Do Your Own Bass Setup

by | Saturday, May 28, 2022 | music, tech | 0 comments

Update: 18 December 2022. I decided to make a whole separate website on this topic. Click here to visit Broke-ass Guitars.

Introduction

(tl;dr – For years I didn’t know how to do my own setups, now I kinda do, and here’s how I do it. Now you can skip to step 1 if you want.)

When I was a wee lad just learning how to play I suffered through some bass guitars that were badly in need of a good setup. I did not know this. I thought they were just crappy instruments. By the time I was doing my first gigs, I had been blessed with a Fender p-bass that had been set up well at the factory and…just stayed that way. Some instruments are like that. Later on, I lucked into two Ibanez basses that were set up well and never needed much in the way of adjustments, although I took one of them into a reputable music store for a setup once just to make sure it was playing as best it could. When I got it back it seemed just the same: it played very well. The point is, I never had to learn how to do a setup myself, even though I’d been playing for nearly forty years!

Then came the day when I bought a used bass online, a Warwick Rockbass Corvette $$ 5-string. Retail price was (and still is) about $1,200 and I got mine for $600. When it arrived I found out why. Although the instrument was in absolutely pristine condition, the neck relief was way too bent and the string action was way too high. It was barely playable. 

I took it in to my local music store and asked them to give it a good setup. After a few days they gave it back to me and said there was nothing they could do to improve it. Told me the neck was twisted or something. 

I was devastated. I had made a $600 mistake. Not knowing what else to do I just played it that way for about a year. 

Then one day during the pandemic when I was watching more and more YouTube, I stumbled onto a channel that was exclusively focused on guitar and bass setup and repair: Dave’s World of Fun Stuff. I binged Dave’s videos for a couple of weeks before it occurred to me that I could take what I was learning there and try to solve the problem myself. 

It worked. 

I was thrilled. Now my once-neglected $600 bass played like the $1,200 bass it was made to be. I went forth and did setups for all my guitars and basses. I even bought and flipped a few instruments just so I could do the setups on them. (It was a weird time.) 

Am I an expert? No. But I do feel the need to share what I have learned, to spread the good news of how to do your own bass setups. You can’t always trust someone else to do it (as with the case of my local music store). To that end, here are the steps to do a basic setup of your electric bass guitar. (Note: I have provided a few links to items below. They are not necessarily the cheapest or the best ones. Typically I just link to what I use/like. Also, I get nothing if you buy those items.)

 

Step 1: Neck Relief

Tools needed: 

With your bass in your lap (or on a table) in playing position, capo the first fret. Then, with your left hand, hold the E string down on the fret where the neck meets the body. With your right hand, slide the 12-thousandths-of-an-inch feeler gauge in between the E string and the fret wire at the 7th fret.

Can you slide it in between without lifting the string? Give it a few tries. If you can, then try a thicker gauge. Find the thickest one that will just slide in without lifting the string. That gauge is your neck relief. 

If you can’t slide the 12 thou gauge in without lifting the string, try a thinner one until you find one that will just go in without lifting. That is your neck relief. 

(Editorial Note: There are a great many people out there, even pros and celebrities, who will tell you that it’s not necessary to measure with feeler gauges, that you can do it “by feel” or with a credit/business card or whatever else. This is, in my opinion, ridiculous. You’re seriously going to put countless hours into learning your instrument and hundreds if not thousands of dollars into your gear, but you can’t be bothered to buy and use the correct tool to maintain it? Absurd. You can get them for $7 on Amazon and they are available at literally every hardware store in America. Get them. Use them. There are no excuses.)

Having measured your neck relief, now what? If your neck relief is 12, no need to do anything. If it’s more than 12, your neck is too bent and you’ll need to tighten the truss rod to straighten it out a bit until it’s right. If your neck relief is lower than 12, it’s too straight and you’ll need to loosen the truss rod until it’s correct. 

Adjust the truss rod in small turns, 1/8-1/4 turns. Then measure the relief again and observe the result. Do this until your relief is correct. As a final step, make sure your bass is tuned perfectly and then double check the relief. You may want to let it sit overnight and recheck it again in the morning just to make sure things haven’t changed.

Is 12 a magic number that everyone agrees on? No. But it’s a good rule of thumb for most makes/models of electric bass guitars and deviating more than a couple thou may result in the instrument not playing correctly. Check with your manufacturer. Also, I view most of the values in this guide as a starting point. Me, I like to get my action as low as I can. In some instances that leads me to a neck relief of as low as 8 thou and a B string height of as low as 4.5. Not all instruments will play correctly like this. Not all players will want this. The numbers I suggest in this guide are reasonable average values to start with. Then, as get to know your instrument and your playing preferences, you may want to deviate from them.

Note: Make sure you use the correct wrench to adjust your truss rod, remembering that some are metric and some are imperial. Don’t just jam one in and “try it.” If you strip that truss rod your instrument is basically toast. Nor should you ever over-tighten it. They can break and if that happens your instrument is basically toast.

