Nooooooooo

i am not getting a good sound out of my B or G string when playing since i got my kahler. Any way i can fix this? im getting mostly a dead tone out of those strings. when i pop the G string it sounds like its dead even if i just got the strings new. is it because i got a hybrid? or because i didnt adjust the string holders to the rollers?

Right off the bat BBMN, I can tell you this much. Line up those claws with the rollers! My guess is that since they are at such weird angles, the strings might not be seating properly in the brass rollers. It also looks like your A and D strings are at a bit of an angle, so I suggest you line those up as well.

aww man ...

first ... like eric sed. the center of each claw shud be centered (or at least close) to the center of each roller. the adjustment lock screw is an allen key just beneath the claw where it rides on the shaft.

next ... it could be the picture. your intonation looks off. if the bridge you took off had its intonation correct, its a good place to start as far as where the rollers shud be as far as their distance from the nut for each string. lighter gauge strings position shud be closer to the nut and the thicher strings shud be further away. when you play an open note, a for example, and your digital tuner registers an a (its in tune) it shud also play an a when you hold the a sting down on the 12th fret.

your b string playing flat? it looks like the angle of your roller assemblies (in front of the roller) is too flat. i understand ... we wanna get that action close to the frets, but if the string is laying flat or too close to the roller assembly, the string is gonna buzz, flat or just use whatever pivot point its resting on as its bridge and not the rollers (so so much for correct intonation). you can jack the action up by raising the rollers and making the correct pivot point, the rollers, be further away from the assembly ... thus the string being further away from the assembly (and your frets) to get a true string ring. i dont think this is what you want ... your strings will have such high action that your bass will now play like a twobyfour. yuk.

this is why we have had discussions here about recessing a kahler from the bass top surface. if the whole bridge sits lower, you need to jack the rollers up to get the proper action ... this puts the roller assemblies at a steeper angle away from the strings. this isnt necessary on all basses ... i think eric has gotten extremely lucky ... but i'm not lucky like that. in order to get a kahler to work correctly, i've needed to recess the whole bridge on both the installs i've done.

lemme see if i can find a good pic ........




you see ... the whole thing sits deeper in the bass. i had to rout the pocket for clearance of the mechanical action of the kahler as well as rout out a space for the base of it to sit in.

eric ... you still got that picture of that guy in jersey doing this to that ken smith bass?

i need to counter sink my kahler. but the guys who did it didnt. i have a router. but dont know how it works how to use it or if its the correct kind of router.

Unless I'm mistaken, that appears to be a table router, which would involve flipping the bass body upside down in order to do the routing. Instead, you actually want use a hand-held router to do the countersink.

And I think MadMike is correct about your saddles being too low, so countersinking will allow you to lower your action without the strings bottoming out on the saddles. Just remember not too countersink too deeply. You only want to go down about half the thickness of the Kahler's outer frame.

Yep. I have had the same problem on my Hamer.

yes ... eric just has a talent for putting the same statement in less words.

i'de take it back to the cats who installed it and tell them that they need to do it correctly this time. tell them some ametures on the internet told you that they did a half butt job. these wouldnt be some of those cats out in the world who call themselves luthiers now would it? i wouldnt hesitate to tell them that they arent ... but your the one who needs their bass done properly. otherwize your looking at buying tools to do this job correctly yourself. take it back to them untill its right ... i'm assuming you paid them your hard earned money.

sorry ... pet peeve. you cant just call yourself a professional and charge money when you dont know what your doing or your a hack. eventually someone like me is gonna come along and call you on it, drag you to small claims court ... or drag you to the parking lot out back. its a two way street. people keep doing this half butt work because no one calls them on it ... they just accept the sub-par workmanship and paying the bill.

i wouldnt use a table router like that. not the correct tool for the job. you need a handheld plunge router. i use a dremel 3500 with a plunge router attachment ... this runs about $140. not the most powerful tool but its pretty precise. the next thing you need is what kinda material to use for and the proper way to cut out a template for the shape of the recessed area.

now we're getting into some machining techniques that are long and wordy for geeky engineering types just to make a simple cut so i'm gonna stop right here. just be careful and do some sample cuts on scrap material to be sure its right before you rout into a helpless bass. they cry when you cut too much.

madmike wrote:

yes ... eric just has a talent for putting the same statement in less words.

