I think one thing you’ll find is that there’s really no point in measuring the neck relief with the feeler gauges because what you personally like and the specced relief are likely to be different. I set my neck relief by feel more than anything else. I find I need more than usual right now due to heavy pick playing, for example.
Nut files would be nice though. Both times I have filed a nut I used some thin diamond files I had and it worked fine but real ones would be nice to own, just spendy.
The Yamaha nut is plastic, not sure how well it will file for you. I have a graphtec on mine right now, that took substantial filing and sanding. I have a coupel spare Yamaha nuts now that I will probably go back to eventually, they are just nicely tapered and angled.
Indeed they are. It took a lot of effort and sanding to get mine trimmed down to the right size when I installed my zero fret. Fortunately I have an orbital sander in my wood shop and that did the trick.
I’ve got one too underneath the bike tools which are under a gazebo after I’ve been evicted from my shed ! Daughters and relationship breakdowns have a lot to answer for but as I am constantly reminded, I did offer.
Re: nut files, just bought these on Amazon for less than half the price of the Stewmacs-- Holmer Bass Guitar Nut Files
I tried to use a needle file, drill bits + sandpaper and even old roundwound strings but wasn’t making much progress (nor was I confident in the quality of my work) on a new graphtech tusqXL nut, so decided to spring for the real thing. Will update when I get them and see how well they work.
They seem to have good reviews. I think a lot of the cheaper ones get bad reviews because luthiers need quality over many uses. I only need these every so often but do want them (the last piece of the ‘setup myself entirely’ puzzle.
One consideration as to whether a bass should be ok out of the box or not is how far it’s traveled. When I bought my '96 MIJ Jazz Bass it came to me in the UK from Japan via Spain and was delivered with all the strings slackened off. When I tuned it up it was totally unplayable from the twelve fret. My only guess is that the constant changes in temperature and humidity it experienced travelling halfway across the world had caused serious alterations to the neck and there was no way I felt brave enough to sort it out. It was sent straight off to the tech at my local music shop and came back absolutely perfect. By contrast, my Spector travelled 30 miles from Leamington to Birmingham and was faultless straight out of the box.
I tried the Holmer nut files last night, they seem to be good quality and do what they’re supposed to do. I installed a new TusqXL nut on my Squier Jazz, and I did most of the nut height adjustment by sanding down the bottom of the nut. However I did the need the nut files for a little additional filing on the E and A string slots. Just be careful to file it at a curved downward angle towards the headstock, I had some buzzing issues until I got that right. The files are .45 - .65 - .75 - .85 - .105 - .135 and didn’t match my string gauges exactly, but close enough. Here’s a good resource I found on the proper way to file a nut and seat a string – Nuts - how to cut the slots
I don’t want a nut file set (I found that easy enough with regular diamond files) but I do eventually want to find an amazon equivalent for StewMac’s fret dressing files. Particularly the fret end one with the smooth sides so the wood won’t get damaged.
i.e. like this one:
but cheaper than StewMac, not more expensive
edit: aww what the hell, just ordered Stewart’s. Shipping was not so bad after all.
I had to actually learn it by myself, aince nobody at my place does setups, not even music shop I bought my bass from. So at first it was trial and error style, with of course theory before hand. However all the videos I looked up were using some tools I dont have. So I came up on SBL “Guerilla style setup” without any tools, and it worked as charm. So now I go around setting up my friends guitars. After setup, playing and feel drastically improved.
I’ve just adjusted the action on my P-clone. I was going for the SH clacky sound. It’s now set to 0.080 at the 17th fret. I do get some more clack out of it, but I still have to dig in to get it.
The truss rod is set to being largely straight with a slight relief.
My question is, how much lower should I set the action so that I can play lightly and get it to clickety-clackety?
I take it by action you are referring to the neck relief of 0.080?
Have you checked string heights.
Part two of adjusting the action is to adjust the string height at the bridge end.
