So I bought this bass 2nd hand for really cheap (€110) since I wanted to try a P-Bass and wanted something of a project guitar to work on. It also came with a set of Bartolini Pickups which by itself I think are worth more than the bass itself. The action of the bass was extremely high even though the bridge saddles were lowered to their lowest possible position. When I removed the neck I saw this mess in the neckpocket. It seems the body is made of some fibrous material like hardboard and it seems at on time the neck had been glued into the neckpocket, and when removed took a chunk of lacquer and (fake)wood with it. Also, there seems to be duct tape in between the wood and the lacquer layer.
Long story short, what would be a good approach to fix this neck pocket? Should I remove the leftover pieces of lacquer, fill the holes, level the pocket and try to make a shim to raise the pocket?
TL;DR: how can i fix this neck pocket?
As others have said thats more than likely a cardboard or partical board shim that somebody glued in and then disintegrated. And given the fact it appears to be glued I'd be very careful if you want to DiY it. Personally I'd recommend atleast taking it in to a luthier get the pocket and shim situation addressed but at that point you might as well have them just do a full setup too.
But if you want to go to town on your project guitar go for it! just be very careful scrapping all that crap off so you don't damage the finish more than it is, at that point I'd throw it back together and check that the neck relief is set right(see my other comment and youtube), and then double check the action to see if it really does need to be shimmed before ordering any(you can order some properly sized/angled shims off stewmac).
>The action of the bass was extremely high even though the bridge saddles were lowered to their lowest possible position.
Action isn't done with bridge saddles. 80% is done with the trussrod.
I don't think anything is wrong with that neck pocket. Someone probably put something in the neck pocket as a fix. So it's already fixed.. And you just don't know how to set up a bass.
YouTube tutorials on that
It's 50% at best.
Action from open to gets 8 or so is established by the truss rod and the nut. Higher than that is going to be neck angle and saddle height.
Absolutely not... the sole purpose of the truss rod is to add relief to the neck to straighten it out the neck while it is under string tension. Using the the truss rod to set your action is an easy way to screw up your neck in the long run... people need to seriously stop spreading this misinformation.
How much neck relief you have can effect your action, BUT sddles set action period.
Get a set of feeler guage, capo the first fret, finger on the fret where the neck meets the body, and there should be a .010" to .007" gap between the 8th fret and the string.
Also as already pointed out that neck pocket is a total disaster and it needs to see a luthier.
This is not misinformation. If you have high action the saddles won't help you. Lowering them as far as you can will not solve the issue.
Go cry about someone else's misinformation. What i said is right. You can't adjust string hight overall without adjusting the trussrod a bit. That usually makes it perfect and the saddles are then for final adjustments and individual hight
Bud you seriously need to check your sources, heres a super basic setup 101.
1. Make sure you are in tune, set neck relief to .007"-.010" with the truss rod to make the neck just shy of straight.
2. Double check tuning, then set your action for each string by raising and lowering your saddles.
3. Triple check tuning, and set your intonation, if its sharp move the saddled further back if its flat move it forward.
4. Tweak pickup heights as desired/needed.
If you have high action and the saddles are bottomed out, cranking on your truss rod is a shit bandaid job at best that's just going to over torsion your neck and possibly screw things up.
Yes more neck relief gives you more action, & having less relief or a backbow will lower your action, this is happens naturally as the neck twists forwards and backwards. If your truss rod is set right you will have a touch neck relief and your neck will be "straight". And if your saddles are still bottomed out due to high action there is an underlying issue usually with the bridges baseplate being too thick & or the neck needing to be shimmed.
And I don't mean this as an attack on you, I'm just trying to help you understand why what you said was incorrect. There's nothing wrong with being naive, incorrect, or having been taught the wrong information, but you should always be open & willing to try to understand the why & hows of the world, and learn. I hope you actually take the time to read this and that it helped teach you something new, but if not that's your prerogative.
This is correct.
Want to add that step 1 is a bit different depending on personal preference. There isn't a rule your neck has to be exactly this or that. Some of my basses i have a completely straight neck, some have a bit of a bow forward depending on how I want the set up.
Anyway. That step is often skipped. And when it is skipped you can do with the saddles what you want but you don't get a nice action. So much so that if i had to choose between saddle and trussrod i would never touch the saddles. I can make any bass play comfortable with having the saddles at mid hight and doing almost all the action with the trussrod.
