Set up Stories

Chubby

Action height is usually measured with the string pressed at the first fret, then measured at the 12th fret, or sometimes 17th fret, this takes the height of the nut or in this case zero fret out of the equation. String height at first fret is measured with feeler gauges. Also the relief in the neck comes into play. Is your neck straight or is there some bow in it?

Jack

Also, is it the top of the fret, and the bottom of the string that's generally used for measurements around here?

Best,
Jack.

Josh Hegg

I don't press the string down. When I'm measuring the neck relief I press the string down but for string action I measure at the 12th fret from the bottom of the string to the top of the fret. So mine is 2.5mm at the 12th fret.


Cheers,
Josh

pallopenna

Michael, Josh

I may have missed this in an earlier post, but did you have to do any neck adjustments after you changed the bridge and strings?

-Paul

MichaelHorowitz

I didn't during this last round of experimentation....

Josh Hegg

I adjusted the truss going both ways. First I put in a little more relief and then I made it just about flat.

More relief: was harder to play and seem to round out the tone a little.

Flat: easy to play and thinned the tone out on the high E and B too much

Where I have it now is a happy medium but more on the flat side. It plays like a dream and the tone is where I like it.

The one thing that must be done on any GJ guitar that has low action like these is a fret level. Not only does it make the frets perfect it also widens them and give the guitar a rounding in tone. When you lower the action the roundness of the tone especially on the high E becomes sort of sharp and the punch goes away. But with the good fret level you can maintain the tone with lower action. Also keep in mind here that we are talking 10% of tone. At this point in set up I'm getting very nit picky about the smallest tone shift. The set up will do way more for the playability of the guitar then the tone when we looking at 2.5mm vs 2.2mm at the 12th fret.

One other thing I do is bring the zero fret down. This makes the fretted string on the first three frets nice and keeps the feel and tone consistent from the low notes to the high notes.


Cheers,
Josh