This is a job I’m glad to have finished– my customer dropped the guitar off six months ago! It’s a cool old Ibanez Musician, but had a number of issues. Lots of uneven frets, a collapsing bridge, and a set of pickups that just wasn’t doing it for the owner.

The owner wanted to try something unconventional and was craving something that would give him decent humbucker sounds but also something brighter and more Fender-esque, and inquired about the Nordstrand NDC pickups. I’d never heard them, but after a phone conversation with Nordstrand we decided it would be cool to try them, and ordered a set. A series of personnel changes at the company led to several delays, but I used the time to get other parts on order and draw up a circuit that would allow the pickup coils to be wired in both series and parallel, with individual coil taps as well.

Unfortunately, there were some issues with the way the mounting holes were drilled and tapped in the baseplate for the pickups in both the original set and the replacement set of pickups from the company. With a new production staff, it seems they’re still working out the kinks, and this is one of their most unusual (and least replicated) pickups. Customer service was really great, but unfortunately didn’t fix the issue, so I ended up mounting the pickups into their rings using tiny retaining nuts. I also had to clip the included springs to allow enough compression to raise the pickups to the necessary height, and because I had to remove the pickups to adjust them, the setup was a little more time-consuming than usual. If the customer’s happy with the sounds we get, I’ll either CA glue the nuts to the baseplates, or find some lock nuts in the correct thread.

Since my mind was on wiring, and i wanted to hear the pickups before doing anything else, I went ahead and wired up the circuit. The volume pots are push-pull pots that toggle between the humbuckers wired in series (standard humbucker wiring,) and putting the coils in parallel, for a brighter sound closer to a tele in the middle position (there are major differences because the coils are beside each other instead of at different harmonic nodes, but you can hear the similarities.) From the volume pots, jumper wires connect to the push-push tone pots, which short one coil of each pickup to ground. The resulting combinations possible make for some interesting sounds, especially with both pickups on.

Once I was sure my wiring was working correctly, I moved on to the frets and hardware. The strings were buzzing pretty badly around the fretboard, in part because of various uneven frets, and in part because over time, string tension had flattened out the brass bridge, causing the middle strings to be more prone to rattle on the frets. The fretboard was a 10″ radius. The bridge had collapsed to something closer to a 20″ radius. I like the hardware on the Ibanez guitars from the late 70s and early 80s, but this is the second one I’ve seen recently with this problem. It makes a good case for using an alloy tougher than brass, or a bridge design that resists all those pounds of string pressure for longer. I knew I was going to spend some time on the frets, so I clamped the bridge up in a vise, using blocks to leverage the bridge back to its original curve. I didn’t want to crack the fatigued metal, so I didn’t over do it– a little at a time, letting the bridge sit in the clamp as long as possible and tightening it slightly as time went on, until I was satisfied that we were holding at the original 10″.

Meanwhile I got busy with the frets. I’ve tried a lot of different fret dressing procedures and am always looking for a method that gets better results, or is faster, or preferably both. Here’s how I went about this dress:

First I adjusted the neck straight, and leveled the frets as I usually do with a long leveling bar. I’ve started paying extra attention as I go to maintaining the radius of the frets. It seems easier to take away material in the right places if I chase the leveling bar with radiused sanding cauls periodically. This makes up for inconsistencies in the angle at which I’m using the bar, without losing the advantage of the length of the bar for creating a level plane down the frets. Once everything is in a nice straight line all across the board, I spend a little extra time adding some fallaway on the high frets– a few thousandths ensures that the strings won’t fret out on bends up high.

Next the frets are crowned with a 3 corner file, which gives a lot of control over the final shape of the fret. For this Ibanez, I left the flat on top of the fret a little wider than I otherwise might, going for more of a classic Gibson fret profile.

I followed up the filing with a burnishing tool instead of sandpaper. Used for jewelry work, the burnisher is great on standard fretwire, which is a copper/nickel alloy of softer metals. The burnisher compresses and smooths the metal, shining it the same way sandpaper would, but with the advantage of hardening the fret and hopefully making it slightly more durable. Instead of running through a lot of grits of sandpaper to get rid of file marks, I can use the burnisher once, and fine tune the fret shape at the same time as smoothing and polishing.

For the final polish I’ve recently started using the ceramic polishing discs sold by Stewart Macdonald. I was skeptical at first but have become pretty impressed. It’s hard to bring the frets to a higher shine than the fine wheel leaves, and cuts at least 20 minutes of hand work out of a fret dress.

When I was happy with the frets I used a razor blade scraper to expose fresh wood and clean up the marks burnished into the rosewood by the safe edge of my fret file.

Then I reconditioned the wood with lemon oil for a nice protective shine.

Moving up to the nut– someone had made a bone nut for the guitar, a step in the right direction, but it was pretty rough. The contours were square, the slots too deep, and it wasn’t too pretty. The deep slots can cause the strings to bind and go out of tune, and the rough, square shape of the nut can create drag on the string between the front edge and the tuners, which can create intonation problems.

I lowered the slots with a file, shaping as I went…

and used a piece of clipped string as a feeler gauge to set the slot depth.

When I’d exposed as much string as I wanted, I finalized the nut profile, and brought the bone up to a high gloss.

Looks and plays a lot better now!

