Re-radius Deluxe J5 neck, and block inlays

[sockdeluxe_mikey]

Hello everyone!

I’ve got a Deluxe 5 Jazz Bass that I recently finished building. It has EMG J5 pickups and EMG support have helped me establish that the pickup magnets are dead flat, no radius.

The fingerboard on my Deluxe 5 is standard 10”, so the outer strings are louder than the middle ones (especially the B string). A bit of a pain…although the B string does sound mighty, different string volumes are annoying for me.

This might actually be relatively easy for me to get around as my luthier was going to level the frets anyway (they’re just factory installed state ATM) so I could in theory just ask him to instead re-fret the fingerboard, and flatten the radius to 14”+ whilst he’s at it. And cost wise it would still work out OK because I got the neck on a ‘Screamin’ Deal’ originally.

There’s absolutely tons of fingerboard (ebony), 1”+ thick in the middle, so I’m not concerned about burning through the fingerboard. But it has block inlays…

So my question is. Are the block inlays installed pre or post fingerboard radiusing? I’m hoping it’s pre-radius, as that would mean I could make the fingerboard flatter and there’d be no risk of burning through the inlays.

Thanks! I will post some pics of the bass shortly…

 

[Rick]

I think there’s a video on warmoths YouTube site that shows how necks are constructed.  Might worth a look.

 

[Logrinn]

I would imagine that a MUCH easier solution to this is to get pickups with adjustable polepieces.
Even if you were able to flatten the radius of the fingerboard there’s a very big chance that the difference in volume between the different strings won’t be enough.
With a pickup with adjustable polepieces you’ll be able to try this out without having to do major surgery to your neck.