Do you do your own setups on builds

Hi Guys,

I have finally got the strings on and made a noise!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v483/strungout34/thinline/SAM_0393.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v483/strungout34/thinline/SAM_0396.jpg

I started to do the setup, but I am tossing up if I should take it and get it done or give it a shot myself.What do you guys usually do -I am showing my in experiance here !

Cheers

Greg

If you can build it, you can set it up as well. Just take your time. It's not that hard.

If you can build it, you can set it up as well. Just take your time. It's not that hard.

+1 You've accomplished the hard part. The setup is not a mystery. Take a shot at it.

You can do it yourself with the information on this site. Be patient and take a little off at a time and check the fit and play often. I was starting to get frustrated with fret buzz I could not seem to fix. I was about to go to a guy I know that can do it and offer him an extra $20 to teach me. I figured it out on my own and am even happier with it. :-)

Having built it yourself, try a setup. It's nice to know everything about an instrument, and to be in total control of its characteristics. As the builder, you'll know what you need to do to make it sound right because you're already familiar with all the guitar's variables.

Patience, though; it usually takes about a week to ten days before I feel like I've tweaked everything enough.

Your guitar looks great! Your question kind of surprises me,
because many of us did a lot of setups before building
anything. Yes, you can do a setup! The thing is, you can
do it over and over until you get it right.

The first couple of times I really sweated it, but after awhile it becomes second nature. Just remember to set your string height first, check your neck relief, adjust truss rod if necessary, then set string heights again. Come back in 24 hrs, and if it still doesn't fret out, adjust intonation.Action first, intonation last :smile:. Trust me, you'll be doing them in your sleep in no time (I do :lol:)

Dave

Thanks for the inspiration to do the setup.

I am more of a "woodworker" than a "Guitarist" or "Luthier" but I suppose it is worth a go.

Cheers

Greg

The setup is the easy part.

To me the set up is the icing on the cake. You get to see firsthand the fruits of your labor. Don't be sfraid, it will be much more rewarding to have everything be done with your hands.

Hi Guys,

I have finally got the strings on and made a noise!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v483/strungout34/thinline/SAM_0393.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v483/strungout34/thinline/SAM_0396.jpg

I started to do the setup, but I am tossing up if I should take it and get it done or give it a shot myself.What do you guys usually do -I am showing my in experience here !

Cheers

Greg

Nice guitar man.

Set ups are something that you learn as you go along. Until we try it, it remains a mystery, but it's important that you know how to do certain jobs, or you'll never have an instriment that plays to it's true potential.

I'd start by making sure the neck is there or there abouts regarding angle, and that you don't need to shim the neck (means cut a piece of card etc and stick it under the front, or rear, of the neck pocket).

Once you establish that your angle is good, and the guitar is playing ok, the next thing to do is to check your neck relief. What we want is a very slight bend in the neck. Think bow, as in bow and arrow, but nowhere as severe.

First ensure your guitar is tuned up.

To check this, you could do with a set of feeler gauges, but a good eye is ok too. Place a Capo on the first fret, and press the last fret of yourthickest string. Now we need to see a little light between the top of the 6th fret and the bottom of the string. Height wise you probably want about a 1/4 of a mm, or 0.25mm. If you wack the strings allow a slightly bigger gap, but nothing daft.

Tighten the truss rod a quater turn at a time, and never force it. If your gap is too big, tighten the truss rod, or too small, or no gap at all, loosen the rod a little.

Once your neck is at the right relief, you can move on to setting the guitar up.

At both ends of the guitar we have a nut, and saddles. For the guitar to feel good we want the strings to hover over the fretboard, in a way that their distance from the fretboard is sympathetic to the radius of the board. Take 2 horse shoes, and put one inside the other, and you'll get the idea.

If we start with the saddles, we can adjust them in a rainbow fashion to start, with the outide E strings being a little lower than the others. Personally I put a ruler on the last fret, and adjust the height of each string to about 2mm or even 3/32". Doing it this way endsures the strings highlight the radius as much as possible. We can always raise or lower if we have to, but it's a good starting point.

Don't worry about your intonation just yet but what you can do is make sure the saddle is about double the distance of the nut to the 12th fret, which will make intonating easier when we come to it.

Now we need to cut the nut slot to perfection. Press the 3rd fret of each string, and check the gap between the string and the first fret. We only want a very small gap. If you don't have proper files then a set of nozzle cleaners sold on Ebay have very similar thicknesses to files, and can get you where you need to be.

Check the string tuned to pitch, then slacken the string, pull it aside, and file the nut, at a slight angle, keeping the top of the slope at the fretboard side, and the bottom of the slope at the headstock side. Your nut will probably be pre-cut unless you bought a blank.

If the string needs to be lowered, then we do things a very small step at a time, otherwise we'll need to refill the gap with a little bicarb of soda and super glue if we go too low, and start again. The idea is for the guitar string to ring out clearly with no buzz, while at the same time being low enough that it doesn't need to be pressed too far / hard, which is uncomfortable to the finger and bad for pitch.

