Quote:
Originally Posted by shredhead84
the mechanics of the guitar can become easily screwed up by trying to adjust it yourself without experience, especially if you have a whammy bar. Take it to a respectable shop that customizes or builds guitars and have them set it up. Trust me...if you mess up your guitars adjustments you wont play it and might just give it up. Learn to play as much as possible until you are hooked, then get into adjusting bridge height, truss rods etc. also when they set it up choose your strings and never change the gauge again, it has to be set up for each string gauge.
That was back in the day when there was little info on it. When I was 12 or 13 I decided to replace my bridge pickup, and there was no internet to get an idea; I just went in and did it. By the time I got done only the middle pickup worked. I brought it to a shop and he said I fried the switch (hard to do that) and fried the tone pot (really hard to do that). Meh, so I was out the cost of a new switch and pot (of course I risked screwing the pickup (which I thought I had), but I understood that ahead of time and took extra care).
If he had a Floyd and was changing from 9's to 10's, then I wouldn't recommend he do it himself, but he's got a Squire Strat - pretty basic setup (even if he has to adjust the claw). Also, he has an education degree in music (which means at least one semester of class guitar), and he's been around instruments all his life (e.g., understands it's not like working on a car engine).
As I write in my setup post below from the other thread (intonation I put in a different post, but I only quote this post for the importance of the truss), the truss is where you have to be most careful. The book Gonzo recommended to him will make sure he understands proper relief and how to achieve it. Unless you're just not mechanically inclined at all, it would be hard not to get a good setup with the radius tools he bought.
On the other hand, the guy with the broken neck that wants to do it himself (even though it's in a good spot) I would suggest go to a shop and pay $50 (mostly because you have to break it to fix it).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mitch Evans
Outside of doing a complete refret, most everything is pretty easy from a basic setup and electronics to a level and crown of frets, if you have some basic information and tools ahead of time.
As analoguesounds said, the last thing you want to do is **** up the neck with an improper truss adjustment. That's about the only thing you can screw up to the point where it can be hard to correct. Cracking the underside of the fretboard isn't any fun to fix, but it's possible.
Truss:
Check the relief in the neck by pressing against the body fret and 1st fret (bass string) and tapping in the center between these two points while holding those two frets down (use that guide Rokke posted for procedure of this). Easiest to use index finger on left hand and thumb on right hand and then stretch your middle right hand finger to the mid point between both pressed frets.
When you are tapping, you should have about the thickness of a medium to heavy guitar pick between the top of the FRET and the bottom of the string.
If there's too much relief (space), you need to tighten the truss; if there's no relief, you need to loosen the truss.
Now, here's where people screw it up. If you've never done truss adjustments before, always start with a 1/16 of a turn (yup, that means a tad less than 12 to 1 on a clock), especially if tightening the truss.
The second way people screw it up is confusing lefty-loosy/righty-tighty. Just hold the guitar so the top of the bolt is facing you; that is, if the truss adjustment is at the bottom of the neck, flip the guitar upside down (neck facing the floor) then turn clockwise for tightening. If the truss adjustment is at the top of the neck, put the guitar body between your legs and have the headstock under your chin.
Make a 16th of a turn and check the relief 20 minutes later (the effects are much faster, but the neck won't completely settle for hours, and GREAT setups are a balance between truss and bridge adjustments. This means there is a general range of relief in the neck that is considered proper, but every instrument is different and both the bridge and truss work in conjunction in finding the ideal string height (as well as geographical climate). There are no shops that will continually tweak both until they are down to moving the truss 1/64th of a turn, and I can't really blame them).
If the truss didn't take, do another 1/16 of a turn - rinse and repeat. Stop at a 1/4 turn total, unless you have a good idea what you're doing.
Action:
Now, before doing all that (fine truss adjustments), you want to set your action first. Some old dogs might scoff at the idea, but clearly the most accurate and best way to set action is to match the radius of the fingerboard using a radius gauge (you can buy them at stewmac, but they are also easy to make).
If you don't know the radius of your fingerboard, you take a radius gauge (ones with notches cut out for strings) and place it on the board until you find one that fits (or search your model guitar). Say, it's 10". You then set the individual string saddles using a 10" understring radius gauge. This will make the bottom of all six strings curve to a 10" radius, matching your fingerboard radius exactly (matching the neck radius will help prevent "fretting out" on bends).
Once your radius is set, start the truss adjustments, if needed. This is where the skill comes into play. You need to balance saddle height with neck relief, and there's no easy way to explain it - just comes from experience. For example, you loosen the truss and the action is a bit high so you lower the action (using your gauge).
Now the action is nice in the high register, but a little high in the low register. You tighten up the truss a tad, raise the action, now it's great in the low register and not bad in the high register. Keep working it. A shortcut is to make your fine adjustments with your most problematic string and once that's set, adjust the rest of the action relative to that string.
Every shop will just get the neck in a general acceptable range (as well as the action), and just call it a day and move on to intonation. This is probably how you should start too, and then scrutinize your setups more and more with each one you do until you learn how each of your instruments responds to the slightest adjustments. Remember, you are setting up the instrument to your playing style/needs, not a dude in the back of a music store, or whatever.
The above will take several hours to do since the wood takes time to settle completely, but it really depends on just how close you want the action. Some instruments you want kissing to board, and some you want it higher to bring out the tone more.
That said, if it's an inexpensive guitar, the nut is probably too high, so that will put some serious restrictions on the quality of your setups, but you can always learn how to do nuts down the road.
Cliffs: tl;dr