Joel's Guitar and Joel's Bass

Up next thru the shop were two instruments each owned by a different Joel.
First up, a Fender Japanese P bass Special owned by Chicago bassist Joel Kelsey. I did some setup work on Joel's main bass, a very nice Sadowsky, a little while back. When I was there I was checking out this P bass and Joel had mentioned it could use some love. I had him bring it by the shop so I could check it out. Originally I thought it had some nut issues but after checking it out I realized it just needed somme fret work.
So I did my usually process of taking of the strings, cleaning everything up, and then taped of the fingerboard.

I leveled the frets as best as I could. Unfortunately there was a pretty serious hump in the fingerboard so I couldn't get it quite as level as I wanted. But all in all it was a big improvement. Crowned, polished and re strung the bass up. Started doing my usual setup process and noticed that I couldn't get the pickup height dialed in like I wanted to. Joel said one of his main issues with this bass was that it sounded kind of weak and thin. I double checked all the electronics and they seemed solid. It is a passive bass so good pickup height is very important. Opened things up and found this.

Definitely not a very good foam job. So I placed some pickup foam under both pickups and added height adjustment screws. Got the height dialed in and finished the setup and here she is!

Next up was my good friend and all around great musician Joel Norman's Ibanez semi hollow Artcore guitar. Joel was having problems mostly with the jack… because it was inside the guitar :)
So pretty straight forward here. Got the jack fished thru the side hole, added an extra locking washer for extra support.

Then I re string the guitar with a nice set of flats and gave it a setup, cleaning, etc. Came out playing great and sounding way better with the flats.

16. 2 Joel's - 2 Instruments
- Fender P Bass Special. Fret Level. Setup, Re String Cleaned, Adjusted pickup height foam and added springs.
- Ibanez Artcore Guitar. Repaired detached input jack. Re String, Setup, Cleaned.