Light
New member
Dan, actually.
Oh, and for the partial refret thing, keep in mind that he's been playing this guitar for 20+ years.
Light
"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
Guitar Setup Question - Valid unexpected modification?
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Dan, actually.
Oh, and for the partial refret thing, keep in mind that he's been playing this guitar for 20+ years.
Light
"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
Light
New member
Fuckin knew it
Book yourself a couple of weeks holiday in the real world dude,you could use the break.
I live in the real world. You, apparently, don't recognize it.
Partial refrets do not take much less time than a full refret, since the actual pulling and replacing of the frets is not all that time consuming and it takes longer to dress a partial (which is the more time consuming part of the job most of the time anyway), so we don't charge significantly less to do them. A full refret on a unbound Martin fingerboard is about $350. Refreting the first five is about $300 - to the body about $325. So where is this huge savings you are imagining?
They are also no where near as good of a job. You can't, for instance, level a fingerboard that needs it. And of course, since you have to grind those new frets down to the level of the old, your new frets won't last through as many fret dresses, and you will just need to get the damn thing refreted again that much sooner. Frequently, you won't even get one dress out of a partial refret.
We almost never do them because they are a usually a second rate job, and they are rarely cost effective (the exception would be certain Bluegrass backup guys, who never play anything above the 5th fret - for them it sometimes makes sense). For me to suggest otherwise to my customers would be dishonest and I would find it morally reprehensible. In the end, my customers would end up spending more because of it, and I would loose many of those customers when they realized the false economy of the situation.
If you haven't a clue what you are talking about, you should really shut up.
Light
"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
muttley600
Banned
In that case he's just plain wrong and I doubt very muck if I'd attempt a partial refret on the OP's guitar.
Lt. Bob
Spread the Daf!
something else about a partial refret is that, as Light has said, you'll just have to do it again and you can only get away with pulling frets just so many times before the fret board will get too much material pulled out of it at some point to be able to 'grab' a new fret. So you don't want to pull frets multiple times if you can avoid it.
I am not going to venture a guess about which "setup" might have been the better, but this thread brings up a good issue: it seems like this setup stuff is so subjective that there could be LOTS of quacks and snake-oil salesmen ripping off a lot of guitarist. Not saying all of them are crooks- I know that is not true- just that this sounds like an area ripe for exploitation.
Caveat emptor, I suppose.
Caveat emptor, I suppose.
RejectionNinja
New member
I had a guitar "set up" by a "tech" once. It was (WAS) a really nice Korean semi hollow electric. It needed a new nut and new saddle pieces in the bridge.
The nut ended up worse than before. It is impossible to play an open string unless you raise the bridge to lap-steel heights. I have no idea how he pulled this off - I guess he "re cut" the string slots to be lower. This is plainly incompetent, but I didn't really care since everything else he touched was worse.
The bridge was a real treat. It has a Tune-o-matic style bridge, so he was going to replace the entire "saddle bar" (unsure of the exact term) and all the saddle pieces with it (the studs and the tail piece would remain original).
He orders the piece but it does not fit on the studs. Being a professional guitar tech, he apparently used a cordless drill and a bottle of cheap vodka to ream out the holes on the saddle bar. (You might have thought I would say, "he sent it back and ordered the correct part." HAHA, fooled you.) He scratched the top of it all to hell. I have no idea how the reamed out holes could possible be true, and therefore I'm sure that the saddle bar is crooked in some direction. But like the nut, why should I care? I gave him a guitar that needed some maintenance and he returned it to me unplayable.
For good measure, he made sure that the intonation was way, way off. I never bothered to fix this, because the bridge is all jacked up and the nut is useless.
So that guitar has been in the case ever since that "tech" got his hands on it. I bought a new guitar instead.
I know there are plenty of competent, skilled, professional guitar techs, but I don't know how to differentiate them from the idiots without seeing their work... which produces stories like this one.
I got a great referral from another guitar player who let me play his Gibson Les Paul Custom, and the strap was so loose that the guitar fell (nearly to the floor) four times in one song. $2000 guitar and he can't spend $10 for a decent strap. I do not trust his guitar tech referral.
It's a cold world out there.
dgatwood
is out. Leave a message.
I'd probably just buy a new pre-cut compensating nut from Earvana or somebody and be done with it at that point. You're obviously not going to get a correctly cut nut from that tech....
Apart from sanding down the bottom of the nut to get the height right, it's pretty much drop-in-and-go. You could probably even install it yourself if you want... and if that's your only choice of a local tech, you probably should....Sorry I've been absent...
