guitar set up??????????

present_tense

hey, someone has to tell me what this entails. What does it involve? Do you guys normally do it yourself? or take it to a shop? I had it done once when i got my toggle switch fixed because apparently i was in dire need of a setup. yes, i am ignorant to all the nitty gritty details of having a guitar. I just like to plug it in and play..i guess ive become so used to how it feels that i cant even fathom it feeling better. fill me in guys. Dont let me down!! do it!

Rodders

I am, by no means, a guitar tech but here is what I know.

Setting up a guitar is a highly accurate task, and involves a lot of things. Basically, for your guitar to play in tune everywhere on the fretboard, and for each string to fret correctly (to avoid buzz) and to make chords and notes more comfortable to play - you need to have your guitar setup correctly.

I take mine to a local guitar tech who is able to do the most amazing things. For a full setup he charges about £50. A guy I used to play in a band with attempted his own setup to save the cash, and he ended up with something more like a crossbow!

What does it inolve? Well, here's a few things:

1) correct tension of the truss rod (runs from the body to the head and provides strength where the strings try to pull the neck out of shape)

2) tuned intonation - an harmonic on the 12th fret is supposed to sound 'precisely' the same pitch as the fretted note on the 12th fret. This is done by adjusting the position/shape of the bridge.

3) fret shaping - fret wire needs to have a certain shape to make notes sound sweet and to avoid buzz and also to make bends work smoothly. new guitars, or well used ones, can have badly shaped fret wire so the setup would involve reshaping them (or even replacing them).

4) bridge height adjustment - depending on the guage of strings you intend to use the bridge may need to be raised or lowered so that the strings sit at a sensible and usable height above the frets (action). Obviously, each guitar has to be setup for a specific purpose so you may find that changing your string guage may require further adjustments. My guitar tech measures the "action" of each string at about 4 or 5 different frets for each string and it is usually measured in fractions of a millimetre.

5) nut adjustment - like the bridge, the nut may need to be reshaped/raised/lowered in order to get the correct string action. It's also important that the string guides are smooth to prevent the strings from catching (especially wound strings).


Bear in mind that all of the above must be carried out (and there may be more things) and that when you alter one thing, it can affect another so it requires a huge amount of technical ability and patience.

What I would say is that my guitar isn't very good, an Epiphone Les Paul standard. I was happy with the look but it didn't feel very ergonomic to play. When it's fresh from being setup, it feels like an expensive guitar! The problem is, that poor qulaity guitars tend to need setting up more often so I should be taking mine along every 6-12 months - due to being stored/used in different places it tends to change shape too often. Sometimes it's in the car, then it's in the alley of a local venue, then it's onstage with lights on it, then it's back in my house near a radiator etc..

My local guitar tech has also done other things to my guitar:

1) replaced one stock humbucker with a decent quality one.
2) rewound the other stock humbucker and "potted" it (dipped in wax) to prevent squeal
3) coil-tapped both pick-ups
4) replaced a damaged jack plug
5) repaired my bridge - due to my palm-muting and the subsequent sweat gathering in the saddles of the bridge, combined with the vibrations of my strings the bridge saddles had all become badly worn and were causing regular string snaps. he used a glass polymer solution to fill the damaged spots and then setup the bridge again to perfection.

Hope that answers your question to some degree.

present_tense

thanks! you went above and beyond what i was looking for, you rule!!

Dirty_Frank

I always do my own work if it involves stuff like string changes, intonation, truss rod and hardware adjustments. I usually do my own wiring as well, the only exception being when I installed push/pull pots and I had no idea how to do that.

I've never had my frets dressed and polished, but that needs to be done soon. It's long, long, long, LONG, overdue on my Les Paul.

samquigley

Unless all your local stores are incredibly bad, you'll always be better off taking your guitar to a pro for a setup. I've made a few adjustments here and there on my SGs and Tele's in the past but they've always played better once I finally took them into the shop. And don't even dream about setting up a vibrato-equipped guitar on your own, unless you can stand to live without it for a while.