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Unreasonably low action, cheap neck - doable?


project_c
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I bought a cheap unbranded J neck and put in on one of my precisions. The neck is pretty nice, it's the right shape, it feels good, the rod is fine, it's nice and straight (the tiniest bit of relief, no backbow), but I can't get the action anywhere near as low as I'd like to, it starts choking out if I go under 2mm. I have my action set very low on my other basses (around 1.2mm at 17th fret) and I'm wondering whether it's possible to achieve such low action on the cheap neck. Would a decent fret levelling help with this, or would I be wasting my money? Is there anything else I should be trying?

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7 hours ago, gary mac said:

If everything else is ok, then you won't be wasting money on a fret levelling, that's assuming they are in need of levelling. Have you checked them with a straight edge/fret rocker?

There's nothing drastic I can spot  with the ruler and small setup measuring tool I use, but something is definitely making the strings choke out way higher than they should be. Might just be one or two rogue frets, not sure. Assuming the neck is straight and the rest of the bass has no issues (it was fine with its previous neck), could it be anything else apart from the frets? 

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7 hours ago, project_c said:

There's nothing drastic I can spot  with the ruler and small setup measuring tool I use, but something is definitely making the strings choke out way higher than they should be. Might just be one or two rogue frets, not sure. Assuming the neck is straight and the rest of the bass has no issues (it was fine with its previous neck), could it be anything else apart from the frets? 

If you have a shim towards the back of the pocket, then I would remove that.

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Thanks for the suggestions. It's quite close to the ideal height but it does make a big difference playing-wise (relatively speaking..). A new nut is a good call, the existing one could well be part of the problem. There's no shim there, but in any case I think I'll drop it into the Gallery and let them have a go on it. 

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18 hours ago, gary mac said:

If everything else is ok, then you won't be wasting money on a fret levelling, that's assuming they are in need of levelling. Have you checked them with a straight edge/fret rocker?

Actually just to update this, I was wrong, I had a really close look today and I found a clear problem spot. The 10th fret seems a tad higher at the G string than all the others, my string action gauge ruler rocks up and down like a see-saw when it's on top of that fret, so I think this may be one of the main issues here.

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