 

Step 2: String Height

Tools needed: 

Do not do this step until your neck relief is correct. Seriously–don’t. Step 2 depends on step 1 having been done correctly. 

No capo, no fretting. With your bass in playing position, look down at your neck, place the metal ruler on the far side of the E string at the 12th fret (see image w guitar above), and look really closely under the string to see how many 64ths it is above the fret wire. You’ll need good light. You may even need a magnifying glass.

Some manufacturers say that your E string should be 6/64ths above the fret. I like to see 5/64ths. If it is too high, lower the bridge saddle and measure again. If it is too low, raise the bridge saddle and measure again. (If you are raising the saddle it’s a good idea to de-tune the string to relieve tension.) Once your E is correct, measure the G string. It should be 3 to 4/64ths. Once you have set it correctly, split the difference between them when you set the heights of the A and D strings. (If your E is 5 and your G is 3, then make the A around 4.5 and the D around 3.5.

Note: Many setup instructions would now proceed to a different step 3, setting the “first fret action,” instead of checking for buzzes like I have done below. They are not wrong. This is where you would do the first fret action. I, however, am skipping this for two reasons: a) you need expensive nut files to do it properly and b) the procedure is destructive, meaning it can’t be reversed if you fuck it up. If you do fuck it up you’ll be shopping for a new nut which will also require expensive nut files to install correctly. For the record, however, your first fret action, measured with a feeler gauge under the strings on the first fret, should be about 20 thou. If it’s more than a couple thou out of spec, take it in. Or…pony up the cash for a set of nut files and go for it!

Step 3: Checking for buzzes

Tools needed: none

This step is easy and fun. Just play every fret on your G string from the first fret to the last, making sure every note rings true and does not buzz out. Repeat for all the other strings. If you have done steps 1 and 2 diligently, you will almost certainly have no buzz. If you do, it’s probably a sign that something is wrong with your bass. You should take it to a reputable tech to have it looked at. 

 

Step 4: Pickup Height

Tools needed: 

  • A 3mm hex key (I may pick up one of these.)
  • A 2mm hex key 
  • Ascrewdriver that fits your pickup height adjustment screws

Your pickups should not be too close to your strings, nor should they be too far away. Check with your manufacturer, but a good starting point is for the bass side to be 3mm away and 2mm away on the treble side. 

To measure this, hold down the E string on the last fret. Then run the 3mm hex key between the string and the pickup. It should just fit. Adjust the pickup height as needed until it is right. Do the same on the treble end (G string) and use the 2mm key this time. Adjust as needed. 

 

Step 5: Intonation

Tools needed: 

  • Appropriate size screwdriver for lengthening/shortening your bridge saddles
  • An accurate tuner (no headstock tuners)

Tune your bass as accurately as you can. Hit the open G string and observe your tuner. It should be spot on. Now fret the G string at the 12th fret and strike a note. The fretted note should also be in tune. If the fretted note is sharp, the string is too short. If it is flat, the string is too long. Adjust each saddle accordingly. (Might want to loosen the string tension before lengthening a string. Loosening should be ok under string tension.)

 

Conclusion

Congratulations! Your bass is set up correctly and it should play like a dream. A good setup can make a cheap bass play great – and a bad setup can make an expensive bass play like shit.

So how often do you have to do this? For string heights and intonation, once. The only thing that might need periodic adjustments is the neck relief. As the weather changes, the wood of the neck may change, too. If you live in Chicago, you might have to check the neck relief twice a year: once in May and again in December. If you live in San Diego, it’s possible that your neck relief will never change. 

If you re-check your string heights or your intonation, just know that you’re not doing so to find out if something changed. Nothing has changed there unless you changed it. What you’re doing is revisiting how good of a job you did the first time. And maybe you do want to double check and be more thorough this go-round. But string heights and intonation generally do not change by themselves. 

Other reasons to revisit your setup is if you change to a different brand or gauge of string or switch to a non-standard tuning. 

Added 2 July 2022: I mentioned Dave in the introduction and he’s great. But you’d have to watch a lot of his videos in order to get all the information you need to do a proper setup. So below is part one of a four-part video series that show all the right steps, with the right tools. Unfortunately there is a problem with these videos. The actual measurement values he’s aiming for. They kinda suck. In my opinion most experienced/discerning players will not be happy with them. First, he sets the neck relief to 15 thou. This is too much. It should not be more than 12, and in fact could be a bit less on some instruments. Then he sets the E string height to what he calls “4/32” of an inch. For those playing along a home, that is 8/64ths and way too high. “Conservative” bass guitar manufacturers say it should be 6/64s. Many players, myself included, aim for 5/64s. Next he was the first fret action set at 22 thou. That’s on the high side. Dave says it should be 20, give or take two thousandths of an inch. So 18-22. Those caveats aside, the video is thorough and contains all the right steps, all the right tools, and the correct order of operations. Check it out!