The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

Very cool bass.

You mentioned that the neck is out of whack. Is there a chance that the strings are old & you live in a dry climate? If so, remove the strings & humidify the bass for a few weeks.

Adjust the truss rod until you have a bit of back-bow, & when you put on new strings, check the bow. It should be bowed up. Slack the strings, tighten the rod a quarter-turn, & tune back up. Repeat until the neck is true, letting the bass rest a day between tweaks.

I had an Urchin in the 80s, sold it, it stayed in a storage shed for 20 years, & I bought it back. When I got it, it was unplayable--& this is how I slowly rehabbed it. It now has the lowest action of any guitar I own.

It only happens infrequently, but I've seen truss rods bend/kink & necks break when adjusted too quickly, & IMO, it's better safe than sorry.

NEVER adjust a truss rod under full string tension.

If this is old-hat news to you, my apologies.

Thank you for your reply!
Please, do not apologize for a thorough and very good answer! Although I do adjust my guitars myself, I still appreciate the input!

I live on the West Coast of Norway, and to tell you the honest truth... I would prefer the climate to be a lot dryer than it is! It's rather wet and somewhat cold.

When I got the bass it had very old and bad strings, my guess is they have been there for 15+ years. I have taken off the neck and it's sitting in my music room with the other instruments. I've checked the neck, and it's perfectly fine. There's a little too much bow to the neck when put under string tension (as it was when it arrived, but the truss rod works perfect both ways, and I see no problem at all getting the bass to play nicely again! The neck is straight and has no unnatural bending or twisting to it.

The truss rod has a brass nut under the cover on the headstock, as opposed to the more modern versions that have the dual action truss rods with an allen adjustment screw at the top. So I think it's probably important to be careful when adjusting. So that's a very good point indeed. I usually also put the bass on the floor and "help out" with my hands/knees to bend the neck in the direction I want, so it's not the only the pressure added by the truss rod that does the job.

Thanks again

I guess noone knows anything more about this bass

I have a question regarding the wiring on this, though.... does it exist a wiring diagram for this setup? There are three switches, four knobs, and two pickups. I presume they are individual pickup/tone, and a pickup switch... however, what are the two other switches intended to do? Any guidance to a relevant wiring diagram would be greatly appreciated!

It's been lying for a while now, but I have plans to get it restored now one of the coming weeks.

An old tread, but the wiring... the two switches is most likely for serial/ parallell on the pickups.