Fender bullet bass - neck advice needed!

[victorcrane]

Hi folks. I have just this evening been given a USA Fender Bullet Bass, evidently produced in 1981 going from the serial number. It's a great looking bass, I've long wanted to try one of these but they're really pretty rare round these parts.

 

The problem with this bass is that it was put in the cupboard by its previous owner in 1997 and has not been touched since! He's moving house and found it in its original hard case behind a pile of boxes, and donated it to me since I'm a big fan of fender basses.

 

The neck seems to be quite badly bowed, if you look down it, the first three fret particularly seem to have a heavy curve and the strings are 10mm high at top of the fret board. This is with all the bridge saddles flat. I noted that with no string tension on it the neck sits back absolutely dead straight, so I tried a half turn tension on the truss rod (which is quite tight to turn) and restrung to no effect whatsoever.

 

Has anyone got any advice? I'd love to bring this old bass back to life if at all possible.

[misterhinkydink]

I'd stop tweaking the truss rod and have a tech look at it.

[victorcrane]

I took it in to my regular guitar tech today, and to my amazement he said 'no problem' and confidently put what looked like two whole turns on the truss rod. I didn't even know you could turn them that far, I was always told very slight adjustments were the way to go.

 

Anyway, the result is a dead straight neck and wonderful action. I never would have dared to do that myself.

[misterhinkydink]

Excellent. I was afraid it was bottomed out and more turns would snap it. BTW, I have one of those basses.