Set up

[DTB]

Hello everyone, I haven’t posted for a while. This winter has seen me dive back in to playing bass whenever I can and have been doing lots of practice every day when pain levels allow. ( music takes a back seat in the summer as my other love is motorcycles, but as my health continues to go downhill music will hopefully fill the void motorcycle might leave any time soon)

and to my main point,

Santa brought me a five string fretless in the form of a Sire V10. 
I set it up to my preferences and noticed the A string was a little quiet. 
I left it until I had a new set of Cobalt Flats to put on it, expensive but worth every penny, and although better string balance, the A was still a little quiet. 
I don’t like the strings to get progressively lower from B to G and always set them up with 2.25 mm clearance on each string following the fingerboard radius. I set my guitars with staggered pole pieces the same and always have good string balance. 
 

I measured the individual string height to the individual pole pieces and the B was about 3mm the G was 2.5 but the A was over 5mm. Also when sighting across the strings the B and G were way lower than the middle 3 even though they were radiused perfectly. 

So I thought I would set the saddle heights for the B and G by eye rather than measuring, bringing up the height of each by about .5 mm and then resetting the pickup heights.
 

I don’t why the two outside saddles were so much lower when following the fingerboard radius, but once adjusted to match the middle three saddles with just a gentle slope, the string balance is perfect and it hasn’t affected the playability. If anything the B string sounds fuller and has more tone.  
 

I am 57 this year and have played since my teens but still seems I am still learning. 
 

Anyone else have a similar set up or encountered problems with string balance. If so how did you solve it?

[jonno1981]

I think you’ve covered the factors off really well. String choice, action and pickup height, there isn’t that much else you can do really. 

[PaulThePlug]

Strings/Sadles to Fretboard Radius, Action, Pickup height to strings.

 

A P with a 7.25" radius neck can make the split pickup look broken!

[DTB]

Why is it that yesterday the B string started having all sorts of issues. Thought it was my preamp to start with but even when I turned the bass volume down I could hear it acoustically rumbling away. 
Relief was down to less than .15 mm

fine for a week then overnight it changes. 
i couldn’t sleep last night due to pain so 4am I reset it all. Relief action pickups. Set it back to .3 mm which is probably a bit much for a fretless but it sounds better than before, although even though the pickups are set as before the A string is quiet again 🙄

i just don’t get it. Aren’t roasted maple necks supposed to be more stable???

[fretmeister]

3 minutes ago, DTB said:

Why is it that yesterday the B string started having all sorts of issues. Thought it was my preamp to start with but even when I turned the bass volume down I could hear it acoustically rumbling away. 
Relief was down to less than .15 mm

fine for a week then overnight it changes. 
i couldn’t sleep last night due to pain so 4am I reset it all. Relief action pickups. Set it back to .3 mm which is probably a bit much for a fretless but it sounds better than before, although even though the pickups are set as before the A string is quiet again 🙄

i just don’t get it. Aren’t roasted maple necks supposed to be more stable???

 

More stable yes. Rock solid and rigid - no.

 

Temperature and humidity affect all wooden necks. Extreme temperature changes can even effect graphite necks a little as all materials react to temperature in some way.

 

I've had to do some truss rod tweaks during a series of outside sets on the same day in the summer as the sun hitting the stage moved and then began to set.

 

There is a trade off - you could make a graphite neck with F1 car levels of tolerance - so not expanding / contracting by more than 0.1mm under load but then you couldn't adjust it to suit your tastes.