A Suggestion For A Low-action Setup Method

[bluesy]

Since I have just started building guitars, 3 in total so far, I am still learning a lot, and I read often about people struggling to set up guitars, just as I have at times. The last couple of guitars that I setup, one I made myself, and one commercial guitar, I used a method that worked well for me and wondered what people think.

I am mainly talking about bridge height, neck relief and low-action, starting with a neck, assuming the frets are level with no relief and the neck angle should be such that the bridge saddles are within range of adjustment and a straight edge used guitar string laid down the neck just contacts the saddles where the strings sit.

So, the bit I have started doing differently is this. I set the bridge height FIRST so that, with strings on the guitar and in tune (i.e. under correct tension), the notes in the top region (where neck relief has little effect), will just play with out buzzing. You have to retune the guitar after raising the bridge (if you do it with the strings under tension) because they will all go sharp, and you want the correct tension for setting the neck relief next. To me, this seems to be the lowest possible bridge height for the given neck angle.

After doing this, I usually find the action is a bit high, and, hopefully, there will be too much neck relief because the truss rod has not been tensioned yet (on a newly made neck). So, I next tighten the truss rod, measuring the relief in the usual way as it reduces. This happily, brings the action down nice and low at the same time. You need to retune again because the strings will be sharp due to the truss rod tension straightening the neck. Without to much mucking about, I end up with a guitar with pretty much the lowest action.

Seems fairly foolproof to me, and it avoids one mistake I was making. That was, I was trying to set action using the bridge height, while I had too much relief in the neck. This resulted in buzzing on the high frets, when playing above the octave, by the time I had the action low enough at the 12th fret (because by then, the bridge was too low for the neck angle)

[WezV]

not how i would do it but if its working for you who can say its wrong.

I take each element at a time and make sure they are correct, i do it in this order:

Frets levelled and strung up to pitch

Nut height

relief

Bridge height

Intonation

I do not use relief to set action, i will say that i personally think its wrong to do so in most cases.. although sometimes its needed for more extreme set-ups/playing styles

i would also recommend against making adjustments whilst at pitch... This includes truss rods, bridge heights and intonation adjustments. Sure you can do it and will get away with it 9 times out of 10 but it only takes one broken trussrod or stripped screw to see why i say it. I would rather take a minute or two extra over a job and do it without risk.

also, when making a guitar i do all the side profile drawing and set the lowest possible bridge height so a straight edge laid along the frets would just touch the tops of the saddles when set at there lowest point ... that means all your adjustment is upwards from the fretboard and low actions are still perfectly possible

[bluesy]

not how i would do it but if its working for you who can say its wrong.

I take each element at a time and make sure they are correct, i do it in this order:

Frets levelled and strung up to pitch

Nut height

relief

Bridge height

Intonation

I do not use relief to set action, i will say that i personally think its wrong to do so in most cases.. although sometimes its needed for more extreme set-ups/playing styles

Thanks for your response. I am not only using relief to set the action btw. The action is largely set, to the lowest possible, when I adjust the bridge to just make the high notes playable. If the relief was correct at that point, I'd be finished and the action would be nice and low.

I had read, and tried doing the setup in the order you use. The trouble was, there are varying opinions about relief, and I had not read anywhere of the problem that too much relief can cause. So by setting the relief, just a little too much, and then adjusting the bridge to set the action at the 12th fret, I ended up with trouble at the high frets with the notes buzzing and even fretting out completely. We even had a discussion here about tapering high frets off.

The only thing I am really doing differently is to determine the minimum bridge height for playability at these high frets. You can do this because these frets are typically in the part of the neck that's clamped to the guitar body, or near it, so the string tension and truss rod don't put any relief into them at all.

Funnily, I purchased a cheap secondhand archtop acoustic a little while ago, and someone had attempted to set it up, and ended up with the exact problem I described above. The high frets were all buzzing and fretting out. So I quickly set the bridge a little higher to stop the buzzing, then a quarter turn on the truss rod brought the action back down and the guitar is one of the lowest action acoustics I own

[Mickguard]

I set the relief first -- I place a capo on the first fret and hold the string down at about the 14th fret with a finger while I measure the gap.

In other words, bridge height has nothing to do with this step. Neither does the nut height -- but I've always used preslotted nuts, so they're already approximately at the proper height (I adjust the slots after I've set the relief).

[bluesy]

I set the relief first -- I place a capo on the first fret and hold the string down at about the 14th fret with a finger while I measure the gap.

In other words, bridge height has nothing to do with this step. Neither does the nut height -- but I've always used preslotted nuts, so they're already approximately at the proper height (I adjust the slots after I've set the relief).

I agree, bridge height has nothing to do with relief setting. That's why I can set it first, and you can set it second. The key point for me was setting the bridge height to suit the high frets independently. Once that is done, even if you set too much relief, you won't end up with notes fretting out at the top like I was getting (although you're action may be a tad high with too much relief).

[Mickguard]

(although you're action may be a tad high with too much relief).

Yeah, I don't go for super-low action, I don't play guitar that way (not even close). My setups tend to stick close to the Fender spec. I prefer some relief -- about 0.25 mm at the sixth fret--don't know if that qualifies as 'too much' though...

The thing with trying to set the bridge first is...well, you're more likely to need to reset it again anyway.