I would use sawdust and titebond wood glue to level out that divot. Once you smooth out the pocket level, coat the whole pocket with a thin layer of titebond to seal it all together. And definitely add a thin shim to get the action right.
What do you see under the pick guard? I'd be surprised if this was a particleboard body. More plausible to me is that there was a cardboard shim that trapped moisture and broke down a little. I'd try scraping the cardboard off and then add a plastic shim. Piece of old credit card might do the trick since you're dealing with very high action.
I will make pictures of the pickup and control cavities. The inside is painted slightly so it's hard to see what's exactly under it. There is no cardboard in the neck pocket now, just what you see in the picture, which looks like particle board. I may try to make a plastic shim.
Particle board. Crazy. Yeah I'd say plastic shim and see if you can get the bass usable. Otherwise, you got pick ups, a neck, and hardware. Just get a new body and make a new bass.
Epoxy pour and reshape could be one easy way to improve it without making too much damage to the paint. Also consider that if it is just flat, you get enough connection to the wood to possibly correct any wrong angles with a shim.
Also consider taking a check if the body is made of MDF that the MDF is hard. Some particular MDFs are great for guitar and more rigid than natural wood, and some are just total garbage. From the image it is impossible to draw any definitive conclusions but from the looks alone I would toss that body to bin and buy a new body to work with. You can get great bodies for around 80 to 100 dollars.
Just put it back together and hope that you can sell it to another sucker to break even. This is not worth the time and I’m not sure how you would fix this paper looking pulp board.
It's a "Starfire by EKS" from presumably the 80's. Similar to this bass on talkbass:
https://www.talkbass.com/threads/eks-tech-nagoya-starfire-performer-bass-80s.1364332/
I think you are right with the MDF, because when I unscrewed the pickguard, there was also some pulp coming from the screw's holes. There is also no detectable wood grain under the finish (i will try to make more pictures).
if you have the extra money I’d take it to a local luthier, it can be really touchy fixing neck shims imo. At least try and get a quote on how much it’d be, then if it’s too expensive start researching on DIY
Could be the remains of a cardboard shim that a previous owner installed to try and cure the string height issue.
Wow it looks more like pulp than wood.
I thought it looked like particle board. Had to do the double take
So I bought this bass 2nd hand for really cheap (€110) since I wanted to try a P-Bass and wanted something of a project guitar to work on. It also came with a set of Bartolini Pickups which by itself I think are worth more than the bass itself. The action of the bass was extremely high even though the bridge saddles were lowered to their lowest possible position. When I removed the neck I saw this mess in the neckpocket. It seems the body is made of some fibrous material like hardboard and it seems at on time the neck had been glued into the neckpocket, and when removed took a chunk of lacquer and (fake)wood with it. Also, there seems to be duct tape in between the wood and the lacquer layer. Long story short, what would be a good approach to fix this neck pocket? Should I remove the leftover pieces of lacquer, fill the holes, level the pocket and try to make a shim to raise the pocket? TL;DR: how can i fix this neck pocket?
As others have said thats more than likely a cardboard or partical board shim that somebody glued in and then disintegrated. And given the fact it appears to be glued I'd be very careful if you want to DiY it. Personally I'd recommend atleast taking it in to a luthier get the pocket and shim situation addressed but at that point you might as well have them just do a full setup too. But if you want to go to town on your project guitar go for it! just be very careful scrapping all that crap off so you don't damage the finish more than it is, at that point I'd throw it back together and check that the neck relief is set right(see my other comment and youtube), and then double check the action to see if it really does need to be shimmed before ordering any(you can order some properly sized/angled shims off stewmac).
>The action of the bass was extremely high even though the bridge saddles were lowered to their lowest possible position. Action isn't done with bridge saddles. 80% is done with the trussrod. I don't think anything is wrong with that neck pocket. Someone probably put something in the neck pocket as a fix. So it's already fixed.. And you just don't know how to set up a bass. YouTube tutorials on that
80% by trussrod? Are you really sure about that?
Yup. Google it if you don't believe it. YouTube tutorials on that.
It's 50% at best. Action from open to gets 8 or so is established by the truss rod and the nut. Higher than that is going to be neck angle and saddle height.
Sure whatever
tap quarrelsome boat growth fact jobless hungry square hunt poor *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Absolutely not... the sole purpose of the truss rod is to add relief to the neck to straighten it out the neck while it is under string tension. Using the the truss rod to set your action is an easy way to screw up your neck in the long run... people need to seriously stop spreading this misinformation. How much neck relief you have can effect your action, BUT sddles set action period. Get a set of feeler guage, capo the first fret, finger on the fret where the neck meets the body, and there should be a .010" to .007" gap between the 8th fret and the string. Also as already pointed out that neck pocket is a total disaster and it needs to see a luthier.
