LeftyBassist.com

My son and I installed side dots. AmPro body ‘16, neck ‘19, I think.

Best feeling Fender Bass I have. Perfect for my hands. At lower volumes, I’m not impressed with the V-mods. Cranked a bit and they’re excellent.

Very cool! Jazz pickups, Maple fretboard, reversed headstock - this is right up my alley!

Thanks. I tried hard to find a lefty AmProf neck, and it struck me that I could get a righty AmPro neck, not only that but with a maple FB. I haven't owned a maple fb bass since 40 years ago when I was a teen. I love Fender black guitars and basses with maple fbs and never had black Fenders. before--and I've got a matching Strat on the project table to go with this JB.

Very nice.

Thanks! I'm really loving it. I've got to set the intonation today. I'm not 100% sold on the pups, so I'm going to try adjusting them and see what I get.

Classic! The black and maple look is always pretty sharp.

I had paid so much attention to the sound that I didn't even pay attention to the action. Then I noticed a serious bow in the neck. I'm a nerd, and often, I feel so inept when it comes to construction or repairs. Well, screw that. I set up the neck, adjusting a truss rod for the first time since I picked up my guitar 45 years ago. The intonation was out. Solved that. I did a careful and precise job, and I'm proud. Installing the side dots was a victory too.

So while this is something you guys do all the time, it's a significant win for me. In fact, I'm learning now all about guitar repair and guitar making. Having recently retired, I am excited about a new hobby like this, especially when it saves me money and makes me feel useful in retirement.

Good for you. I help moderate a Jazz Bass forum on Facebook and another guy posted this morning about doing his first setup as well. Every player needs to know how to do these basic adjustments. It’s really not hard! A few Allen wrenches and a radius gauge is really all you need for a lot of this stuff, as far as basic tweaks go

Doing a really good setup yourself is so satisfying.

Things are busy as hell these days, but the next thing I'd like to do is file a new nut for my SB-2. One after the other all the slots in my nut are dropping until the strings hit the first fret. It's wearing flats and I rarely have to tune it more than a few degrees of a turn, so I'm not really sure what's happening. But the slips of paper under three of the strings is kinda kludgey for such a nice bass.

Try releasing the tension on the truss rod.

That's not the issue. The relief is the same. If I push the string down between frets two and three, the string rests on the first fret, too. I can tap the string over the first fret and there's no "plink." Somehow the nut slots are lowering.

Maybe the nut wasn't quite seated to one side and has slowly been pressed into place.

That would be more likely, since I seriously doubt the slots themselves could actually be wearing out.

Hey Matt, can you post a link to your Facebook Jazz Bass forum? Thanks... also, just sent you a friend request to your FB... Ian

Got your request! I sent you an invite on fb, but here’s the link too.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Fenderbass/?ref=share

Thanks Matt!

The more I play this bass, the more I love it. Of my regular / long scale basses, it's the easiest and most fun to play. For some weird psychological reason, I play more freely on maple fretboards. It seems less formal, more welcoming--silly metaphors, but apt.