Is my tuner out of tune, or are my frets misplaced? Or are my strings old?

[Reggaebass]

I’m confident to set up most my basses, perhaps not a vintage one, I would leave that to a professional, but all the basses I’ve ever had have never needed anything done to the nut , it’s one thing I wouldn’t touch 

[bassman7755]

On 20/09/2021 at 17:28, bass_dinger said:

I tune my open strings on a Boss TU2, using the strobe setting.  Open strings are spot-on (apart from a wavering low B).  I then fret the string at the 5th fret and it registers as sharp - the strobe moves upwards, slowly. 

 

Of course, I may be only looking at a few cents out, but it is odd to see the tuning is not the same all the way up the fret board. 

 

The strings (a £5 set from eBay) are about a year old and are 45 to 125.  The bass was set up for a set of Dunlop steels (40 to 120).

 

So, should I simply tune so that the 5th fret note is right?  Should I change the intonation?  Should I buy a better tuner?  Fit new strings?  Should I simply not worry?        

 

 

Even on a well set up instrument open strings and fretted notes are always slightly out of tune with each other, its down to the basic physics of the instrument - a fretted note always has a slightly higher string tension than an open note. Despite what people may tell you you cannot fully compensate for this with intonation adjustment because its a non-linear effect, if you intonate the instrument to open and 12th fret then notes except open and 12th will be slightly out, if you intonate 1st and 13th frets then all frets will be in tune but the open will be slightly flat.

 

This is why things like Feiten Tuning exist - it uses a "compensated" nut which slightly decrease the distance between nut slots and first fret to compensate for the open string flattening effect.

 

Making sure that your nut as cut as low as possible will mitigate effect. I'm not completely sure but I think a higher action at the bridge actually helps (in combination with a low cut nut) as the tension increase would become more linear as you move up the finger board.  Theoretically higher gauge strings also help as the fretted/unfretted tension disparity causes a smaller pitch error with higher tension strings. mind you I still use light strings and and a low action being the wimp that I am 😁

Edited September 22, 2021 by bassman7755

[nilebodgers]

2 hours ago, Reggaebass said:

I’m confident to set up most my basses, perhaps not a vintage one, I would leave that to a professional, but all the basses I’ve ever had have never needed anything done to the nut , it’s one thing I wouldn’t touch 

My MiM P-bass needed the E and A slots tweaking. It wasn't bad enough to make the lower frets sharp, but it felt a little stiff to play.

[bassman7755]

2 hours ago, Reggaebass said:

I’m confident to set up most my basses, perhaps not a vintage one, I would leave that to a professional, but all the basses I’ve ever had have never needed anything done to the nut , it’s one thing I wouldn’t touch 

 

Interesting, In my experience the nut is the most common thing I see wrong on guitar and bass setups. Every bass and guitar I've ever had has had the nut cut too high so I've had to cut the slots down and/or lower the nut on pretty much all of them. I'm probably a but OCD about it to be honest but a high nut grinds my gears something rotten.

[Reggaebass]

I play with a really low action and the only thing I did on one jazz was to widen the nut slightly when I tried some heavy flats , I used an old roundwound string to widen the slot , which was a good little trick 

[Stub Mandrel]

6 hours ago, nilebodgers said:

Yes, it's one of those things that you need to have done a lot to develop the touch and eye to know when to stop. I've done enough to work on my own guitars+basses and fix an obviously too high nut action, but I'd not try and do it for money where people might want you to get it as low as it will go without buzzing. (although basses are a lot more forgiving than guitars as the files cut slower on wider nut slots)

 

I prefer to scrape the bottom of the slots with a scalpel, although I use files when making a bone nut from scratch recently (to replace a cracked one).

[Stub Mandrel]

6 hours ago, nilebodgers said:

Yes, it's one of those things that you need to have done a lot to develop the touch and eye to know when to stop. I've done enough to work on my own guitars+basses and fix an obviously too high nut action, but I'd not try and do it for money where people might want you to get it as low as it will go without buzzing. (although basses are a lot more forgiving than guitars as the files cut slower on wider nut slots)

 

I prefer to scrape the bottom of the slots with a scalpel, although I use files when making a bone nut from scratch recently (to replace a cracked one).

[StickyDBRmf]

Did this problem just start? Old strings can do weird things. You get a nick or a dent or a flat spot and it's not going to ring true.

[bass_dinger]

10 minutes ago, StickyDBRmf said:

Did this problem just start? Old strings can do weird things. You get a nick or a dent or a flat spot and it's not going to ring true.

 

I noticed about 3 months ago, when the strings were 10 months old. 

[itu]

12 hours ago, bass_dinger said:

 

I noticed about 3 months ago, when the strings were 10 months old. 

This is the answer: nearly year old strings. I tend to change strings 2 to 4 times a year. M. Miller changes strings after three hours in studio...