Help With New 4003 Setup

[spongebob]

Been away for a while, but have just taken ownership of a new 2013 4003.

Great bass, needed a setup - I'm no expert but taking my first steps.

Action at the 12th was very high, okay at lower frets. I tweaked the truss rods slightly - now have a lot of buzz at the lower frets, but still a higher action that I like at the 12th.

Bit worried about lowering the bridge as I assume that would simply increase the buzz?

I know there's an easy fix, but I'm struggling a bit!

[jps]

How is the height of the strings at the 1st fret? After getting the neck relief (truss rod adjustment) to about where you want it, the nut slots may need to be filed down to get the strings to almost touch the 1st fret when you press them down at the 3rd fret. How low this should actually be depends a bit on your playing style, the less aggressive you play the closer they can be to the 1st fret. After doing that set the string height at the last (20th fret in this case) somewhere between 2-3mm, again this depends on your playing style and to some extend how the relief is all along the length of the neck. Sometimes on a new instrument there may be some places on the fingerboard where a fret may be a bit high causing buzzing in isolated areas. This is normal as it takes an initial setup based on the needs/desires of the individual player before they may be revealed (don't expect a perfectly level fret job from any manufacturer as it is very time consuming, therefore, expensive, besides the fact that the instruments are not set up for you specifically but just a general setup; final destination of the instruments affects all this, too). Have a qualified repair tech/luthier do a fret leveling to eliminate thee high spots, then you can go back and do a final setup as to relief, string height and, then, intonation in that order. After all this is done adjust the pickup heights to where you want them to be.

Hope this helps!

[spongebob]

Thanks for the info!

I'm in a bit of a pickle with this - the action is way too low and very buzzy frets around 1-6, but too high by quite a bit at the 12th.

Now I'm not sure what to do! It's like I need to reduce the u shape in the neck, whilst raising slightly at the early frets.....

[jps]

Do a search on the forum for truss rod shape or curve (something like that), there is a lot of info on how sometimes the truss rods end up rotated around in their channels. This may be part of the issue you are having, although I have not had to pull them for that on my basses. There may also be information about this on joeysbassnotes.com.

[8mileshigher]

Check out Joey's Bass Notes http://www.joeysbassnotes.com/
under the "maintenance" section ....

Post Script --- I see Jeff already suggested JBN too !