If you’re here, you’re probably wondering why you should have your guitar or bass setup. I’ll tell you why! You want your instrument to feel the best it can in your hands and be easy to play, and most importantly, your guitar probably sound better than ever!
The feel of an instrument is one of many ways that each of us bond with our instrument. Other things may help us to love our instrument, such as the color, the model, and our heros playing a similar build. However, the way the instrument sits in your hand, how it feels to slide up and down the fretboard, and how it makes you play a special kind of way are way more impactful than the other qualities I have mentioned.
The best way to improve the way the guitar feels in your hand is to get a setup performed on your instrument. Action, or the distance from the tops of the frets to the bottom of the strings, is the most impactful way we perceive how our instruments play. There are three ways to adjust action: at the nut, adjusting truss rod neck relief, and at the saddles.
Generally speaking, in a setup, your neck relief, which is adjusted using the truss rod, and saddle height, which depending on what type of bridge you have can be individually adjustable or adjusted as one unit, are the two main places a luthier will adjust to make your guitar’s action perfect. Now the third area, the nut slot height is adjusted to affect the action nearest to the nut. On a side note, an improperly cut nut will lead to string breakage, tuning, and intonation issues! With adjusting these parameters, the instrument’s feel will drastically change!
Your instrument may go from fighting your every move to working with you to allow you to play your best! Another way the feel of your instrument can be altered in with fret polishing. Quite simply, fret polishing not only makes your frets look great, but they make bending and sliding feel effortless as the corrosion and buildup on your frets do not impede your movements. Your vibrato will feel so nice!
This ease of play and warm fuzzy feeling you’ll get with a freshly set up guitar are no match to what a setup can do to your guitar sonically. Your guitar is a carefully constructed piece of art. Any changes to the art will alter its beauty. All metaphors aside, any changes to your guitar’s setup will change its sonic characteristics, often for the better.
After adjusting the action, which can affect how the guitar feels, the next step is intonation. Already, adjusting the action to a comfortable height improves the intonation of your instrument, but this can be fine tuned at your guitar’s saddles. Intonation, or the accuracy in pitch when fretting notes up and down the fretboard, is a very important way to make your guitar sound amazing. Even though your strings may be in tune when plucking an open string, when you play a fretted note, an guitar which has not been correctly intonated will play out of tune. This WILL sound bad… Some factors affecting intonation of your guitar are adjusting the action of your guitar as well as changing the gauge of string from higher to lower or vice versa. By adjusting the position of the saddle relative to the nut, the intonation can be set and your guitar will play in tune again.
Another way your guitar can sound better with a setup is adjusting the pickup height and or pole pieces (usually on humbuckers). These can DRASTICALLY change the tones you can pull from your instrument and overall, how your instrument sounds to you. A trained luthier can get your guitar to sing with a few adjustments to your pickups! Overall, the sound of your instrument will improve when setup by a skilled luthier, which is a huge benefit to having your guitar worked on.
Overall, your guitar will thank you, and you will thank yourself after you get your instrument worked on by a skilled luthier. Someone such as myself can make your guitar perfect, no matter how new or old. I take great pride in making sure every instrument that is passed through my hands becomes the best version of itself, and it really shows.
If you have any questions about servicing your instrument, please do not hesitate to reach out to me anytime! I’d love to talk shop or even make sure I can get your instrument the way you want it. Reach out to me by either leaving a comment below or call or text (954) 529-3155 or reach me by email at jakeguitar01@gmail.com.
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Thank you for reading! Keep on rockin!!
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