The beast Taylor Lee graced me with his presence this past week. He's toured with Katy Perry, Jeff Sipe, and Harry Connick Jr. Everything went great — until it didn't. (More on that later!) But first, here's what we did to his Fodera bass.
The assessment
I started with an overall assessment to get my bearings on the instrument. I checked the neck relief, string height, and nut slot depth, did a chromatic walk up and down the neck to listen for uneven frets, checked intonation, and finished by checking the electronics for scratchy or dirty pots, switches, and jack.
The main thing I saw when sighting down the neck was a very strange-looking relief bow that almost looked like it was joined with a neck hump around the 12th fret. But it wasn't fretting out. Ok, cool.
It did, however, throw the consistency of the fretboard a little out of balance. Taylor even asked me, as I kept sighting down the neck, if it was doing something weird in that same area. His pro hands had been feeling what my eyes were seeing.
A quarter turn from perfect
The first thing to check off the list — the thing that would firm up our game plan — was whether that bow-and-hump could be straightened with a turn of the truss rod. To our delight, about a quarter turn on the rod made it... perfect.
Man, we were off to the races. I completed the whole setup, cleaned the electronics, and detailed the instrument to make it look super fresh.
I have a policy when it comes to the final setup: "There is no right, no wrong. Only perfect." Because perfection is in the eye of the beholder (in our case, the hands of the beholder), I always make sure the player takes their time and test drives it.
Usually after a few minor tweaks, we get it dialed in like a custom-made suit. And so it was. Everything was perfect... until.
The plot twist
The next day, I'm in mid-day routine mode when I thought I'd call Taylor to check in and make sure everything was still feeling right... only to find out that by some unknown force, the action was SKY high off the fretboard.
What?! No way! How?!
As a tech, my mind was spinning ten different directions on what the problem could be. But he was two hours away, and I wasn't able to connect until the following day. He, being in a time crunch, needed his main money-maker playable ASAP. Understandably so!
So he had a guy in his town who does tech work look it over and troubleshoot the issue. And thank God he did. And thank God it was fixed with a tightening of the truss rod.
The big fear for somebody in my shoes is that the truss rod broke — which would have been puzzling as to how. Thankfully, that was not the problem. Though the verdict is still out on how in the world the action could have shifted that much, his local tech really was the star of this story.
What this teaches
I'm sharing all of this so you can see that even after 20+ years of pro repair, weird stuff can still happen outside of your control. I'm not afraid of facing circumstances like this, because I know there is always a solution. And thankfully, this was a simple fix.
The only way to not be intimidated by your gear is to dive in and face the issues. I know how scary that can feel, especially without proper guidance. That's why we're working diligently on a project that will help you work through your gear issues with full confidence and ease.
In the meantime, if your bass or guitar is doing something weird, that's what the bench is for. Start with the signs your instrument needs a setup, and get in touch when you're ready.