Last week got a little crazy, so I haven't been checking this thread. For what it's worth, the tech really, REALLY wanted to re-fret the first 5 frets at least. His temporary solution was to accomodate my severe lack of money and, in my opinion, get his hands on the guitar so that he could set it up (which he pretty much admitted when I came back - see above). So not to defend the stuff that he did that I didn't like, but he certainly wasn't partial to the fill.
Basically, the setup and fill (which he said he'd never done before, and that he said was temporary) cost me $45. The re-fret would have been over $100 - $120-$130, I think. Yes, long-term, it may very well have been a better idea to have the frets done, but it was an easy way out of an extra $80-$90 I don't really have. I wasn't even planning to spend the $45. And, of course, I had no idea exactly how much he had been planing to do to the guitar.
The notes are much easier to hit now, but it seems a lot more stressful on my fingers. This could be because I'm used to higher action, but especially on bends, I find my fingers wearing down a lot faster than they used to. I'm listening to the strings, and I'm not sure the lower ones aren't rattling... going to have to keep an ear out.
Everything he said seemed to make sense, and it certainly isn't playing as badly as the Korean guitar mentioned above - it's just that I would have liked to have had a bit of a heads-up as to what he was going to do. I mentioned lowering the action slightly, which the other tech had mentioned, but I didn't realize it meant doing so much stuff to the guitar itself. According to him, pretty much everything was off, so he fixed it. I do have several months during which time I can bring it back, but I'm understandably nervous at the prospect, as I really have no idea what will happen next. The one thing I do have going for me at this point is that I'll sure as hell make sure I know EXACTLY what he plans to do, down to the commas.
And, for what it's worth, I believe the tech DID know that I'd been playing the guitar for almost 20 years, and that I'd only ever had the one setup done on it a few months prior. Logic would seem to follow (at least to me) that the customer would be used to the current action, possibly not well-versed in setups, and that with what he'd planned to do, he might have wanted to give said customer more of a heads-up on what he planned to do... but that really didn't seem to be part of his thought process at the time.
Last week got a little crazy, so I haven't been checking this thread. For what it's worth, the tech really, REALLY wanted to re-fret the first 5 frets at least. His temporary solution was to accomodate my severe lack of money and, in my opinion, get his hands on the guitar so that he could set it up (which he pretty much admitted when I came back - see above). So not to defend the stuff that he did that I didn't like, but he certainly wasn't partial to the fill.
Basically, the setup and fill (which he said he'd never done before, and that he said was temporary) cost me $45. The re-fret would have been over $100 - $120-$130, I think. Yes, long-term, it may very well have been a better idea to have the frets done, but it was an easy way out of an extra $80-$90 I don't really have. I wasn't even planning to spend the $45. And, of course, I had no idea exactly how much he had been planing to do to the guitar.
The notes are much easier to hit now, but it seems a lot more stressful on my fingers. This could be because I'm used to higher action, but especially on bends, I find my fingers wearing down a lot faster than they used to. I'm listening to the strings, and I'm not sure the lower ones aren't rattling... going to have to keep an ear out.
Everything he said seemed to make sense, and it certainly isn't playing as badly as the Korean guitar mentioned above - it's just that I would have liked to have had a bit of a heads-up as to what he was going to do. I mentioned lowering the action slightly, which the other tech had mentioned, but I didn't realize it meant doing so much stuff to the guitar itself. According to him, pretty much everything was off, so he fixed it. I do have several months during which time I can bring it back, but I'm understandably nervous at the prospect, as I really have no idea what will happen next. The one thing I do have going for me at this point is that I'll sure as hell make sure I know EXACTLY what he plans to do, down to the commas.
And, for what it's worth, I believe the tech DID know that I'd been playing the guitar for almost 20 years, and that I'd only ever had the one setup done on it a few months prior. Logic would seem to follow (at least to me) that the customer would be used to the current action, possibly not well-versed in setups, and that with what he'd planned to do, he might have wanted to give said customer more of a heads-up on what he planned to do... but that really didn't seem to be part of his thought process at the time.
Well, I've had the guitar for a little less than a week, and I find myself increasingly unwilling to play it, as it's a lot harder on my fingers - I really miss the old feel of the guitar. The action of the strings is a lot lower, but the give of the strings and the ease of playing actually feels a lot worse - I think it may be due to the straightening of the board and lowering of the nut for intonation purposes. It may be "correct" and "the right way", but it's really not feeling that way to me.
