Setting up your bass guitar: When, why, and who I trust to do it

The answers are almost always the same. Twice a year. Every season. When you change strings. When something feels off. The advice is reasonable enough for someone who owns one or two instruments and plays them regularly.

What triggers a setup, in practice, is one of three things.

The first is live rotation. If a bass is going on stage in the coming weeks – whether for a Foo Fighters Tribute gig, a Bad Boys of Boogie session, or anything else – it gets attention well in advance. Strings get changed. Intonation gets verified. Action and relief get checked. I want to know the instrument is dialled in before it ever leaves the rehearsal room, not discover a problem during sound check. The second trigger is condition. A bass that has gone visibly out of adjustment – rising action, intonation that’s drifted, a buzz that wasn’t there before – earns its way to the bench regardless of whether it’s in active rotation. Climate matters here. Denmark’s seasonal humidity swings are real, and instruments that have stood untouched for months can shift quietly without anyone noticing until they’re picked up again. The third trigger is time. If it’s been years since a particular bass had any attention at all, that’s reason enough on its own. Even instruments that aren’t being played accumulate small drifts, and at some point those become worth addressing.

What I do myself, and what I send to a tech, is a clear line – and one I’ve drawn deliberately based on what I’m comfortable doing well versus what I’d rather have a professional handle. String changes, basic truss rod adjustments, bridge work for action height and intonation – all by me. Pickup swaps and basic soldering for household-level needs – also me. From there, it goes to a tech. Fret work, serious electronic problems, anything structural, anything involving an instrument I’m not willing to risk – workshop bench, every time. Vintage instruments are an obvious case. A 1974 Jazz Bass or a semi rare 1978 Antigua doesn’t get touched by me beyond strings and the most basic tweaks. The cost of getting it wrong is high, and the cost of getting it right is something a good tech can deliver in less time and with more precision than I ever could.

There’s no ego in that. It’s just an honest read of where my skills end!

Two techs, two specialisations

Over the years, I’ve worked with several different bass and guitar techs. Most recently these two: Jan Irhøj / GuitarIrhøj (Greater Copenhagen area) and Niels Olsen (Jutland and Funen). Not because one wasn’t enough – and not because one is better than the other. It’s also about practicalities: who’s available when, who’s geographically close, and which tech feels like the right match for a given instrument.

On-site tech session with Niels Olsen

Niels brings a combination of experience that’s genuinely rare. With past experience from the workshop of a well-known Danish guitar brand, plus his own work as a musician, producer, and sound engineer (and the list goes on…). That last part matters more than it sounds. A tech who has only ever set up basses on a workbench will get the geometry right. A tech who has also tracked bass in a studio and stood in front of a PA at a live gig will get the geometry right and understand why a particular adjustment matters in the contexts where the instrument actually has to perform.

The other thing – and an important one – is that Niels knows my preferences. Slightly higher action than most. Different choices for the Jazz Basses than the P-Basses. That kind of knowledge is the reason setups can happen smoothly without long briefs.

What a single workshop visit actually looks like

The photos accompanying this section are from a recent session with Niels – and not at a workshop in the traditional sense. Niels came to me, setting up at the rehearsal space (aka. the Rock N Roll Warehouse) and working through five basses on site. On the bench that day: a handful of Fender Japan PB70s and the Flea Signature Jazz Bass. Different categories of instrument, all getting attention in the same visit.

The PB70s are modern enough that I’d happily handle most basic adjustments myself – but when they’re already going to the bench alongside others, it makes sense to have everything dialled in by the same hands at the same time.

The Flea Signature occupies a middle ground: it’s a current-production instrument, but the Road Worn nitrocellulose finish demands a particular kind of careful handling that I’d rather leave to someone who knows exactly how to work around it. Same session, two different reasons for being there. That’s the practical reality of how a collection actually gets maintained.

The Flea Signature is also part of the forgotten colors story – read about Shell Pink and Fender’s rarest finishes.

The on-site approach matters too. Bringing five basses to a tech is logistics. Having a tech come to where the instruments live – where they’re played, where they’re stored, where the gear they actually run through is set up – changes the dynamic. Adjustments can be verified in context, against the amps and cabs the basses are paired with, in the room they’re going to perform in. Not every tech offers that, and not every situation calls for it. But for a working session covering multiple instruments, it’s hard to overstate the value.

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“Bass spa days” with Jan Irhøj

Not every session happens at the rehearsal space. Some are quieter affairs – what I’ve come to think of as a bass spa day. The 1975 Precision Bass and the Epiphone Jack Casady went to Jan Irhøj on a different occasion, and for different reasons. Jan’s depth with vintage instruments is hard to overstate.

My 1975 P-Bass needed some attention. Vintage Fenders carry decades of small adjustments, repairs, and accumulated quirks – and in this case, a bent tuner peg. Getting one to play right today means understanding what’s been done to it over time, not just what needs doing now.

The Jack Casady was a different challenge: a semi-hollow with its own setup logic, and in need of some serious bridge work. Two very different instruments, both leaving Jan’s bench better than they arrived – relaxed, refreshed, ready for the next chapter.

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Two techs, two sessions, multiple basses across both – all part of keeping a collection of this size in playable shape without trying to do it all at once.

What this means for your bass

The framework here scales down as well as it scales up. If you own one bass, the same three triggers apply – rotation (are you playing it?), condition (is something off?), and time (has it been ignored?). The line between what you do yourself and what goes to a tech is the same conversation. The value of building a relationship with a tech you trust is the same value, just concentrated on a single instrument instead of spread across many.

What forty-plus basses actually teaches you is how to read instruments and when to let go of the ones you can’t fix yourself. I can tell you, off the top of my head, which basses in the vault tend to drift quickly and which ones stay rock-solid for years. Which ones have idiosyncrasies in their truss rods. Which ones never quite play the way I want them to no matter what we do. That kind of knowledge is the actual product of owning a lot of instruments over a long period – and the right techs become part of how that knowledge stays useful.

A bass that’s been set up properly is a bass that’s ready to be heard. Several of the instruments mentioned in this piece – the 1975 P-Bass, the Jack Casady, the Flea Signature, the PB70s – are part of The Bass Vault Playlist, where they connect to the tracks that define what they sound like on record.

If you’re based in Denmark and your basses (or guitars) need some tender love and care, I highly recommend Jan Irhøj or Niels Olsen. Both have my full trust – which, after years and dozens of instruments, is not something I say lightly. If you’re outside Denmark, find a great tech in your local area – they exist almost everywhere, and the right one is worth the search.