(Part 3) Basses for Newbies Bass 1-3

I leveled and crowned the frets on #2 today. . . I had the bass set up yesterday and thought about what was happening on the fretboard. I would have to deal with a gradual hump in the fretboard from ~4-7 frets, a dip in the fretboard from 13-16th fret and a pretty steep rise at the end of the fretboard at the 20th and 21st frets. I presume the sharp rise at the end of the fretboard could be caused by the neck shim and inserts pulling down hard. With the neck as straight as I could make it with the tools I have on hand, I got started by marking the frets with a sharpie.

And I do my leveling with a 16" precision ground block from StewMac. Not that it's necessarily the best way to do it, but it's the only way I've known since the method seemed like one of the more idiot-proof ways to go.

That dip at the 15th and 16th fret were the problem spots. The rest of the board was good to go, but these were still significantly low. I started to work some fall-off at the end frets by putting some tape down to create a different angle. . . Those last 2 frets got shaved down pretty hard, but I slowly worked swithing between grinding the fall-off angle and lowering the rest of the frets until I finally met at the 15th and 16th frets.

I seem to always end up in this same situation when leveling these SX basses. I don't know if it's a characteristic of all bolt-on necks.

That ordeal being over, I re-marked the frets and started to crown them. I spend most of my time removing file chatter and am now wishing I had purchased a diamond file. I thought I was only going to do 1 bass, so no problems.. . . just get the cheaper file. Now, I regret it.

After that, I went over each fret with a small flat file (to remove large chatter), 600 grit sandpaper, 1000 grit sandpaper, and then a felt polishing wheel on a dremel with some polishing compound.

The most involved operation is done on #2. It came out well. I think I'm getting better and faster at this with each bass I do. . . so, 'til next time, here we are on #2.