5 Guitar Setup Tips & Tricks You NEED To Know

and it's elevated so it's you know you can see underneath it oh so you can just drop your pig drug yeah yeah yeah actually Brian did next set on it years ago and it's and you could totally see like the is that overspray on oh yeah it's just spray painted that's all just take a stencil and just lay it on the headstock it's how much are these now okay so I'm back here at dojo guitar pair with my good friend Dave Onorato Dave Onorato I came back down here today though because I want to make a video with Dave taking you through some essential setup and guitar maintenance tips that all guitar players need to know and need to be doing on a pretty regular basis and selfishly I wanted to make this video because I'm terrible with the nuts and bolts of actually keeping a guitar in good playable shape I tore a lot I travel with my guitars a lot and I never do anything other than change the strings and occasionally maybe clean the fret board so today Dave is going to take us through some essential guitar maintenance and care tips and tricks [Music] okay first off we'll start with acoustics stuff to look for just you know say you get off the road or you get done doing some gigs and they're like you start noticing maybe the actions getting a little high or you get some buzzing that you haven't had because of either weather the next moving whatever first thing I always like to do is to see how the bridge and the neck angle are on an acoustic you'll get the bridge that will move a lot the top will actually buckle up you can kind of see like on this guitar it's actually got a little bit of a hump in it and that's from the humidity in the air and the tension on the guitar it pulls the top up so when that happens the string gets higher or I can't get lower depending on how it's being affected so first of all I just like to go site down the neck and usually a lot of people always get this question but by hundreds of guitar players to come anything like I don't know what I'm looking at when I look at a neck to see if it's straight or not and simply what I do is you just kind of close one eye and just follow the line of the neck down the body of to the guitar and if you close one eye you can actually see where how the neck is in the fretboard in here so if you see something that's going like this with a massive bow in it that means you've got to tighten the truss rod sometimes you have to take the neck off like on some Fender guitar solid bodies but we're just dealing with acoustics right now most the time they're usually here or up in the sound hole but what I like to do is see you know how much bows in the neck and see how much distance is from this saddle here to like where the 12th fret is and then from the 12th fret to here to where the nut is so cuz it's an equal distance between the two like on this guitar this guitar has a pretty decent sized bow in it so now I know that that means that you got to tighten the truss rod if you lose sight down your neck and it's back bowed and it's getting like you're buzzing out up in here in the middle of the neck or up in here you get a lot of buzz you want to back off the truss rod because that means it's too tight so how much should people be adjusting their truss rods at a time it kind of depends on the guitar but I usually tell people an eighth of a turn either way to see how much play is in the truss rod like if you get into a guitar that has a backbone in it and you go to adjust the truss rod and you realize that the truss rod is already loose you have a major problem with your guitar so you can't adjust that out same as if you have a heavy bow in the neck and you go to adjust a truss rod and it's really tight and you can't tighten it anymore you have another problem with a guitar so outside of those two instances you should be able to get at least an eighth of a turn a quarter return without too much problem and every time you do it just sight the neck and see if how much it's being affect its second thing I like to do and it's it's a big one that most people overlook when you're taking off your strings and you're kind of cleaning your guitar make sure to go and check to see how tight your tuners are that these unfortunately are non adjustable tuners but like on a you know normal guitar hair like this you know like a set of Grover's you've got a couple of points of action where you can actually adjust the tuner so you've got these screws here on the buttons that you can tighten up so I always check those so if you're having tuning problems or you seem to have strings that are loosening up slipping see how loose these are and tighten them if they're loose tighten them until they're nice and snug the other thing is also on these gears where you have a threaded bushing a lot of times these threaded bushings will loosen up simply take the string off and just take a socket and tighten that down and make sure it's tight because at all of these points if any of these are loose it's a possible area where the string and the tuner are actually moving and you're getting tuning issues so that's an easy one you know and I can't tell you how many guitars I get in here guys go I can't keep my guitar tuned I don't know what's going on and it's just simply loose tuners you know so that's right so for the next tip this is something I screw up all the time and it's adjusting the intonation this is something that as guitar players we should be doing regularly and know how to do so Dave what is intonation and how do we fix it when it's out what you want to do you can use I would suggest using a good floor tuner or a good rack tuner if you got rack tuner it says either one I would signal not suggest using a headstock tuner because they're not quite as finite as the floor tuners or generous so and with the intonation you want to be as close as you possibly can and the thing about a guitar that you have to remember is that you will never get a guitar to be perfectly in tune typically even the best guitars temper tuning all of that you can get them extremely close but they are a stringed instrument and they always will be out just slightly and it's just sort of the thing that you can't get around so we have to find the happy medium basically there's a few ways you want to do this I would suggest not laying the guitar down like this and in checking your intonation because if you do this you can actually pull it out of tune by pressing simply on the neck and watching it move on a tuner so put it in playing position you know sit do it this way because this is the way you're pretty much gonna play at all times and are you fretting on the 12th fret are you what I do first is just hit them hit the harmonic to see where it's on the tuner so what that one's showing it's basically this is the low E I'm hitting it's basically in tin right there so then what I do is just simply as light as I can I try not to over push on the string but just right in the middle hit it and you can see this one so just a tad flat so if you're say your string is sharp on your tuner you actually want to move saddle the saddle here take a screwdriver you actually want to move it back this way so if it's sharp at the 12th fret when you fret it you want to go back and that means tightening this that's why you you tighten it and the settle actually goes this way if it's sharp you want to go I'm sorry flat you want to go toward the neck so the good thing about these type bridges is