my new 12 hour 7 day a week job (with no time off for good behavior). It didn't cut through the block so much as burn through it. Ever try to cut a 1.3 inch wide strip of wood off of a small rectangle block on a table saw?

And it being ebony and the blade being dull, it was literally smoking. Lots of lubricant was used. Also a table saw is not exactly a precision instrument. But thankfully the fourth strip was just about right. Only had to sand it a little while to get the right thickness. I then used a dremel to cut off the right length strip, then cut that strip in half to get the right height.

I didn't glue it in, it was too tight for that, I actually had to lightly tap it in with a small hammer. It's pretty much an exact fit.

For the notches, I'm a bit worried about my placement. Nobody gives a nice easy road map with measurements and I spent a lot of time looking at a lot of different places online before I settled on what I did. I'm a little bit worried that maybe the E-string could have been one or two hundreds closer to the edge, but I think the rest are fine.

So I set the nut height, then sanded off a bunch of the excess that was sticking up more than it needed to be.

Now to check truss rod and bridge height again, as I mentioned I just did the nut height. Then I can set intonation, and call it good.

If the world ends in the next few hours, totally my fault for finishing this.

 

[rgand]

If it works as good as it looks, you're home free.  :icon_thumright: