Gimme a hand setting my strat up..please?

[Light]

Specs is specs.

But that is only a small part of what setting up a guitar is about. It's a balancing act between buzzing and not. when people are just learning, they have a very difficult time getting each thing just right before they move on. And that is the name of the game.

Look, I don't know what to say except that I've seen many times many guys who thought like you do (i.e., "I can do a setup as well as anyone, because I read a book!") who come to us for fret work, and when they pickup their guitars (which, as a part of the fret work, have been setup, of course), they are amazed. MANY if not most of these guys never set their guitars up again. Oh, they may do little spot adjustments in emergency situations at gigs, but they are in the shop any where from a few times a year to a few times a month getting their guitars setup. Why? Because we do it better than they can. And these the guys who are there the most are, I promise you, far better than ANYONE on this board. In fact, pretty much every truly great guitar player I know of (and I know quite a few) get their guitars worked on by professionals (be it us, or some other shop). Quite simply, your wrong, we CAN do a better job. It's our job. It's not just that we do it faster (though there is that too), but also that we have a much larger base of knowledge than you possibly could about what variations make sense for different styles of player.

The guy that over watched me when I started wasn't any better at it than I was but he was by far faster.

You WAY wrong here. He was BETTER at it. Sure, you may have been able to make a part that was acceptable, but for you it was a challenge. For him, it was quick and easy. That is, in any book I can imagine, better.

And then there is one other point to consider. Some people just suck with tools. It's not their aptitude. It sounds like you are good with your hands, and that's great. It takes a certain natural aptitude to be so. Some people, no matter how many times they try, can't figure out which end of the hammer to hold. There's nothing wrong with that. Often as not, those guys can do math in their heads that I can't even do with a calculator, or they can play guitar in ways I can only dream about playing, or they can write, or whatever. Everyone has different talents, and while it is great to try and stretch your talents, it's maybe best not to do so with an instrument which represents a pretty significant investment.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

 

[dragonworks]

set it in the garbage can and get a gibson

 

[TragikRemix]

i do my own.. its not about the numbers or distances or anything like that.

it is done when you are comfortable with it.

of course, i set up guitars at work too. thats a little tricky because you don't know what the customer wants. really sucks workign with crappy guitars and trying to find the balance between comfortable action and no buzzing. i can live with a little buzz but some people are crazy and it flips them out.

get the neck dead straight, and then play with everything else.

 

[Flamin Lip]

Light wrote....... "Still, I've never met a person yet who had their guitar set up by someone who really knew what they were doing who wasn't happy with the results."

I disagree with this... If youre looking for the prototypical lowest possible action w/ no fret buzz, then you are correct sir! BUT my comfort point regarding action, is a little bit higher than that. That is why I advised the original poster to figure it out on his own, and tweak to taste.

 

[travelin travis]

But that is only a small part of what setting up a guitar is about. It's a balancing act between buzzing and not. when people are just learning, they have a very difficult time getting each thing just right before they move on. And that is the name of the game.

Look, I don't know what to say except that I've seen many times many guys who thought like you do (i.e., "I can do a setup as well as anyone, because I read a book!") who come to us for fret work, and when they pickup their guitars (which, as a part of the fret work, have been setup, of course), they are amazed. MANY if not most of these guys never set their guitars up again. Oh, they may do little spot adjustments in emergency situations at gigs, but they are in the shop any where from a few times a year to a few times a month getting their guitars setup. Why? Because we do it better than they can. And these the guys who are there the most are, I promise you, far better than ANYONE on this board. In fact, pretty much every truly great guitar player I know of (and I know quite a few) get their guitars worked on by professionals (be it us, or some other shop). Quite simply, your wrong, we CAN do a better job. It's our job. It's not just that we do it faster (though there is that too), but also that we have a much larger base of knowledge than you possibly could about what variations make sense for different styles of player.

You WAY wrong here. He was BETTER at it. Sure, you may have been able to make a part that was acceptable, but for you it was a challenge. For him, it was quick and easy. That is, in any book I can imagine, better.

And then there is one other point to consider. Some people just suck with tools. It's not their aptitude. It sounds like you are good with your hands, and that's great. It takes a certain natural aptitude to be so. Some people, no matter how many times they try, can't figure out which end of the hammer to hold. There's nothing wrong with that. Often as not, those guys can do math in their heads that I can't even do with a calculator, or they can play guitar in ways I can only dream about playing, or they can write, or whatever. Everyone has different talents, and while it is great to try and stretch your talents, it's maybe best not to do so with an instrument which represents a pretty significant investment.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