Spend time getting the feel of things. In any set up you'll find your big strings need a bit more room to vibrate than your thin strings, so their gaps and heights will be slightly larger.

Add a little lubrication to the nut slots when done. Vaseline and opencil lead is an old favourite. You can sand the lead into a spoon, and mix it before applting. A chap stick is handy too. I also put a little in the string tree too, but never on the tuning peg itself.

When you're happy with your nut, and the height of the strings at both ends, we can intonate the guitar, but first adjust the height of your pickups, so that they're not pulling on the strings. Press the last fret, and measure the distance from the bottom of the string to the top of the pickup pole piece. A good guide for average pickups is about 2mm bass side and 1.6mm treble side. Once your guitar is set up you can readjust by ear if needed.

Back to intonation.

3 saddles are poor at getting good intonation, so we sometimes give the saddle a little tap with a hammer just to bend it where we need it to be. It's easier to slacken your string before adjusting hardware too.

If you measured the distance earlier, you should be fairly close, so providing our strings are new, and we are in tune, we can check the intonation, using a tuner.

The easiest way is to compare an open string to a 12th fret octave, and basically all we want is the 2 notes to be the same pitch. If the 12th fret note is flat, then we need to move the saddle forward, towards the pickup, so slacken off the string, adjust, retune, then recheck.

If it's sharp, move the saddle backwards. F for flat, and F for Forwards.

If you have a scenario where 1 side of the sadde is perfectly in, and the other side needs to go backwards, then give it a little tap with a hammer, and bend the saddle ever so slightly. :wink:

If you have 6 individual saddles, even better. Just do them all seperately.

Now double check your pickup volumes are all to your liking, and there are no problems with anything, and you should be good to rock.

Presuming that all your screws are tight, and especially your strap buttons, your guitar should now play like a dream. If it doesn't, go over various things again, and learn which action effects something else. Then, finding a good compromise is key.

Fender set up specs are here too: http://www.fender.com/en-GB/support/articles/telecaster-setup-guide/

Good luck, and if I've missed anything, I'm sure someone will fill in.

You only learn by experimenting, and no size is perfect for every guitar. Get stuck in. You can't break it, and even if you could, it's just a guitar. Who cares. Fix it again. :smile:

By the way, you might find Don Erlewine's books good sources
for info on setups:

http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Player-Repair-Guide-3rd/dp/0879309210/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1306030533&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Electric-Guitar-Great-Softcover-Player/dp/0879306017/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1306030533&sr=1-3

By the way, you might find Don Erlewine's books good sources
for info on setups:

http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Player-Repair-Guide-3rd/dp/0879309210/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1306030533&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Electric-Guitar-Great-Softcover-Player/dp/0879306017/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1306030533&sr=1-3

+1. Erlewine is the man. Second book is particularly good. Takes a lot of the mystery out of setting up a guitar.

Thanks heaps Flat ,

I have been searching around for a "Step by Step" and your reply is just that.....

Cheers

Greg

I'm not finished with my first yet, but I'll definitely be attempting my own setup. That's one of the things I'm attempting to learn on this scratch build. I've done it on my strat, so as long as I take my time with getting my neck/fretboard/fretting, I should be able to do it.

...

I started to do the setup, but I am tossing up if I should take it and get it done or give it a shot myself.What do you guys usually do -I am showing my in experiance here !

Cheers

Greg

You have nothing to lose by giving it your best shot. If you aren't satisfied with the playability at that point, go ahead and get a pro to touch it up. Absolutely worth it! I did my best with my partscaster build, and ended up having Mellecaster set it up. The improvement was astonishing. :shock:

Check your frets with a fret rocker. If they aren't perfect, do a level and crown. Ron Kirn's sticky at the beginning of the Tele Tech section will tell you all you need.

After you set your relief, saddle height, and intonation, check your open string height at the first fret. Should be .015" - .020". If it's higher than that, the nut slots need to be cut down.

Whatever you do, don't settle for mediocre playability. With a first class setup, it should play as well as the most expensive custom builds.

I've been playing and working on guitars for a long time and I've never found another person that can set up a guitar the way I want and get it right. Also, the setup is all tied together so that the level/crowning work, nut slots, relief and saddle height - so if you have a very specific objective: I like .02" to .05" of relief and the action set so that there is .20" clearance on the high-e string at the 12th fret with a capo on the 1st fret, .30" on the low-e... Years ago I started doing my own setups because I just got tired of being told that I did not know what I really wanted - and I would get my guitar back from the person I had taken it to and the relief would be way too high and the action was terrible. It really comes down to the fact that others can not read your mind - so if you know what you really want, it's best to do it yourself.

I think that's part of the reason that I'm attracted to Tele's because it's really easy to get them set up, and they stay set up. Even all of my Tele builds from scratch are much better playing guitars.

I do my own setups, and I am starting to get really good at it.

I haven't built any yet but I do my own setup.

Nice guitar. If you can set up jigs and layout a plan and cut it and basically anything to do with woodworking (and your name isn't Stumpy or Two Fingered Jack) then a setup is something you can learn almost in your sleep.

By the way, around here tossing up must mean something else. (and no, not THAT either)