Mal’s big guide to guitar setup and troubleshooting

Your guitar comes with a whole panoply of features that should be able to tweak to get it into shape, and most of these adjustments can be made with nothing more than a screwdriver, a little care, and some patience. Find out how…

Warning/disclaimer The information in this article is provided free of charge, in good faith, and on the condition that it will only be used responsibly and entirely at your own risk.

The procedures outlined are based on 20 years experience of tweaking guitars, and have been confirmed through consultation with professional luthiers, etc., as good practice.

However, even something as simple as adjusting a pickup may be fraught with danger – simply dropping a screwdriver can horribly damage the finish on your guitar. It is up to you to proceed carefully and at your own risk, taking note of all the tips, tricks, and warnings where applicable.

Guitar set-up and troubleshooting So, you just bought a new guitar and it’s producing unexpected buzzing, and/or has playability problems.

Don’t worry – very few guitars ever play perfect straight out of the box. They are made of wood, and there is an old saying around genuine guitar parts: ‘Never trust anything made out of wood.’ 

Wood expands and contracts with heat and cold or changes in humidity, it warps and twists, relaxes or sags over time, it occasionally does completely inexplicable things, just because it feels like it.

That’s not necessarily the manufacturer’s fault. Differences in climate, temperature, the vagaries of shipping – all can affect the set-up on a guitar. It may be an issue to take up with the shop you bought it from. They really should have checked it thoroughly and performed a set-up on it before letting you buy the thing, but not all of them do, of course!

But what if you bought it on the net, or second-hand? You can’t easily return it for servicing, and if you don’t have a good luthier or set-up guy in your neighbourhood, who do you turn to?

No problem – your guitar comes with a whole panoply of features that should be able to tweak to get it into shape, and most of these adjustments can be made with nothing more than a screwdriver, a little care, and some patience.

However, first you need to understand what it is you are trying to achieve…

What is a good set-up?

The term ‘set-up’ is a catch-all phrase that covers three main areas: playability, tone, and intonation.

1. Playability:How easy the guitar is to play? If the strings on your guitar are too high above the fret board, then it will take a lot more force to push them down onto the frets, which makes the guitar more difficult to play. If the strings are too low above the fret board, they may well buzz against the frets when you pluck them. Exactly what the ideal string height is for you depends on your individual finger strength, what string gauge you use, and how hard you play the strings.
   This brings me to the first ‘Golden Rule’ of set-ups: Every guitar player is different, there is no such thing as the ideal set-up for everyone, only the ideal set-up for you.
   The playability of your guitar is governed by two parameters - the action (the height of the strings above the frets), and the neck relief (how straight or bowed the neck is, and to what degree it allows free vibration of the strings). We’ll come to the specifics of ‘how’ later.

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