I thought it was “if it ain’t broke, fix it til it is” 
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Yup 
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Depends - which type ?
Amplitude oscillation - check
Frequency oscillation - nope
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This is only true of four string Fender basses 
(except, you know, the compound radius ones - good luck with those )
There’s lots of other radii with other brands, especially when you throw in 5 and 6 too.
The full StewMac set covers a reasonable range but still isn’t going to get you Yamaha or Ibanez 5-strings, for example. Or other common basses.
Meanwhile, my strings beautifully follow the radius, and I’ve never measured anything while adjusting. It turns out adjusting for the feel you want on all strings accomplishes the same thing automatically.
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I did a LOT of experimenting today while putting back together the fretless and JJ Aerodyne with setups. I have thrown out my old method and have gone to the Roger Sadowski method in full. It is simple and works.
One thing I found, low/med action (per Roger’s measurements) depend on the bass and intended play.
Both Aerodynes were able to be set up per his low specs, but the fretless Squier I went with medium, it eliminated a bunch of odd noises. Will be rechecking each of the other basses as I pull them to play them.
Good news is his setups really do equate to feel, which I like. I like knowing a measurement will put the feel where I like it on a certain bass.
The interesting thing is he does not do the radius gauge thing, but instead does an incremental from E to G…but honestly when you put the gauge on it its basically the same.
Net / net, experiement, note and set up your bass to your liking the way you want to get there. Whatever works.
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Yeah, the old P basses and older basses in general used to have larger rad (or small rad, depends how you look at it) and you can really seed the curve, and especially on the wider P you see it better.
The Jazz are flatter necks (bigger rad / smaller depending how you view) and more narrow so you don’t see the roundness of the bass neck as easily.
At least thats what I have now noticed from looking at my basses again, but having considered this in the past to not be something I need to check all the time (based on the same thinking @howard said, if adjusted right, it follows the shape of the neck), so I have never bothered.
But now that I have one P bass in my collection that I am going to string soon, I can really see the difference. It is cool to notice. so I will see how it goes with the P bass when I string it. My Ray34 has a little more rad then the others with J width necks too, but the Dean is widest and pretty flat.
I am guessing it will not be a big deal, but if I come to some sort of stopping point where my fiddling makes something wrong, I will invest in some rad gauges and hope it works.
If not, I will return to Amazon with everything else.
+1 to this. If you can do setups you really don’t have to follow the standard imo.
Some factors that you have to considerate:
- Do you play with pick, fingers, slap or all of them
- Do you prefer light touch while fretting
- Do you like to dig in for dynamics
- The brand/type of the bass
- The shape of your neck and the size of your hands
- Which genre music you like to play
- Etc.
I could go on but you get the idea. This is also why I think it’s good to learn doing setups yourself and see what works best for you.
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Yep. Honestly, the only tools you need for a setup are a tuner, the allen wrenches that came with the bass, and a screwdriver. A capo is convenient but not required.
All the basics - neck relief, action height, and intonation - can all be set with just those. There’s really no need (or really any utility) in measuring anything. If you were a luthier setting up a bass to spec for someone else, sure. But you’re not. You’re a person setting up the bass for yourself and the feel that you like, and any specs are at best a starting point, and worst a waste of time.
I still think Marcelo’s video is the best bass setup video out there.
and for intonation
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As I understand it there’s only one way of looking at the radius of a circle. Smaller radius generally older basses gives a more rounded fret board. Larger radius feels like a flatter fret board. Pic for example.
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Yeah, you can look at it on the left, or look at it on the right…
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Yeah, but larger rad equals Flatter Fretboard.
Smaller Rad equals rounder fretboard.
That sounds backwards to many people, who automatically think a larger number will present more radius on the neck.
Backwards logic would tell you that neck has a 9.5 rad, well then the 16.5 must be rounder.
I just said “depends on which way you look at it” instead of writing it out.
Or posting the handy pic you have, I am sure it helps some people to see it.
Wrong Wise Ass!!
If you are going to call it out like that, there are almost an infinite number of ways to look at it.
So curvature is the term for how far from flat the board is. A larger radius yields less curvature, or a flatter fretboard.
For a circle, curvature = 1 \ radius.
I’ve heard people use the terms interchangeably which will definitely sound backwards as they’re recoipricals.
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Right. The curvature and the radius are inversely proportional. The radius describes the size of the circle that defines the curvature for a segment of the circle which is the width of the neck.
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Plus you have the Profile shape which is the variable tapering radius your thumb rides upon.
Put them together, and you have a neck. (there is some spacers between them, so that is not 100% accurate, but it is close enough)
So if you hear people talking about a such and such rad on a Modern C profile, you will understand what they are saying.
I don’t have a neck shape profile chart, but I think @howard does.
This does not consider thickness, so you can’t calc out the fretboard height (top of fretboard to bottom of neck) but most companies put a Thick an Nut and Thick at Bridge position, like the Width at nut and bridge.
If you get familiar with them, you start to know how a bass might feel prior to playing it. It is not a solution, to prevent you from trying out a bass of course, it is always nice to put hands on the bass you are thinking about buying, prior to purchase, but when you are web browsing away, those specs start to add up, and you can almost guess what it would feel like.
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I hear and agree with you but for some reason people seem to just like complicating things 
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Could not agree more.
I have seen you post this same advice, and the Marcelo Feldman videos, several times but for some reason people just don’t seem to want to listen.
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Let’s be fair here guys, you know what your doing. There are many newer folks here that aren’t so sure what “feels right” until they put some miles under their fingers. So don’t dis measuring because it’s a viable and valuable method for some newer folks (and older anal retentive engineers too).
If you are brand new to bass, I disagree with your “all you need is”. If you know what your doing and what feels right…then yes.
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I really disagree. I think the misperception that you need more tools than that to do this puts people off of the process, which is harmful; I also think that any bass player of any skill level will have more luck following Marcelo’s advice there than they will buying a bunch of rarely used tools, measuring, and setting it up to an arbitrary spec that might not feel good to them in the first place.
Better advice would be to pay a trusted shop for the first setup to get a feel, but that is difficult for a lot of people and reeeeeeaaaaly haphazard in quality from the big chains.
I say this as someone who has always been in an analytical field professionally too - measuring is part of my day job and my major was literally analytical chemistry. I’m not measurement-adverse in any way, I just think in this case it is detrimental if it is a barrier to people learning to do this.
People aren’t idiots. I mean, sure, there are idiots, but generally I think most people can follow a clear instructional video like Marcelo’s and get good results with minimal to no outlay on tools.
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Put another way: I and many others didn’t require more than that when new to bass. I learned how to do it from that video and have always done it that way with good results, from the first time. In fact I made a post here about it.
I would feel like a condescending jerk if I just assumed others couldn’t do what I did there - I’m not a musical genius
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Personally, I like to measure things like relief, string and pickup height, because I want to be able to return to my original settings if I mess them up. Also, developing a “feel” for how I like my basses set up takes time, so in the meantime I use measurements as a sanity check.
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