I have a new bass coming in today that shipped from across the country. It seems somewhat debated how much time a new bass should acclimate to it’s new environment. Is there a consensus within the forum of what is an appropriate acclimation time? Does this just mean playing the bass or does this even include opening the packaging? I am beyond excited for it but I don’t want to do anything that would negatively affect it.
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If it were going from extreme cold to indoor hot, I might let it warm up to room temp with the box open, but nothing like the 24 hours as suggested by some distributors. I generally open them right when I get them. After setting them up, I might have to make minor adjustments once everything settles, but I have never experienced any damage to the instrument because of opening it up too early. What would touring musicians do if this were the case?
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Open it on arrival, set it up and enjoy it. If it needs to be tweaked again later, tweak it again later. No reason to wait, you won’t damage it.
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If it’s a nitro finish I’d leave it the 24 hours in the box.
Otherwise i wouldn’t be overly precious about it.
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Pretty sure you can play anything out of the box. You might need to retune the day after.
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I’ve always unpacked my basses from their shipping boxes as soon as they arrived, and I’ve never had a bad experience.
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Like all things…
A: Depends
Why?
Depends on what you are doing.
Do you want to play it and noodle around and make sure it works properly.
A: right away
Do you want to set it up properly and have it hold it’s intonation/etc?
A: Depends on the climate it came from and, more importantly, how badly/far away from set up it is. I have bought new basses (a Yamaha TRBX305 that took over a week and a half to settle in, as much to do with how far away from good it was as it did with climate. Used things I have bought from across the sea in Japan were good to go out of the box.
The bigger thing here is holding setup/intonation etc after a lot of moving around. The movement is usually the neck as as long as it isn’t too crazy moving once you get it the intonation will hold. The bass (or guitar) is a system, everything effects everything in a setup, some a little, some a lot. So it all depends.
I usually play it the day I get it.
Leave it a day and set it up.
Check truss rod/intonation after a week etc to make sure everything is still cool.
Sweetwater has giant warnings all over their boxes about not touching it for days.
This is a CYA move for some finishes that might be a bit more sensitive, or, quite frankly, done poorly to begin with.
Like @howard said, you won’t hurt anything.
Remember - touring musicians put their gear in trunks, on trucks (that see negative temps to 140F), on planes in storage holds that are damn damn damn cold (offical term) and they are all ok.
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Like new strings, I takes a couple or retuning and some neck relief adjustments. If I have to wait for the bottle shock period I’d gone mad lol.
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Sweet. I will confidently unbox and do some playing tonight and keep an eye out for tuning and setup needs. Thanks everybody
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I always check the bass as soon as I can. If electronics are going to fail, in my experience it’s out of the box. Also I have had the incorrect bass shipped to me. These things go smoother the faster you get the return process started.
Although I agree with @John_E - I pretty much follow his routine though it’s not as formal with me, experience has shown me that if I have string buzz the first day, leave it alone and it may take care of itself the following say as the neck adjusts to tension. And so on.
But I do check all the electronics day one.
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Don’t sweet it …tune it play it…next day tune play it…should be acclimated…enjoy it NOW
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