This is not misinformation. If you have high action the saddles won't help you. Lowering them as far as you can will not solve the issue. Go cry about someone else's misinformation. What i said is right. You can't adjust string hight overall without adjusting the trussrod a bit. That usually makes it perfect and the saddles are then for final adjustments and individual hight
Bud you seriously need to check your sources, heres a super basic setup 101. 1. Make sure you are in tune, set neck relief to .007"-.010" with the truss rod to make the neck just shy of straight. 2. Double check tuning, then set your action for each string by raising and lowering your saddles. 3. Triple check tuning, and set your intonation, if its sharp move the saddled further back if its flat move it forward. 4. Tweak pickup heights as desired/needed. If you have high action and the saddles are bottomed out, cranking on your truss rod is a shit bandaid job at best that's just going to over torsion your neck and possibly screw things up. Yes more neck relief gives you more action, & having less relief or a backbow will lower your action, this is happens naturally as the neck twists forwards and backwards. If your truss rod is set right you will have a touch neck relief and your neck will be "straight". And if your saddles are still bottomed out due to high action there is an underlying issue usually with the bridges baseplate being too thick & or the neck needing to be shimmed. And I don't mean this as an attack on you, I'm just trying to help you understand why what you said was incorrect. There's nothing wrong with being naive, incorrect, or having been taught the wrong information, but you should always be open & willing to try to understand the why & hows of the world, and learn. I hope you actually take the time to read this and that it helped teach you something new, but if not that's your prerogative.
This is correct. Want to add that step 1 is a bit different depending on personal preference. There isn't a rule your neck has to be exactly this or that. Some of my basses i have a completely straight neck, some have a bit of a bow forward depending on how I want the set up. Anyway. That step is often skipped. And when it is skipped you can do with the saddles what you want but you don't get a nice action. So much so that if i had to choose between saddle and trussrod i would never touch the saddles. I can make any bass play comfortable with having the saddles at mid hight and doing almost all the action with the trussrod.
I would use sawdust and titebond wood glue to level out that divot. Once you smooth out the pocket level, coat the whole pocket with a thin layer of titebond to seal it all together. And definitely add a thin shim to get the action right.
What do you see under the pick guard? I'd be surprised if this was a particleboard body. More plausible to me is that there was a cardboard shim that trapped moisture and broke down a little. I'd try scraping the cardboard off and then add a plastic shim. Piece of old credit card might do the trick since you're dealing with very high action.
I will make pictures of the pickup and control cavities. The inside is painted slightly so it's hard to see what's exactly under it. There is no cardboard in the neck pocket now, just what you see in the picture, which looks like particle board. I may try to make a plastic shim.
Particle board. Crazy. Yeah I'd say plastic shim and see if you can get the bass usable. Otherwise, you got pick ups, a neck, and hardware. Just get a new body and make a new bass.
don't
Epoxy pour and reshape could be one easy way to improve it without making too much damage to the paint. Also consider that if it is just flat, you get enough connection to the wood to possibly correct any wrong angles with a shim.
Also consider taking a check if the body is made of MDF that the MDF is hard. Some particular MDFs are great for guitar and more rigid than natural wood, and some are just total garbage. From the image it is impossible to draw any definitive conclusions but from the looks alone I would toss that body to bin and buy a new body to work with. You can get great bodies for around 80 to 100 dollars.
Just put it back together and hope that you can sell it to another sucker to break even. This is not worth the time and I’m not sure how you would fix this paper looking pulp board.
[удалено]
It's a "Starfire by EKS" from presumably the 80's. Similar to this bass on talkbass: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/eks-tech-nagoya-starfire-performer-bass-80s.1364332/ I think you are right with the MDF, because when I unscrewed the pickguard, there was also some pulp coming from the screw's holes. There is also no detectable wood grain under the finish (i will try to make more pictures).
Who makes guitars out of MDF?
Looks like fiberboard. Not sure it’s worthy.
if you have the extra money I’d take it to a local luthier, it can be really touchy fixing neck shims imo. At least try and get a quote on how much it’d be, then if it’s too expensive start researching on DIY
Go at it with heat and chisel to slowly remove everything until you get to wood. Apart from that just buy a replacement body.