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INSTRUMENT SETUP & MAINTENANCE

Bass Setup To Fender Specs - From Fender.Com comes the definitive setup process for a Fender bass. If you ever wondered why Fender Factory Certified Techs charge so much to setup a bass, this is why. (Frankly I've seen lots of basses with truss rod issues that prevent a totally proper "plays like butter" set up. If your bass won't set up to these specs then take it to real professional, they may be able to fix the truss rod issue.)

"Mr. Gearhead" - The official starting point for Fender, Guild, DeArmond, Squier, Brand X and Sunn tech information is Mr. Gearhead. This basically is a gateway page to the sites for each of the FMIC brands.

Bass Setup Instruction Manual - By Gary Willis. TIP: Even if the only procedure you follow is applying pressure correctly during truss rod adjustments, as pictured HERE, it could save you a lot of time, trouble and needless expense, or from winding up with a totally ruined bass! Lots of places tell you to turn the nut this way or that way however they don't show you how to do that important step properly, but this one does! A++

Electric Bass Setup Guide - From Andrew Pouska's TuneMyBass.Com

Kindess's Harmony-Central Bass Set Up Thread - A different approach to setup, using Stew-Mac's String Action Gauge instead of feeler gauges.

Fretboard - Fingerboard Care - To oil, or not to oil...that is the question! Read a good write up about the facts and the fiction surrounding fretboard & fingerboard cleaning and care.

Neck Radius Tool - Free downloadable and printable gauges to figure out what neck radius you are dealing with from our friends at PICKGUARDIAN!

Mute an Electric bass the Brother Dave Way! Easy, reliable and free muting for any bass!

Official Fender Bass Wiring & Parts Diagrams - From Fender.Com

Seymour Duncan Wiring Diagrams - A great resource for a passive or active P/J diagram and many others not on the Fender site! The bass diagrams are listed last on the list.

Fender JP90 Diagram - P&J pickups with 3 way switch! - From Brother Dave.Com

Fender Precision Bass Wiring Diagram - from Guitar Nucleus

Fender '62 Jazz Bass Wiring Diagram - from Guitar Nucleus

Lace Sensor Precision Bass Wiring Diagram (P/J) - from Guitar Nucleus

Jaco Pastorius Jazz Bass Wiring Diagram - from Guitar Nucleus

Fender Hot Rod Precision Bass Wiring Diagram (P/J) - from Guitar Nucleus

Fender Precision Bass Elite I Wiring Diagram - from Guitar Nucleus

Fender Precision Bass Elite I Preamp Schematic - from Guitar Nucleus

Bill Lawrence's WILDE P/J Schematic - Works ONLY with the WILDE pickup P/J set! Gives you Master Volume, BLEND and Tone using three standard 250K pots and two capacitors. Note all the extra pickup leads required are only found on the WIlde P/J set. This is why it won't work with any other set. Very innovative and quite unique just like lots of Wild Bill's concepts which defy convention yet work exceedingly well. I used a 0.47 PIO for the tone cap and in the variable treble bleed position I used a 0.018 PIO cap. I don't think I'd want to go up in value from the 0.018 and I might try a 0.01 there when I can get one, but the 0.018 sounds pretty dang good.

BC Rich, EMG & Ibanez Bass Wiring Diagrams - From Guitar Nucleus

Fender Amplifier Schematics - From Fender.Com.

Sunn Amplifier Schematics - From what's left of Sunn, which isn't much, but it was nice of FMIC (Fender) to keep the amp diagrams up. They didn't have to. FMIC also continues to make the last Sunn tube bass amp design as the re-badged Fender Bassman 300. Loved my Sunn 2000S. That was a great amp!

Amplifier and Effect Schematics - From Schematic Heaven. TIP: The list of schematics organized by brand name is hard to read until you LEFT CLICK and drag across the listing of all the schematics available to highlight it in a more readable color. Probably the best free amp schematic collection online but I find their index hard to read until you highlight the whole thing by clicking and dragging across it and then I can read it much easier.

Marshall B30 BASS 30 Schematic - Courtesy of DEDMOUSE from the Fender Forum!

