My 22-year-old friend Brendan Dane is a serious bass player. After first owning a Fender Squier P-Bass, he saved enough money to buy a Modulus Flea Bass while in high school. Brendan recently bought a third instrument, but he didn’t have to save for long—he found a Grand acoustic/electric bass on eBay for $90 and took a chance on it. A chance it was, too, since the bass was less playable than he’d hoped it would be: The action was too high for anyone but Paul Bunyan. However, after looking it over, I knew I could improve the Grand’s playability. Fig.1 The neck had far too much upbow or relief—not usually a good omen for an inexpensive instrument. Some necks will never adjust straight, but this neck was cooperative. I completely unthreaded the trussrod adjusting nut; next, I cleaned and lubricated its threads before reinstalling and adjusting the nut. Then, I “helped” the neck go straight by clamping it into a slight backbow with the trussrod tension loose, and then tightening the nut (as demonstrated here on a Fender P-Bass neck). This technique works wonders. Fig.2 I tapped on the frets with a steel nail set and listened. I could tell by the hollow thunking sound that the frets were not well seated in their slots. (Well-seated frets produce a crisp, solid sound.) Some frets also showed good-size gaps between the bottom of the fret and the fingerboard. With the help of my neck jig, I took care of this problem with one of my favorite quick fixes: First, as a protective measure, I applied paste floor wax to the fingerboard surface adjacent to the frets, as well as to the frets themselves. I applied the wax with a paper towel, wiping excess wax off the towel so there were no clumps on the fingerboard. Then I ran waterthin superglue under the frets to fill any gaps that existed. Later I used a rag dampened with naphtha to remove the wax from the board. Fig.3 With the bass jigged in the playing position (tilted to about 83 degrees), I could work on it under string and trussrod tension, even though the strings were removed. That’s my apprentice Jonah Powell; he’s reading the fingerboard with a notched straightedge that sits over the frets and rests only on the fingerboard. Afterward, he compared the fingerboard’s flatness to the fret tops using a regular (un-notched) straightedge. Then he rotated the jig back to the horizontal position before leveling and dressing the frets. Figures 4 & 5 This bass had an inconsistent fingerboard radius. Using a radius gauge to make comparisons across the board’s width, I found radii ranging from 9w" to 16", with 14" and 16" radii being predominant. Fig. 6 Since the frets were very high (.055"), I was able to smooth the fret tops until they were level with
	—Dan Erlewine works on new product design and is the staff writer for Stewart-Mac-Donald’s Guitar Shop Supply in Athens, Ohio. Dan still builds and repairs basses and guitars in his home shop. His monthly repair column Repairs & Modifications, and numerous feature articles, appeared in Guitar Player for 16 years. His books, Guitar Player Repair Guide (1990) and How to Make Your Electric Guitar Play Great (2001), are published by Backbeat Books.
	Orginally published in BASS PLAYER magazine. Copyright © 2006 CMP Entertainment Media. All rights reserved. Used by permission.