Hey everyone. I’m a beginner, in module 9 of B2B. I have a Squire Sonic four string.
I’ve gone through Josh’s setup video on YouTube and all seems right out of the box except for nut height, seems way too high.
In the video Josh doesn’t give exact measurements and I’ve seen conflicting information online in what it should be or even how to measure. On mine, with nothing fretted my E string is 1.18mm / .047in above the first fret measured with a feeler guage.
Is this much higher and expected and if so what range should I ask for when taking it in to get filed.
I played around at guitar center with a stingray with super low action, the string appeared barely above the first fret just eyeballing it and it felt great. I was able to play chords and open strings without a problem. I worry though that my cheaper bass might be different if I go too low, especially with me being a beginner without great technique.
Do not file the nut unless only one string is high.
If the nut has a flat bottom: Get a piece of sandpaper and put it flat on the table. Pop the nut off and sand the bottom a bit, evenly across the nut. Put it back on and recheck. Repeat until the height is good.
If the nut has a radiused bottom: Do the same, but wrap the sandpaper around the fretboard and use it as a sanding block instead.
Is this something a relatively handy person should be able to do? I was planning on taking to guitar center, because I’m not investing in nut files, but if it is just sanding the bottom flat I would think that wouldn’t be too bad.
The only thing I’d be careful about on more inexpensive basses is sometimes they glue the shit out of the nut and the poly coating they spray on the neck can also bleed onto the edge of the nut.
So it might not be as simple as just ‘popping it off’. I had this issue on a cheap Squire guitar.
If you are unsure, it’s a cheap fix at a guitar store with a competent tech.
If you end up going this route, I myself wouldn’t go to the local Guitar Center though. I’d google luthier in my area and look for someone experienced and reputable if you don’t already know one. Just my two centavos.
If its under warranty take it back to fix.
My Ibanez AcousticElectric just wasnt right after awhile. Brought it in for service saying it was a bad nut. Replaced and fully setup.
The international warranty was for electronics only but they accepted it.
However, if they were to charge me then I just fix myself.
That’s a fact, Jack. Back in the '80s, I was coding an assembly language driver to run under MS-DOS and ran into a problem. We had a sharing agreement with MS at the time, so I had access to a direct tech support phone number. I called, asked my question and then? I heard the tech support guy turning pages. I told to look on page X and explain what didn’t make sense to me. He turned to that page, took a little time to read it, and then started reading the page to me. Sheesh. I said “thanks” (for nothing) and hung up. I’ve hated MS for a LONG time.
I mean I can still do it if I want but there’s little point now for most stuff. Last time I did it when it was actually required was probably 2007-ish.
I learned Ditran (Diagnostic Fortran) in college. My first job after UW-Madison was working on the Neutrino beam line at Fermilab National Lab in Batavia, IL from 1978-1979. We used DEC PDP-8 minis to control the beam line. My development machine was a PDP-8e (the last one with a wirewrapped card cage (no motherboard). The user interface was paddle switches, where you entered one 12-bit assembler instruction at a time to load the bootloader. My assembler was a 3-pass paper tape. I used an ADM3 ASCII CRT terminal and a 14" 1 MB platter (not sealed) for storage. The computer itself had the CPU card and 3 x 12 bit x 4K of non-volatile core memory cards for a whopping 12K x 12 of RAM. Later, coding with ASM under CP/M and ASM86 under MS-DOS was a breeze compared.
Oh, wait…we were talking about nut heights. Time to exist the wayback machine.
