This 1979 P-Bass arrived with a serious neck deformation. With very high action, it still suffered from fret buzz.
This was caused by the forward tilt around the octave point causing a significant bow in the neck. I usually strive for minimal modifications to the instruments in all my repairs, but here the problem was so severe, we needed to sand the deformation out of the neck.
Of course, we will not deviate from the 7.25” radius. And in such instances the so called neck jig comes in handy to put the string tension on the neck while sanding the fretboard level. Without it, I may as well work with my eyes closed.
We are finished with the Precision repair and were able to normalize the situation by sanding down the fretboard. The board received its new frets. We removed the cardboard neck shim and from here on we were looking at a routine bass set up job. With the repair of the neck, all was as prescribed by the original specs.