Look man, I set my guitars up the way I like them. I've had others do it, more so when I was younger, and it was never right for me. I know what I want and I adjust accordingly. Yea it took some playing around to figure out what works best for me but it didn't cost me anything but time. Some guys here might be in that same boat. I know that not everyone is good with their hands. If they know that, they probably aren't trying to work on their own guitars. Anyone that's got the notion to be poking around at their own guitars probably is mechanically inclined enough to do so but might be lacking the knowledge to get things right. It takes some trial and error. When I say pick up a book, I don't mean just read it. Absorb it, understand it, and then start getting your hands dirty. In my experience, guitar techs can't do a better job at setting my guitar up than I can. They might think they can but I guarantee you that within 24 hours of a setup, I'll have to be twisting some screws to get things right for me. The way I see it is I might as well do it from the get go rather than paying someone full price for half the job and be with out my guitar for up to a week. That same tech might do a great job for the next guy but every guitar player is different. When I said specs is specs, I was referring to tolerances. If a guy doesn't know what tolerances he's shooting for, he's never going to get there. If he doesn't know how to read measuring instruments accurately, he's screwed too. I know wood and metal have their little quirks and some jobs require a bit more thinking outside of just measuring. It's called common sense. If the numbers ain't giving you want you want, you might have to use a little of that common sense (try explaining that to an engineer and see what happens).

This might amuse you. I have an old strat copy that I've owned for quite a while and I'm planning to have a go at refreting it. It sounds good, holds a tuning well, has decent enough hardware, and the pickups are pretty rockin. The only thing I've never liked about this guitar is the semi-crappy fret work. Wide, tall, kind of flat and the ends are beveled way too much (1/8"). The frets are actually still in pretty good shape but I hate that crappy bevel and don't like wide frets. I've been playing the crap out this guitar ever since I got it because it just sounds good. I've bonded with this guitar. Worse case scenario, I have to end up snagging a replacement neck that's probably better built in the first place and gain a little more respect for guitar techs. I'm going to get a few fingerboards (which are pretty cheap) and practice on those first. If I can't handle that, I know I have no business messing with my guitar's frets. I figure with 3 fingerboards and tall frets, I have plenty of practice runs (an evening here, an evening there). Next, I'm going to level and crown my strat copy's frets. These frets are pretty tall so if I don't get it right the first time, I probably have another shot at it. Even if I get it right the first time, I'm going to take the frets down some more (if they'll take it) and crown again. Then I'm going to refret the guitar. If I can't get the final refret right, I'm going to come back in here and kiss your ass Light.

 

[travelin travis]

Light wrote....... "Still, I've never met a person yet who had their guitar set up by someone who really knew what they were doing who wasn't happy with the results."

I disagree with this... If youre looking for the prototypical lowest possible action w/ no fret buzz, then you are correct sir! BUT my comfort point regarding action, is a little bit higher than that. That is why I advised the original poster to figure it out on his own, and tweak to taste.

Finally, someone knows what I'm talking about. I hate getting that same fucking easy playing generic setup from every guitar tech. I like my action on the high side, which requires the pickups to be on the high side, and I like the pickups a little higher still, and all this probably means some adjustment in intonation and maybe neck relief. If I leave my guitar with a tech for a few days or a week and have to end up leaving it again, or final adjusting it myself, what the hell was the point of paying for a setup? I play a strat because it wants to be choked. It sounds best that way to my ears. If I wanted super low action, I'd have bought a fucking Gibson or Ibanez or whatever the yuppies are playing.

 

[travelin travis]

i do my own.. its not about the numbers or distances or anything like that.

I guarantee you that 99% of it can be measured and repeated on the same guitar if the thing is stable enough to hold the adjustments. A little tweaking outside of the numbers might be required. If I set my guitar up and get it exactly the way I want it, measure the adjustments, and use those measurements as my specs for the next adjustment, it's going to be very close to right.

 

[ez_willis]

I sense a lecture by Light is right around the corner.

. .

 

[Light]

I disagree with this... If youre looking for the prototypical lowest possible action w/ no fret buzz, then you are correct sir! BUT my comfort point regarding action, is a little bit higher than that. That is why I advised the original poster to figure it out on his own, and tweak to taste.

Ah, but you see that is part of what we do. When people want the lowest possible etc., etc., then that is what we do, but we do what the customer wants and needs.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

 

[Light]

Look man, I set my guitars up the way I like them. I've had others do it, more so when I was younger, and it was never right for me. I know what I want and I adjust accordingly.

And what I am saying is you have never had it done by anyone who was really good. It is guys EXACTLY like you who end up becoming regular customers when they finally DO get it done right. And it happens on a regular basis, at least a few times a month. You can disbelieve all you want, until you've had it done right.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

 

[ez_willis]

And what I am saying is you have never had it done by anyone who was really good. It is guys EXACTLY like you who end up becoming regular customers when they finally DO get it done right. And it happens on a regular basis, at least a few times a month. You can disbelieve all you want, until you've had it done right.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

What state are you in, Light?

