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Old 03-19-2017, 11:40 AM
Michele Caramazza Michele Caramazza is offline
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Join Date: 08-02-2011
Location: Italy
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Default Setup question: have I a nut issue?

I have a question for Ken. I could have asked by email but I thought this could be of general interest here...
I checked the setup on my bass. I noticed that the bridge saddles on my bass are almost all the way down to the bridge plate. I firstly suspected that this was done to accomodate a front bow in the neck but I was wrong..
I checked the relief (capo at first fret, B string fretted at 15th fret) and to my surprise the neck is pretty straight: it reads 0.35 mm (0.013") at 7th/8th fret.
The action at 2.25 mm or 0.088 in imperial (measured both at 12th and 24th fret) is a little higher than the crazy low I was accustomed to (1.5mm).
That's good to me as I've recently found that with an action not that crazy low my playing is cleaner and the tone improved as well.
I noticed however that the bass is a little hard to play in the first four/five frets.
At first I tried to go back to my old setup, flatten the neck even more to lower the action but, while this eased things for my left hand, I hated the general feel of the instrument, not mentioning that the tone immediately deteriorated. I could have probably go on raising the bridge saddles and lowering the pickups but didn't want to mess with it and preferred to bring the bass back where it was.
Then I noticed that the nut is probably a little high. Fretting at 3rd fret reveal a gap of about 0.45 mm (0.017") between the bottom of B string and the top of the first fret. Isn't that a little high? Maybe the nut could have been slotted deeper?
Thoughts? Opinions?
Please see the attached pics...





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