Fretless Necks

[backonbass]

Does anybody have the advice for setting the action on Fretless necks in terms of shimming, bridge and nut heights, relief v. straight, etc? I have an inexpensive Yamaha fretless with poor action. I've tried various adjustments but to no avail.

[Bill Bolton]

Shiming/neck angle is purely matter of ensuring there is adequate bridge saddle height adjustment, it has little or nothing to do with action per se.

 

For fretless I find a little relief useful, but some bassists like no relief at all. You should make sure that you neck can assume a true "no relief" position.... if you have a "ski jump" at the end of the neck you will certainly have a lot of trouble with getting a workable action.

 

In general once you get "in the ballpark' with a fretless set up, very small adjustments can have large impacts on the sound, so you need to adjust things slowly, and play using each adjustment for a while to get a good feel of EXCATLY what it has done to the sound. For me "dialing in" a good fretless setup is process of several weeks of small adjustments. It also means that I don't change string brands/types/gauges much on my fretless basses due to the length of time it takes to get a new setup bedded in.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Ed Friedland]

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Well, yes and no IMO. I find that shimming/neck angle adjustments do have a noticeable effect of the overall feel of a bass. It tends to loosen up the bass, at least that's my subjective sense of it. I'm sure it doesn't actually change the string tension. This is more noticeable on fretted/slapping setups. I find the shim makes the bass respond easier to the slap as the last fret is closer to the string. It's different than just lowering the strings at the bridge, not sure exactly why.

 

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