All that was left was the setup, so I unclamped the bridge and cleaned out as much dirt and crud around the saddle screws as possible, and lubricated the threads with some 3-in-1 oil. Strung up, after the work to the frets and nut, I was able to set the neck dead straight with a nice low action that played perfectly in tune.

This guitar is rejuvenated and ready to rock! It’s nice to have the opportunity to go through a cool instrument like this and really do everything necessary to get it playing great. Hopefully the owner will dig it and it will be making music for many years to come.

Q: My friend found this quote online and asked about it: “I have been using Dean Markley strings for over 20 years now. I’ve gone through all the popular brands like DR, Rotosound, GHS and Fender. I started with the Superwound series. I played those for years. I thought those strings were the best until I tried the Blue Steel series. I was completely blow away by these strings. They were very consistent from box to box. They kept their brightness and tone for a much longer period than the other brands. The thing I really like about them is their feel. Very soft. Other strings use a thicker core and that tended to be hard on my hands since I play so much and the fact that I play a lot of slap bass. Another benefit of these strings is that they come back great when you boil them. Well, I should say that I use to boil them, now I just run them through the dish washer. I have many vintage Fender Jazz basses and it is important to me to have a consistent feel from bass to bass. That is why I don’t mix and match. The only strings I use are Blue Steel – Light Gauge. Remember to only take one string off at a time when you change your strings. If you take them all off at once or if you put on a different gauge set of strings, the neck will check and throw off your action. Find the set of strings you like and stick with them. Your bass will be glad.”

Brian,

Is that right? You should take the strings off one at a time — the above quote is from Anthony Vitti – Berklee Bass Guru – so I don’t doubt him but have never heard that before….

A: I’m suspicious of people that propagate the “boil your strings” BS; at the temp that water boils i don’t believe you’re doing much at all to the metal. Some metallurgist, feel free to explain the effect. I’m sure there are answers to this all over the internet already, but if you want to temper your strings, why not bake them? If you’re convinced it improves your tone, why throw your steel strings in water that WILL rust them if you take the plating off? (To propagate another rumor,)

I heard van halen started that whole business in interviews as a hoax, but there are PLENTY of people that have taken it seriously. I definitely know people who tried it and swore by it, i’m just pretty convinced that it’s placebo effect. Some people boil them THEN put them on the guitar and claim it makes them feel “broken in,” some boil them to rejuvenate them and claim it makes their old strings new. To both camps, I say

“What-EV-rrr!

If you want a simple good reason not to boil your strings and put them back on your guitar, even if it does clean them up, it’s that as you play your strings, the frets wear dents into the bottoms of the strings. Over time, as you tune the guitar, those dents move up and down the neck by small amounts. Eventually you have large enough dents in your strings that you will start getting rattles and buzzes, fretting out, and general nastiness. Take the strings off, put them back on, and wind up a different amount of slack, and you’re pretty much guaranteed to cause yourself some buzzing you don’t want. Sometimes people think they need a fret dress because their strings are buzzing, when a new set of strings cures the problem. (This is also a good reason to change your strings frequently– if you want a “broken in” sound, try coated strings, flatwounds, or a different string alloy for a warmer tone and no buzzing!)

Back to the question– it is not true that if you take all your strings off at once you’re going to damage the neck of your bass or instantly check the finish. You’d have to have an incredibly hyperactive truss rod to make changes that significant. The truss rod is in the neck to resist the upward tension of the strings on the neck and keep the neck straight. The truss rod pulls back against the upward force of the strings. Even when there is no tension at all on the rod, with strings tuned to pitch, most necks will only bow upward at most by 1/8″ or so– a lot in terms of high action, but it’s not going to shatter the finish on your guitar or ruin the neck.

When you hear people tell you you’re going to hurt your guitar by taking the strings off all at once, ask them whether they think the same thing will happen if you change string gauges, or go to a lower or higher tuning. Basically that’s doing the same thing in terms of changing the tension/force on the neck.  Even if you have a really over-tightened truss rod, you’re likely to see less backward bow when you take the strings off the guitar than you would see upward bow, with heavy strings and NO tension on the truss rod. If the theory were correct, you’d be doing more damage by playing heavy strings without the truss rod adjusted correctly, than by taking the strings off.

It IS true that the tension on a neck can have an effect on the way the wood changes over time, just because of the way the competing stresses of the strings and the truss rod compress the wood, but I’d say those effects are subtle to most people. The best advice I can give if you’re going to store an instrument for a long time is to leave it as neutral as possible– loosen the truss rod so the neck is straight and take the strings off if you  know you’re not playing it for a long while.

Generally speaking, if your guitar is set up correctly, the changes that happen when you change strings will be minimal, and if you use the same type of strings and same tuning when you string up again, you should be right back where you started.

I think the rumor that taking all the strings off hurts the neck stems from people who are afraid to admit that they need some help with basic setup– which is totally OK! Especially on guitars with floating tremolos like the Floyd Rose or Fender American Standard, simply tuning the guitar can be somewhat tricky, especially with new strings, because the bridge is set to balance against the string tension, and if you change that all at once, it can take a while to reset the balance. On guitars like these, it IS good practice to change one string at a time, because you have to make fewer adjustments when tuning up. Maybe people heard that information along the way somewhere, and thought it applied to EVERY guitar.

One thing’s for sure– a good setup really makes all the difference in being able to balance the guitar and keep it in tune, whether your strings are new or old, all on or all off– so don’t hesitate to stop by and invest in a quick setup!

Hope that helps.

Brian