 

[dragonworks]

Why are so many people here afraid of working on their own guitars?

I have a 1972 gibson ES-335 and I am not bonded nor do I have any insurance.
Let a pro fuck it up and they can replace it.

 

[mrface2112]

Taking measurements and twisting screws ain't rocket science and doesn't require a special touch.

Travis--i agree with a lot (most?) of what you're saying here, but Light is right here. Those who are truly gifted at doing setups *do* have a special touch.

IMO, it's a lot like what separates the truly great guitarists from the other 99.999% of us.

I do most of the work on my guitars too, and i can get them about 98% of the way there. but i don't have the touch to *nail* that last 2%. that's when i take it to a buddy of mine who used to do setups for PRS in the early days. i swear he doesn't do anything i didn't do--and he usually barely only touches the thing and he rarely uses anything other than a business card to check heights (if he even does that), but whatever it is that he does makes it just absolutely perfect.

until i got my tele setup by him, i had thought i had a perfectly playing instrument (b/c it always felt great). but ever since that day, i get it most of the way there and then i bring it in at lunch and we look over it, he tweaks a little and i buy him lunch. it's a nice break from the monotony of the IT job, and he enjoys keeping his hands in the dough, to use a baking analogy.

maybe you've got that special touch to get it 100% of the way there.....but i suspect that Light's right and that if you wanted to really look, you could find someone who gets that guitar performing in a truly magical way.


cheers,
wade

 

[travelin travis]

mrface2112, how do you setup your guitar? is there a particular order you follow when setting up your guitar? have you ever measured the neck relief, nut action, action, neck angle, pickup height, and intonation after you get a setup from your guitar tech friend? do you have measuring instruments precise enough to do so?

don't get me wrong. i'm sure your buddy (and light) have developed an eye for setting up guitars without getting too anal about measuring everything. that comes with experience. here's an example for you. i worked in metal fabrication for a couple of years when i was younger. the guy that trained me had an eye for angles and distances that i thought was just unreal when i started the job. when we would bend a piece of sheet metal on a brake press, he could guess very accurately within a few degrees of the actual bend angle. he worked in carpentry before the metal fab job and probably had a combined 10 years of working with measuring instruments every day. every bend or cut we made, we measured the result. after a while i got the eye for it too. so did everyone else that did the same work over and over, day in and day out. my point is, we still measured everything. always. some times we would have to deviate from the engineer's print to make things work. change a bend 5-10 degrees or a cut by 1/6". when we found something on the print that needed tweaking, we would make a copy of the print and write down our changes for future reference. we always informed the engineers of the problem but to them, the numbers added up so we must have been making a mistake some where, which was rarely the case. so we kept our modified blue prints, carried on, and everyone was happy. the thing is, even though we didn't exactly follow the numbers, we did create new numbers and follow those.

 

[chazba]

I don't think that a pat answer will apply to all strats and all players. One good friend and fellow strat player was all excited about the setup he had paid one of the local luthiers $75 for, including new strings. He and I use the same set ( 10-13-16-28-40-52). When I played his axe I was surprised at how stiff it felt. The action was way high and It felt like I was driving a Schoolbus
having just stepped out of a Porsche. I use a lot of hammers and pulloff's and it seemed that every other note wouldn't sound for me.Go figure. I thought that maybe he was trying to justify the $75. I would be very reluctant to let anybody mess with my setup. The neck on my MIJ has almost no finish on the back side. It feels like honey but it is sensitive to seasonal weather changes, so I tweak it in early winter and spring. Just a tweak though, like maybe 1/8 turn or less on the trussrod. The bridge I haven't touched in so long that the screws are probably rusted into position anyway. I cant imagine that a quality instrument would need a setup every few months.

chazba

 

[Light]

mrface2112, how do you setup your guitar? is there a particular order you follow when setting up your guitar? have you ever measured the neck relief, nut action, action, neck angle, pickup height, and intonation after you get a setup from your guitar tech friend? do you have measuring instruments precise enough to do so?

don't get me wrong. i'm sure your buddy (and light) have developed an eye for setting up guitars without getting too anal about measuring everything. that comes with experience. here's an example for you. i worked in metal fabrication for a couple of years when i was younger. the guy that trained me had an eye for angles and distances that i thought was just unreal when i started the job. when we would bend a piece of sheet metal on a brake press, he could guess very accurately within a few degrees of the actual bend angle. he worked in carpentry before the metal fab job and probably had a combined 10 years of working with measuring instruments every day. every bend or cut we made, we measured the result. after a while i got the eye for it too. so did everyone else that did the same work over and over, day in and day out. my point is, we still measured everything. always. some times we would have to deviate from the engineer's print to make things work. change a bend 5-10 degrees or a cut by 1/6". when we found something on the print that needed tweaking, we would make a copy of the print and write down our changes for future reference. we always informed the engineers of the problem but to them, the numbers added up so we must have been making a mistake some where, which was rarely the case. so we kept our modified blue prints, carried on, and everyone was happy. the thing is, even though we didn't exactly follow the numbers, we did create new numbers and follow those.

