How to adjust the truss rod on your bass – Dan Erlewine
Dan shows how to pre-bend the neck so that skinny little truss rod doesn’t have to do all the work.
Duration : 0:1:37
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sorry dudes but i …
sorry dudes but i wass fali in my english, and i didnt understand the last 15 secs. can some one plz write wut hes sayin ? thx
Great advice, just …
Great advice, just used this technique to straighten the neck on my P bass, thanks Dan!
oops, just noticed …
oops, just noticed I got my “back bow” and my “up-bow” misplaced in that post above …
@itsumonihon you …
@itsumonihon you are missing the point, I know exactly what the clamps do, I’ve been clamping necks for years prior to adjusting the truss rod to get rid of a back bow, but in order to get rid of the subsequent up-bow, you have to tighten the rod first, then loosen it, you don’t remove the clamps and loosen the rod straight away, which is what Dan is saying.
Put it another way, are you suggesting that if you didn’t adjust the truss rod at all, the up bow would remain after clamp removal ?
@intrepgun people …
@intrepgun people worry too much about truss rod adjustments. you are not using jackhammers on finely crafted crystal dishes here. it takes a lot of effort to break the truss rod – in fact a lot of people probably don’t even have enough strength to do it. your hands will ache like from trying to wrench on an allen key before the rod ever snaps. and the wood doesn’t care much either. just put it to the position you want it and wait for it to set.
@murrmac think …
@murrmac think harder. it’s not an instantaneous change. by clamping the neck it’s fixing the warp/set that the wood has taken on. instead of the truss rod being tightened to its maximum and STILL not having enough strength to correct the bow, you let the clamps correct the bow which “resets” the truss rod back to neutral, allowing you to use it to correct the neck relief again.
Dan, you are indeed …
Dan, you are indeed the man !!
I’ve learnt so much from your DVD’s from Stew Mac as well as your books. I now setup all my own instruments (from a Tele to a 9 string bass) and help others with theirs.
Im getting a …
Im getting a terrible buzz on the first three frets on my G and D strings!!! Can anyone give me some direction here?
@richardwil i would …
@richardwil i would try adjusting the bridge…
I have a dean EAB …
I have a dean EAB fretless with a curve which makes it hard to play much above the (inlaid!) 10th fret. If I tighten the rod and correct the bow I get horrendous buzz on the E and A string on the first “fret”. If I make It playable in the middle I make it unplyable near the headstock. Any ideas?
either we have an ” …
either we have an “Emperor’s new clothes ” situation here, or else I am being totally thick, but I cannot for the life of me figure out why Dan says at the end of the video that he loosens the truss rod, instead of tightening it.
if he loosens the truss rod, then once he takes the clamps off, the neck bow is going to be even worse than before, isn’t it ?
the whole point of the clamps is to assist the truss rod to be tightened by relieving most of the existing stress on the rod, surely ?
1. Adjust the …
1. Adjust the truss rod
2. Set the saddle heights
3. Set intonation by saddles back or forth.
4. OR bottle it and take it in for repair
hey, I’m having a …
hey, I’m having a lot of buzz on the nineth fret.
I’ve done all the adjustments on my bass, the truss rod, the bridge, the strings, but I keep getting buzz on this specfic fret.
I can’t figure it out why this is happening…any ideas?
Can someone help me?
yes, it totally …
yes, it totally affects the playability.
but it’s right to have a slight curvature.
neck is too …
neck is too straight. needs to have a slight bow.
fret*** sorry
fret*** sorry
i am getting awful …
i am getting awful buzz at the first and third strings…
any advice for me?
waiting days is …
waiting days is much better for the health of the neck than waiting hours. but i’ve done some pretty large adjustments without waiting at all. i consider myself fortunate that i didn’t destroy the neck in doing so, but at that moment i just needed to turn that damned key and get the thing playable! i’m impulsive like that at times.
In that case – I …
I was kinda worried I’d done damage back then.
In that case – I feel a LOT better about the times I used to tighten a small turn per few hours or days under tension
in some instances, …
in some instances, i loosen strings or remove the neck entirely, but under general conditions, for relatively minor adjustments, keeping the bass in tune and adjusting is the way i’ve been taught to do it. i won’t name drop or anything, but very respected, reputable luthiers have relayed various ways of doing it to me. the important thing is that you adjust in small increments and give the neck time to adjust and settle before moving it more. oh yeah, and play it! haha
I usually loosen …
I usually loosen the strings and add a little hand force when straightening the neck, but keep tension where possible when adding bow. If it’s all about assisting the truss rod, then it seems a bad idea to keep string tension high when straightening the neck. You’re forcing the truss to ‘lift’ hundreds of pounds of string tension. Could be nothing though, I’m NO luthier.
No, almost all …
No, almost all necks need a slight bow to play right, so yours is probably fine.
hey ime pretty new …
hey ime pretty new to playing the bass. and i just noticed that the neck of my bass dose have a slight curve (very slight). ime wondering if even this will effect the way it performes.Thanks
I have had 2 G&L …
I have had 2 G&L L2000 basses and the neck eventually warped on both. I never change string gauges and I have my basses set up regularly, but it didn’t matter in either case. I think the problem is that the neck is only secured to the body by three screws, in a triangle. 70′s J basses and early Musicmen are the same way. Warmoth doesn’t make a replacement neck that will fit the L2000 for less than $400 bucks. I sold my most recent one for parts. After my repair tech could do no more.
you need to tighten …
you need to tighten the truss down tightly, but not so much that it bows the neck back so that the strings touch the center of the neck (back-bowing). If you do this and your strings are still pulling to hard, your truss rod is probably defective in some way and you’ll have to replace the neck or get it repaired.