Electric Guitar Setup String Height

Adjust the truss rod to add relief to the neck if that s what the player prefers.

Electric guitar setup string height. Tune the guitar to desired pitch. This distance plays a key role in your setup because it determines the ease in which your guitar can be played. String height or action describes the distance between the top of your frets to the bottom of your strings. Look down the profile of the fretboard on both the bass and treble sides of the neck is the neck straight or is there a curve.

How to set up a guitar perfectly step 1. Turn the guitar on its side close one eye and look down the neck from the headstock towards the bridge left. An excerpt from dan erlewine s how to make you electric guitar play great including celebrity setups from jeff beck to jim weider. The higher the strings the more tension they have and the harder it will be to fret the notes.

For acoustic guitars we ll want to go just a bit higher than this. Measure string height on the first fret for each string using your feeler gauges. This may involve adjusting the height of the saddles or of the string slots in the nut. Then measuring with the string action gauge adjust the string height to the player s preference.

These are not the only acceptable string heights but they are a starting point as the happy medium all comes down to your own personal preference. Pickup height is measured from the pole piece to the bottom of the string on the bass and treble sides with the. Check the pickup height. For electric guitars in our opinion a good default string height at the 12th fret is typically about 6 64th of an inch 2 38mm on the bass side and 4 64th of an inch 1 59mm on the treble side.

Sight the neck please read the beginning of this article for. Tune the guitar to pitch. Sight a guitar neck. A famoussetups here are over three dozen precise setup specs collected by dan erlewine as he interviewed famous players and roadies.

Action determines how much pressure and distance is required for the string to make full contact with each fret.