Well, the problem with measuring is that most mistakes happen when someone gets remembers a number wrong. Don't get me wrong, we measure things, but most of the time we DON'T use a ruler or feeler gauges or anything like that to measure. We check things against the guitar in question.

A couple examples: We never make measurements when we are replacing the bridge on an acoustic guitar - we take the old bridge, double-stick tape it to the new blank. It is much more accurate, particularly when you need to match the old bridges profile exactly in order to avoid messing with the finish around the bridge, and there are no numbers to mess up in your head.

Another one would be the depth of a nut slot. If you read Dan Erlewine's book, he suggests using feeler gauges to check the depth of the slot. The thing is, there really is only one "right" way to cut a nut. You want the bottom of the nut slot to be (ideally) the exact same height off the fingerboard as the top of the frets. Anything else will lead to intonation problems in the low positions, and will be unnecessarily difficult to play. Getting this right with feeler gauges is a PITA process of measuring the frets, then doing the addition to get the feeler gauge stack just right...it's very easy to get a number wrong, no matter how careful you are. In practice, it should be 1-2 thousandths high because it is all but impossible for even the most experienced guys to get it perfect, and if it is even a thousandth too low you will have open string buzzing problems. So, how do we do it? We use a small, thin straight edge (actually, we use the back of an Exacto saw blade which we know to be straight), and check the nut slots against the frets. It makes a very slight clicking sound against the frets as you slide the straight edge out of the slot. In practice, it is far more accurate than using feeler gauges, and it is also much quicker. Getting the nut right is also one of the things most often messed up (or, as often as not, just not dealt with) in amateur setups. And if you play in the lower positions at all, it is of critical importance. (It is also something I have seen done right on less than a handful of factory setups).



Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

 

[ZoSo58LP]

oh man i love dan erlewine...he always has a column in bass player, it's so interesting...he makes repairs seem 100000x easier than they actually are lol

 

[Light]

oh man i love dan erlewine...he always has a column in bass player, it's so interesting...he makes repairs seem 100000x easier than they actually are lol

Well, Dan's been doing this for a long time, so for him they ARE!

Seriously, though, Dan is a good guy with a very deep knowledge about guitars. Every now and then we see a repair we need a second opinion of, and Dan (along with Frank Ford, and a few others) is one of our good friends who will help us out in those situations, as we always help them out in similar situations. He's also nice enough to send us a shit load of free tools to try out (and give feedback on, of course) before they go in the catalog. Cool! (Mind you, Stew Mac's tools have a "hit" rate of about 25%, with the rest being "misses," at least from our point of view. As often as not, though, it's just that they don't fit with our established methods of working, or they are slower than what do.)


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

 

[travelin travis]

Light, I completely agree with you on the nut and factory setups. It's never right and every new guitar that's factory built guitar should have the nut adjusted or or a new one installed. I know what you're talking about with stacking feeler guages too. Better have your calculator out for sure and double check and triple check. Oh, I know. The only problem I see with not using feeler guages is that fret heights vary. Same wire could be completely different heights depending on who installed them, who dressed them, fret wear, etc.

I've read some of Dan Erlewine's stuff. His Guitar Player Repair Guide was one of my first guitar orientated books along with a book on 4 track recording and another on music theory. I don't own that book any more but I remember it having a bunch of information gaps that I had to look up else where. He's a pretty inventive guy when it comes to tools. Maybe a bit too inventive some times.

 

[cephus]

I paid for setups and was disappointed every time in my life but once prior to this last time. The only problem with that last one was the guy is in such demand that he flat out refused any sort of consultation as to what I wanted and gave me slick setup #1 and charged me $60. This is what they all try to give you, and I had been royally disappointed before. The difference was that this guy was really good at it and gave me a super good slick setup #1. I just wasn't goin gto give him my money for what is essentially a mail order off the shelf setup.

This time I asked a ton of players in town who set their stuff up. This last place was recomended by most of the players I had respect for. All of them tweak their guitars here and there and aren't afraid of the truss rod wrench. It's just that when you put alot of miles on them, there is more to compensating for the wear than allen keys.

I have the means and don't have the patience to do tweak these guitars everyday for a week trying to get them where they need to be. I think it is totally worth paying for - as long as you ask around and take it to the best shop in town. A couple visits to Plasma Alliance should cover it.