I'd like to have it taken care of, but the only person who will do it for free (under guarantee) is the tech that screwed it up, and I'm extremely reluctant to bring anything to that tech. So it's either deal with it, entrust it to the person who messed it up in the first place, or spend more money I really don't have and either roll the dice with another new tech or go back to the one that took care of it the time before last. Not really good choices all around - I'm definitely regretting having the work done now.
This sucks.
I'd like to have it taken care of, but the only person who will do it for free (under guarantee) is the tech that screwed it up, and I'm extremely reluctant to bring anything to that tech. So it's either deal with it, entrust it to the person who messed it up in the first place, or spend more money I really don't have and either roll the dice with another new tech or go back to the one that took care of it the time before last. Not really good choices all around - I'm definitely regretting having the work done now.
This sucks.
RejectionNinja
New member
What type of bridge does it have?
Assuming it's an electric guitar (not sure if this was mentioned) you might try raising the action at the bridge by yourself. It's not the 100% correct fix, but if you want higher action this will do it, and it won't cost a thing. You can also loosen the truss rod a little bit. Both of these options are extremely easy to do and run little to no chance of doing any harm.
But for the truss rod, if it's your first time messing with a truss rod, turn it no more than 1/4 turn left per day. (It's safe and possible to go more than that but I wouldn't give that advice over the internet, especially for a 20+ year old guitar.)
Assuming it's an electric guitar (not sure if this was mentioned) you might try raising the action at the bridge by yourself. It's not the 100% correct fix, but if you want higher action this will do it, and it won't cost a thing. You can also loosen the truss rod a little bit. Both of these options are extremely easy to do and run little to no chance of doing any harm.
But for the truss rod, if it's your first time messing with a truss rod, turn it no more than 1/4 turn left per day. (It's safe and possible to go more than that but I wouldn't give that advice over the internet, especially for a 20+ year old guitar.)
apl
Stand Up Comity
Everything you mention should make the guitar more playable. Did the guy restring it with heavier strings?
Actually, I did provide the strings for the setup, and they're the exact same stings I've been using for years.
The only thing I can think of with the guitar killing my fingers is that I'm so used to the higher action and old setup that my playing style evolved around it over 20+ years, and now the new position of the strings, and straighter fretboard, is causing problems as I press harder than I need to on the strings.
The truss rod is something the tech suggested as well, same advice - no more than a quarter turn - I may try this, as I think I'm hearing a little rattle in the lower strings as well, and loosening it slightly might help.
Maybe I should try playing it for a while longer and see if I get used to it? It's just a pretty appreciable change after being so used to it a certain way for so long.
The only thing I can think of with the guitar killing my fingers is that I'm so used to the higher action and old setup that my playing style evolved around it over 20+ years, and now the new position of the strings, and straighter fretboard, is causing problems as I press harder than I need to on the strings.
The truss rod is something the tech suggested as well, same advice - no more than a quarter turn - I may try this, as I think I'm hearing a little rattle in the lower strings as well, and loosening it slightly might help.
Maybe I should try playing it for a while longer and see if I get used to it? It's just a pretty appreciable change after being so used to it a certain way for so long.
I agree, it does suck.
Perhaps you can talk to the owner/manager of the shop (assuming the tech is not he) and calmly explain your problem to him. He should then take charge of the problem, and find a way to solve it. Really, that's his job, and he should be happy to do it, in the name of customer retention.
RejectionNinja
New member
well anybody that's been playing for 20+ years deserves to have a guitar set up the way they like.
I have a Tele with really low action that I find awesome for playing rhythm. For lead, it's playable but sounds like a mess because I'm inadvertently fretting adjacent strings. For lead, I have a Strat with higher action that doesn't have this problem.
My point is that even though the changes SHOULD make it easier to play (i.e. lower action) that doesn't mean it's what you want or like. Lower the action on my Strat and I'll be annoyed, and it'll be harder to play clean lead parts.
After 20+ years, you know what you like, and YOU shouldn't have to adjust YOUR skills because the guitar tech adjusted YOUR guitar to somebody ELSE's standards. Just my opinion - I'm no guitar tech, I've just been playing for 20+ years.
I have a Tele with really low action that I find awesome for playing rhythm. For lead, it's playable but sounds like a mess because I'm inadvertently fretting adjacent strings. For lead, I have a Strat with higher action that doesn't have this problem.
My point is that even though the changes SHOULD make it easier to play (i.e. lower action) that doesn't mean it's what you want or like. Lower the action on my Strat and I'll be annoyed, and it'll be harder to play clean lead parts.
After 20+ years, you know what you like, and YOU shouldn't have to adjust YOUR skills because the guitar tech adjusted YOUR guitar to somebody ELSE's standards. Just my opinion - I'm no guitar tech, I've just been playing for 20+ years.
