Acoustic Bass Guitar

UPDATE: I gave this to a friend; hopefully he'll get more playing out of it than I did.

I saw a Beaver Creek (BCB05bk) acoustic bass guitar on Kijiji. I figured it might be good for playing country with friends, or have a nice sound for jazz electrically. I went and tried it out, and surprise, it made real bass when played acoustically. I offered him $20 less because the neck was seriously bowed.

   

I thought it would be just a matter of turning the truss rod and reducing the neck relief. Wrong.

I loosened the strings, pinned them back out of the way with a pencil, and tried to turn the truss rod's adjusting nut.  I heard some ominous crunching noise as I put more pressure on it. The adjusting nut was badly seized. So I stopped and filled the hex hole in the nut with WD40 and also applied a little around the outside of the nut. After a couple hours, I worked the nut back and forth a little and it started to move. I repeated the process and it released.

I adjusted the neck a little more every hour or two until it had a little over a millimeter of neck relief (forward bow) measured from first fret to fifteenth. Then I re-tuned and let it settle in under normal tension. Another adjusting cycle and it was about the way I wanted it. A little less relief would be nice, but the neck has a slight S curve to it, so less relief isn't going to happen.

 

I filed the slots in the nut to get correct string height at the first fret. *
 

Someone had already notched the saddle somewhat, so I went ahead and notched it further to get the first through third strings down to the correct height. The saddle was already too low at the fourth string due to the ridiculous curve they put on it at the factory. (I'll replace the saddle later when I'm feeling industrious again)

The 14th fret was way high. I tried tapping it down, but ended up filing it. A few more frets tapped and filed and it's pretty good. The strings are old and oxidized, but they're good enough to learn on.

 

The electronics looked good, but I wondered if they actually worked. Yep, the only issue was a little scratchiness in the sliders. Some electronic spray cleaner fixed that up.

Now if only I could learn to play the thing. "They're just good ol' boys, never meanin' no harm..."

* The correct height for guitar strings at the nut is not hard to determine. If all else is about right, put a capo on at the first fret and measure the string height at the second fret. That will be the string height you should have at the first fret. File the nut slots to bring the strings down to that height at the first fret. You might leave a little extra height to allow for some nut wear over time.