The Fender Amp Guide - What is that Fender Amp? Power, specs, schematic?

AMPEG Schematics - Including the FIVE variations of B-15's. AWESOME? Yeah!

MARSHALL Schematics - Including one of my favorites, the SUPERBASS 100!

VOX Schematics - What is not to love?

GIBSON Schematics - The ones not found at the headline link are sometimes found on Schematic Heaven like my very first amp, the Gibson Medalist Series ATLAS with about 50 fierce tube watts on a good day with a tail wind! A groovy retro looking ton-of-bricks on wheels just slightly smaller than a Volkswagen Beetle with a slight pyramid shape to it for some ancient Karma! ($185 used at Ralph's Radio Music...Demorest, Ga.) A dang durable amp which seemed to have been built to standards that would withstand a Rooskie ICBM missle attack. I messed with it pretty seriously over the years I had it. I tried different tubes, caps and other parts with very interesting and educational results. I took the tiny little original knobs off and put REALLY big knobs like you'd find on an old late 50's Gates radio console on it. (They were old Gates knobs actually.) It had this really funky looking crinkled brown wood grain tolex and best of all... 2 Sylvania 6L6GC output tubes...which equals not-a-lotta-watts but what few there were...were soul stirring. I replaced them with the solid BLACK 6L6 RCA's which was STUPID. Sort of wish I still had it from time to time. I did in fact buy it back after trading it not once but TWO times. So altogether I bought this exact same amp THREE times all totaled. I know I played it wide open most of the time at gigs and it didn't quite cut it. I didn't gig it after switching to an Ampeg 300 tube head in 1971. Then in 1976 "I saw the light" and donated it to an A.M.E. Zion Church in Charleston, SC. It might still be there. I like to think so. I never saw anyone as happy as that deacon was when I gave him that amp which I'd been keeping at my office at WCSC because I could plug a turntable into it and it sounded just like a jukebox with those lush lows. He was in my office, saw it, apparently knew what it was and told me how badly his church needed a good bass amp...and well, that was the last I saw of Mr. Atlas. I wonder how Mr. Atlas made out after that.

Speaker Cabinet Wiring Diagrams - How to wire up 2 speaker and 4 speaker cabs to get the total impedance you need to match your amplifier's output. Good clear diagrams from JUMBO SUNSHADE which is a guitarist's EZine & Blog.

