Hi, first post for a build of a MMB-5 with a maple neck. I put it together right out of the box just to hear it acoustically:
and it resonates pretty well. I'm pretty impressed with the lack of neck dive (I did a HB P-bass kit which dives heavily), massive humbucker pickup, less so with the nut which moves around when I tune the low B. I'm shooting for the Joe Dart vibe btw with minimalist electronics which is why there's no cut out for that.
Anyway, there's a lot of fret buzz with the neck bowed a bit the wrong way. I raised the action a bunch on the bridge and I tried to loosen the truss rod (counter clockwise right?) but it blocks at some point, with the neck not quite flat. Any tips on correcting that?
The kits have a dual action truss rod, so turning clockwise (looking down the neck from the headstock) should flatten the neck and anti-clockwise should add more bow. There's a loose dead-spot in-between the 'flattening' and 'adding more curvature' screw sections, so just keep going trough the slack central point and things should start to bite again and you should be able to add more bow.
Sounds like the nut is loose, which can be a good thing if you haven't got any nut files or needle files to lower the nut slots and you sand the bottom of the nut down instead, as it saves any hassle removing the nut to do so. A drop of PVA or Titebond on the bottom of the nut should keep it in place once you've sanded the bottom (if necessary).
Best of luck with the rest of the build.
Last edited by Simon Barden; 10-01-2022 at 06:48 PM.
I managed to get the action comfortable after turning the truss rod back and forth a bit. I sanded 0.5 mm off the bottom of the nut which helped. I didn't glue it back in yet since maybe it should be sanded some more, it's about ~3.9 mm thick at the rut of the G string and 3.4 mm on the B string. It feels a little high but intonation is OK on the lower frets so I'll wait.
I applied a two linseed oil coats (with some mineral spirits) and wired the humbucker directly to the jack with the bridge grounded. The humbucker comes soldered for series so I kept that for now. I'm still thinking about minimal controls and how to do the head stock, but for now, it sounds great and is fun to practice (at home) with.
The nut slot height is all relative to the top of the first fret, so you really need to look at the string clearance over that to decide whether the nut needs a bit more filing. You could just have a go at the slots with a round needle file and some P400 sandpaper to lower them whilst it's fitted to the neck. That's how I do my bass nuts.
In theory, truss rod should really just be used to set the neck curvature with a small amount of neck relief, and action then adjusted with the saddle heights. But I must admit I then almost always tweak the neck a bit flatter to get the action down a bit more.
I'd really recommend giving the headstock a bit of a shape. You'll make the bass look so much better.
In the past, for the 4-string MM-style kit, the pickup has come configured for parallel operation, with a volume pot for each coil and a common tone. https://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-co...MMB-4_2014.pdf some of the wiring is done at the factory and isn't shown. So if that's a kit pickup, it may be worth double-checking the wiring arrangement on it. But the factories do chance things from time to time without notice, and the 5-string version may also be different to the 4-string.
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