Video: How to Adjust the Truss Rod on a Bass Guitar

Adjust the truss rod on a bass guitar by looking down the neck at the frets and using an allan wrench; learn how from our expert bass guitar repair specialist in this free instrument maintenance video on Fender guitars.

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michael.furia1 May 09, 2011

Where is the video? I only have the audio.

Uruzmag Apr 17, 2011

with the help of this vid, I got up and did this while having my morning coffee, easy as pie; thanks for the instruction.

keibafan Aug 02, 2008

Ferret, another concise and clear video series on the guitar...thanks from keibafan.

keibafan Aug 02, 2008

Ferret, another concise and clear video series on the guitar...thanks from keibafan.

rickd76 Aug 02, 2008

This is a great series for a newbie like me! Thanks for the great info, Ferret!

Video Transcript

THE FERRET: This is the Fender Precision Bass, which is pretty much the industry standard. It's pretty stripped down to mostly the basics. You got one pickup, one volume, one tone control, bridge with adjustable saddles, and the truss rod adjustment is right up here at the end of the neck. The first thing we're going to do is we're going to check the neck because we can't really intonate it and do the action until we know the neck is straight. So what you want to do is you want to sight the neck from the end of the headstock looking down the edge of the fretboard and what we're looking for is to see that if the neck is straight or not, or if it has a hump in it, or if it's bowed. I'm looking at this neck right now; it looks like it is actually bowed, and that means that it's kind of got a flex in it like that. So what we need to do is we need to bring that up so it's flat. What we do is we use the right size Allen wrench, which just goes right in the hole here. And once we know it's in place, we're going to give it about a quarter turn to the right, which is going to make the fretboard come up to a flat plane. And there's a lot of string tension on this neck, so it's going to need another quarter turn, and sometimes you might have to loosen the string to get that wrench over where it needs to be. There we go. One more quarter turn. It's starting to look nice and straight. You want to look at both sides to the neck 'cause sometimes, you'll get a little bit different reaction from one side or the other. And this is looking pretty good, maybe just a little bit more, and then we're going to tune it back up to pitch and check the neck again.

How to Adjust the Truss Rod on a Bass Guitar

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