Oh, I dunno about that. From Linda, to my family and friends, I believe they would all tell you differently! I tend to be too wordy most of the time, but that's just because my brain runs in about half a million different directions at once.

I totally agree with you MadMike that one needs to be careful about who they choose to do guitar/bass routing work. There are a lot of hacks out there who will promise you one thing, but in fact, aren't truly capable of doing the work correctly. I certainly won't ever claim that the work I do on my own basses is the neatest, because it isn't. But do I have enough confidence in what little ability I have to make it work properly and be acceptable to my own eye? You betcha. And along the same lines, I won't ever do work for anyone else, unless it's something simple that isn't risking any cosmetics, because I know that I am limited in what I know how to do, and I don't want to ruin anybody else's gear.

EricHaven wrote:

madmike wrote:

yes ... eric just has a talent for putting the same statement in less words.

Oh, I dunno about that. From Linda, to my family and friends, I believe they would all tell you differently! I tend to be too wordy most of the time, but that's just because my brain runs in about half a million different directions at once.

I totally agree with you MadMike that one needs to be careful about who they choose to do guitar/bass routing work. There are a lot of hacks out there who will promise you one thing, but in fact, aren't truly capable of doing the work correctly. I certainly won't ever claim that the work I do on my own basses is the neatest, because it isn't. But do I have enough confidence in what little ability I have to make it work properly and be acceptable to my own eye? You betcha. And along the same lines, I won't ever do work for anyone else, unless it's something simple that isn't risking any cosmetics, because I know that I am limited in what I know how to do, and I don't want to ruin anybody else's gear.

I like to remember "just 'cos I can doesn't mean I'm good at it".

i feel i'm the same way with the cosmetics.

i can install a kahler properly now ... because i spent the time to investigate, bought the correct tools to do the job and bugged a million people with tons of dumb (and not so) questions. i determined exacly what i needed to do to do the install correctly ... and still ran across the issue of sinking the base of the kahler into my bass. i was just careful and took my time and ................

dial calipers, measuring the width of the cut from the router, taking measurements of the base of the kahler and doing all the math so that this thing would fit perfectly in the bass from the template i cut ... i still ended up with a sixteenth inch gap around the outer edge and the kahler positioned an sixteenth inch too low. i know, i know ... you cant see it in the pictures ... but i know its there and it drives me nutz because i'm a perfectionist.

it just doesnt look as good as i think it shud for my work.

blacking out pickup and trem pockets does wonders!

i just simply wouldnt trust someone who calls themselves a luthier to do the research and take the time that i took, just to end up doing a mediocre job as i did at best. they do this work to make money ... and time is money ... so they just do what they think is good enuff and get it out the door. who i would trust as a luthier is someone like that cat in jersey that has pictures, like eric has, of an install done correctly and comes referred by someone who knows about such an install, like eric, as being an expert in doing so.

if i pay someone to do it, i expect it to be better than i would do, at the very least, if not perfect.

i can do it ... but i wouldnt feel comfortable offering this as a service to others and charging them money for the work. maybe after 2 or 3 more installs i will work out the details ... but i'll do that to my bass projects; not on someone elses bass.

as with all the work that i do on my own. i started doing these things for myself so i know they would be done right, and if not ... why. if i have the opportunity to do a project a few times and perfect it ... i wouldnt mind making a few bucks on the side for doing work for others ... but only on things that i know i can do the best. even then ... its not about the money .... its about the pride that i do the job the best.

does this make me a weirdo? .... or just a bad business man?

bobo,

having any luck resolving your trem issues?