Shield Your Bass - Must preface this segment with a strong caution that the following is not recommended on a collector class instrument. Any Pre-CBS Fender for example I'd leave completely stock or you might regret the markdown in an appraisal or sale. But for all other "player class" passive instruments copper shielding with star grounding and cap upgrades are without a doubt in my mind the two best bang for the buck upgrades you can make to your instrument! Who doesn't want to reduce annoying hum and interference once and for all on your passive basses? High-mass bridge and pickup upgrades are way more commonly done, but shielding WORKS GREAT and is relatively cheap! And it works for our 6-string wielding brothers & sisters too! When you get fed up with single coil buzz the website in the link in the title of this segment, "Shield Your Bass." The page at the link shows how to minimize it! The shielding/star grounding process is somewhat time consuming as you have to remove the pickups from the cavity which can sometimes be done without de-soldering them. Plus you have to remove the pickguard and have unobstructed access to the control cavity so some disassembly & reassembly is required. I've never been able to do a shielding project without soldering something somewhere. At the least you have to solder the ground wires to the volume pot and it is also a good idea to put one bead of solder on all seams where the copper foil tape overlaps, because the adhesive on the back of the tape reduces the conductivity of the overlapping tape pieces creating some resistance. Be sure to diagram any wiring you have to disconnect! For less money than a new set of bass strings the end result is amazing on a single coil bass and is absolutely worth the effort and relatively tiny expense compared to other more often done and more expensive upgrades. Shielding & star grounding is especially effective on Jazz style, P/J arrangements and the first generation P-basses which all have at least one single coil pickup, but it also improves the noise floor on second generation P-basses too. Second generation Precision basses have less noise inherently, but it is still there and they can benefit from this project, primarily because it also shields the controls. I use the copper tape for the sides of cavities and sheeting for the backside of pickguards and the bottom of cavities. This is also a good time to consider a capacitor upgrade too if there is a ceramic or poly-film cap in there since you'll be accessing the controls anyway and will have to solder a ground to the the shielding in one spot in the control and pickup cavities. If the cavity is fully surrounded by a pickguard or metal control plate (as on a Tele-type bass) be sure to let the copper tape overlap the edge of the cavity so it will make good contact with the metal control plate or with the copper sheeting you applied to the back of the pickguard. On any pickup cavity with no pickguard or control plate, stop the copper tape just beneath where it would show above the pickup and your shielding job will be completely invisible. You'll need a screw drivers and hex keys to remove pickguard/pickup/covers/knob set-screws/cavity cover, a marker or grease pencil to trace the pickguard, an Exacto type knife or heavy scissors like kitchen scissors to cut the adhesive backed copper tape and sheeting, a soldering iron, some high quality rosin-core silver solder, plus you'll need enough black wire to run from each pickup cavity to the control cavity to solder to ground there. I use toothpicks to open screw and wire holes in the copper material after it is in place and I use a paperclip sometimes to open up lugs on pots so I can re-solder the pickup leads back on or to do a tone capacitor upgrade. Finally before reassembly, check your ground connections to the cavities with a multimeter set to R1000 using the bridge plate as a common contact point for all cavities before reassembly. Your goal is to completely encase anything electronic in the copper material except for the very front of the pickups and ground the copper shielding to the common circuit ground of the signal circuit. Count on a shielding project to take at least 3 hours and maybe more if it is your first time, but it isn't rocket science and anyone that can solder can do it. Also anyone with a passive bass, especially if single coil pickups are involved, should do it. If you follow the instructions at the site in the title link to this segment and also study the photos HERE you'll have no problem. A 5 foot length of 2 inch wide copper tape and one 12x12 solid copper sheet is more than enough to do one bass and should cost about $13 US plus shipping from about any of the parts suppliers. Based on how many pickup cavities and the size of your pickguard, this might actually be enough to do two basses with some still left over. Some people say you can use aluminum tape and yes it does work but the copper is much easier to work with and more permanent because you can solder the ground wires right to the copper tape material, but you can not solder to aluminum so you have to tape the ground wires to the aluminum and that tape is naturally not permanent. You can also use metal screws through the aluminum into your guitar with the ground wires soldered to the screw which is more permanent but I prefer to just spring the 3 extra bucks for copper and not use tape or risk drilling holes and be done with it. Copper is easier and faster to use and more permanent. Any gauge ground wire will work but I would use small gauge because you have to run this wire in the same channel as the pickup leads which can get crowded. I would also use black in color wire to tell any future tech that "HEY....that is a ground wire!" If you use a metal pickup cover, you can solder a wire from the cavity, strip one end and put it under the cover next to one of the screws and that helps a little bit too, but not as much as the copper cavity and pickguard shielding. Remember you must encase all the electronics in copper and then ground the copper cavities to the control ciruit. It is pretty easy to do, but it is slow going to do a neat job. It is all worth it when you find you can turn your treble control up much higher without hearing the annoying buzz or when you have to play a club with neon signs around, a dive that uses home light dimmers on stage or that has fluorescent lighting nearby.

Soldering is a Skill - The following sites give good information on how to make solder connections: TEAM NOVAK, E-MUSICIAN, ELECTRONIX EXPRESS and SHAVANO MUSIC ONLINE. With these sites, a soldering iron, solder, a few basic tools and some practice you will be a soldering machine in no time! Soldering skills come in handy to repair cables, instruments and sometimes even speaker cabs and amps! A $15 investment in a small soldering iron and some high quality rosin core silver solder will pay in the long run! Keep a pair of needle nose pliers, pocket knife, tiny screw driver, soldering iron and solder in your gig bag and you just might be the band's hero when you save the show!

Make ANY Pot a NO-LOAD Pot using simple hand tools and a multi-meter. From ProjectGuitar.Com .

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