Lt. Bob
Spread the Daf!
As a piano tuner/tech .... I can tell you that I always stand behind my work. Different players have different needs and, though it's rare, once every year or so someone will want their piano a bit different than I had set it up. I go, for free, carefully question them to be sure I understand EXACTLY what their objections are and what they'd like done instead and then I fix it, as I should if they were unhappy with my first work. I don't think I've ever had anyone unhappy the second time and it's way in my own interest to make sure I can always go back and fine tune repairs because my business depends on not having customers bad mouth me..
IMO .... if this guy is a reputable tech, you should take it to him and have him correct it. He's gonna WANT to make you satisfied.
You, yourself, admitted that you didn't give him a lot of input the first time, feeling that you didn't know enough to do so.
But in that case, any tech is gonna do whatever they think is the best repair.
He can most likely put it just the way you want if given the opportunity to do so.
My only concern is whether he's any good or not since I would refuse to do that epoxy/fret thing even if asked to do so because it just won't work.
But if he has a decent rep, that may be just an aberation. no one's perfect ..... I bet even Light has screwed up once or twice and had to redo something.
It happens.
Also ..... anyone that's been playing for 20+ years should know something about guitar setup anyways. The basics, which it sounds like all you were needing, are fairly simply.
IMO .... if this guy is a reputable tech, you should take it to him and have him correct it. He's gonna WANT to make you satisfied.
You, yourself, admitted that you didn't give him a lot of input the first time, feeling that you didn't know enough to do so.
But in that case, any tech is gonna do whatever they think is the best repair.
He can most likely put it just the way you want if given the opportunity to do so.
My only concern is whether he's any good or not since I would refuse to do that epoxy/fret thing even if asked to do so because it just won't work.
But if he has a decent rep, that may be just an aberation. no one's perfect ..... I bet even Light has screwed up once or twice and had to redo something.
It happens.
Also ..... anyone that's been playing for 20+ years should know something about guitar setup anyways. The basics, which it sounds like all you were needing, are fairly simply.
pohaku
New member
Are you certain that the strings currently on the guitar are the ones you provided? Just because you provided strings doesn't mean that they were actually used. Just a thought.
Not going to argue that and, in fact, I think I acknowledged that earlier in the thread. However, there really isn't much I can do about it now aside from learn said basics. It's too late, of course, but it's better than never, I guess. If I have to make an excuse for it, it's that I was entirely self-taught, and apart from a burr in the bridge that I took care of myself and one of the pickup switch positions being out that I never worried about, I never really ran across anything urgent enough to make me say "wow, this needs to be fixed". Hence, no setup. Which, as it turned out, was a blessing in disguise.
To answer questions:
stevieb: I did speak to the shop owner the day of the repair, and he said that he understood my point of view, and to call the tech back, but he seemed to be of the opinion that the tech knew what he was doing. One quote was something along the lines of telling a mechanic how to fix your car. He definitely seemed to stand behind the tech's work, but believed that he would make things "right", even if "right" wasn't really "right". Basically, to use another rough quote, the tech would be happy to mess it up again if I wanted. His opinion was that of the tech's... if you play it for a while, you'll probably realize that it's better the way it is now.
pohaku: Of course I'm not 100% sure they're the strings that I provided, as I wasn't there to see him restring the guitar, but they seem to be at least roughly the same gauge as I'm used to. Of course, given that the tension and setup is completely different now, I can't really tell you if they feel the same because, of course, they don't.
CMunch: The guitar is an Avenger by Vantage, Japanese-made, most likely 1980s. Not a PRS or 60s Fender Tele/Strat, but it does the job, and it's what I'm used to. As to WHY I don't own a PRS, Fender strat or other expensive guitar after playing for 20 years, see "lack of money" above.
And, just to re-iterate, the epoxy thing was a stopgap, based on the fact that I really don't have $100-$200 to blow on a full/partial re-fret right now. Of course, even if I HAD blown that money, I'd still be in the same situation, because the setup is what knocked everything out of whack, not the fret fix, which the tech did VERY reluctantly and qualified roughly five hundred and fifty two thousand different times as a TEMPORARY thing, as well as something that he'd never done before. Doesn't mean I trust the guy any more, but it's not really for the epoxy fix.
One last bit of info on the tech - he said that he never really went to any kind of school or had any kind of training, but relied on his years (20+ i think) of experience to know how to set up a guitar. The first tech from a few months back was the opposite... certified from a guitar repair school, with the philosophy that you don't change the way the guitar feels unless the customer requests it.
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