madmike wrote:

i feel i'm the same way with the cosmetics.

i can install a kahler properly now ... because i spent the time to investigate, bought the correct tools to do the job and bugged a million people with tons of dumb (and not so) questions. i determined exacly what i needed to do to do the install correctly ... and still ran across the issue of sinking the base of the kahler into my bass. i was just careful and took my time and ................

dial calipers, measuring the width of the cut from the router, taking measurements of the base of the kahler and doing all the math so that this thing would fit perfectly in the bass from the template i cut ... i still ended up with a sixteenth inch gap around the outer edge and the kahler positioned an sixteenth inch too low. i know, i know ... you cant see it in the pictures ... but i know its there and it drives me nutz because i'm a perfectionist.

it just doesnt look as good as i think it shud for my work.

blacking out pickup and trem pockets does wonders!

i just simply wouldnt trust someone who calls themselves a luthier to do the research and take the time that i took, just to end up doing a mediocre job as i did at best. they do this work to make money ... and time is money ... so they just do what they think is good enuff and get it out the door. who i would trust as a luthier is someone like that cat in jersey that has pictures, like eric has, of an install done correctly and comes referred by someone who knows about such an install, like eric, as being an expert in doing so.

if i pay someone to do it, i expect it to be better than i would do, at the very least, if not perfect.

i can do it ... but i wouldnt feel comfortable offering this as a service to others and charging them money for the work. maybe after 2 or 3 more installs i will work out the details ... but i'll do that to my bass projects; not on someone elses bass.

as with all the work that i do on my own. i started doing these things for myself so i know they would be done right, and if not ... why. if i have the opportunity to do a project a few times and perfect it ... i wouldnt mind making a few bucks on the side for doing work for others ... but only on things that i know i can do the best. even then ... its not about the money .... its about the pride that i do the job the best.

does this make me a weirdo? .... or just a bad business man?

Your stance on luthiers makes me think of the phrase "if you want it done right, do it yourself". You strike me as a My way or the highway kinda guy.

i dont like that, "my way or the highway" saying. i dont attempt to have any control over what others do or say. i dont have any control over making someone leave when their behavior isnt acceptable to me. making statements like that are ignorant. are you saying that i'm ignorant? (or was it just a bad choice of words?)

i do have have a choice with who i choose to associate with.

if your behavior isnt acceptable to me ... i'll leave.

and i do have a choice of deciding who i believe would do a good job working on one of my basses. if you know someone who does much better work than me or all the boneheads that i've dealt with ... please ... tell me who they are!

and the idea of doing something right has gotten so deep for me that its become viewed as a defect of character by others. perhaps this intimidates them by shedding a little light on their own shortcommings so they just claim me defective. seems pretty simple and lazy to me, just as simple and lazy as the luthier work i'de gotten done in the past and as simple and lazy as the attempts at taking my inventory has been done by others.

obviously i've spent quite a bit of time taking MY OWN inventory of character and although i'm not 100% satisfied with the results i get from people, i cant live with myself living at a level below par in a society that wallows in it. since i've put forth these self inventory efforts ... i really didnt need for you to do it.

if you want a crappy install on your piece of crap plank of a bass ... go for it.

if you want help ... ask and i'll help you.

I understand you, man.

I personally believe that it all comes down to knowing what I know, and accepting that I still have a lot to learn.

Even with bass tremolos. I'm no expert, and I will never claim to be such. That's why I created this space, since I wanted there to be a resource of information and learning for those who do decide to go this route, while the rest of us can learn something new.

I also believe that to acknowledge that one doesn't know everything is extremely healthy. And if anyone feels that they know it all....well....I pity such folks, because you never know everything there is to know about any given subject. This goes back to why I truly appreciate everyone here, since I learn something new every day.

thanx for taking the time to understand boots.

madmike wrote:

thanx for taking the time to understand boots.

I understand you because I feel the same way. Same goes for what you say, Eric.