that you have plenty of room to adjust now sometimes you'll get a bridge like something like this like a wraparound tail piece where you don't have any adjustment as far as the actual saddle because it's obviously you can see it's notched here the only way you can do this that on this bridge is actually take a allen wrench and tighten these loosen these and it will actually angle the bridge either way on the treble side or the bass side and I checked the height of the nut because you know after a while these the slots will get worn out sometimes they'll get a little too loan they start to buzz but I'd like to check the the nut height then with the way this way to do it is just take your index finger run across the third position here and just take your index finger and see how much play you have between the first the fret here and in the actual nut you can kind of see how the strings move in there a little bit this nut is cut fine but if you do this and you notice that the nut is is kind of high you're gonna have a lot of play in it so like this one you can see like I'm pushing down on the fourth string here and there's got some play between where I'm taping it with my finger and where I'm pushing on it I typically like to have the strings as low as I can cut the slots cut is low so there's not a lot of height than that and what that'll do it it actually it will mess with your tuning and then also it will feel different like that if the nuts higher you're gonna feel the actions gonna feel higher even though you have it low at the bridge it's still gonna feel high up in here and that's something that's fairly easy to do to our salads perfectly into my next question and that is what are some common tools and things that every guitar player should maybe not carry with them to a gig but have at home to keep their guitars in tip-top shape well I look at it like you know it's like anything your tools are everything so first I like to use radius gauges which the radius gauge is basically just a set of these gauges that you can get from a bunch of different suppliers and their different radiuses for each one's I've got everything from a seven and a quarter which is a normal fender all the way up to a twenty which is a like a flat classical now obviously you would need to bring all these to a gig but if you find out what your radius is on your particular guitar or ones that you use a lot of you know just buy three or four of these they're fairly inexpensive and the greatest thing about these is if you don't know how to set action on a guitar this is basically kind of a dummy way idiot-proof way doing it so like this tele I got I know is like a compound radius but it'll flatten out at like a 16 so I just go and look at the 16 and they're all numbered so it's easy to figure out you basically just slide these under the string this is my guitar by the way so if I hit ok and what you do with this is you just take the radius gauge and pull the radius gauge up under the strings and you can see what you do is you just set your bridge saddles to the arch of this radius gage so if you know if you get a bridge it's all wonky and you get ones that are lower really inconsistent a lot of times it's usually the saddles have just been messed with and they're not anywhere near the right radius so all you do is you take this radius gage if you just want to check it even and over time you know on a Fender bridge from playing it and hitting your hand on it sweat bending strings you know these can fall and collapse and the allen wrench screws can can loosen and change and that'll mess with your radius so the easiest way to check it is just take one of these pull it up and you can see if there's ones with gaps in it or could not if they're perfectly across like this I know the radius is OK the other thing I would suggest getting is a basically like a fuel gauge for guitar and this is just to check the action height so you can get these at Stu Mac also and I'm not being paid by stomach by the way to say that but if they want to send me a check that's like I'll take the rig I'll take the the gauge here and actually just measure at the 12th fret the height of the strings and what I end up doing personally for myself is all I'll check it and I'll go like 2 or 3 gigs and I'll make a mental note I'll just write it down what what it was the last time I checked it to see if the next moving at all so to suggest buying a set of metric and imperial allen wrench so you can cover the bases between American and non-american guitars the ever trusty string winder with it you can't get around you have to have one of these another one that I love is the is this snaps 2.0 bridge pin puller and the guys at big rocker or good guys and they make a lot of cool stuff and it's real simple to use and it's just it saves so much time and it saves a lot of bridge damage and all this is simply likes ok so you get your normal bridge pin here and you want to like change the string well you use this little snaps tool and you basically just go right over this pit the bridge pin and push this collar down like this and just pull up on it and just rock it back and forth pulls it right out you know you'll never have to see this ever again where somebody's doing this and ruining a bridge or the pins whatever yeah I see it I'll actually do that up nice enough see it all the time straight I've always just use this thing on the streamliner that little thing in there and what happens is I get under there yes well that's I think that's why the snaps I've never I've had one of these for a while and it's never screwed a pin up never skirt the bridge up lifesaver so we should point out they're not sponsoring this video at all no this is just no actually it's not this is dry use these tools there's nothing in any of this that I get paid for that I've been given whatever I buy all this stuff I use it and if it works great then I I support it if it doesn't I'll tell you I have no qualms what really works cuz you get the t-shirt on well the other thing I would suggest and this is really easy to make or use if you want ok say you take your strings off your your acoustic and you've got all these loose and the strings are flying all over the place and you don't want them to get caught up in each other just take two strips of velcro ok this is really easy to do just slide one under the string and then take another the over other piece here and do this and your strings don't go anywhere and they stay put so you can you know literally I can take all of these strings off have them flopping all over the place and they you know they don't come off the tuner and vice versa if you take them off here use it right here you know and so either way it'll work and it's real simple simple easy little hack to use I mean they're if they're you know you got to think smart with that kind of stuff and uh cool yeah and so when the strings are loose there I can actually pull the strings off have them over here work on the nut put the strings back on and they don't get caught up in each other so okay so the next thing we're to talk about is setting your pickup height adjusting your pickups to get the right balance of tone without sacrificing yeah right sure first I get a lot of guys in with humbuckers that tend to collapse inside to the the ring like they actually fall in down in the guitar and what happens is this spring or this screw will loosen up and they're just hanging in there so what I like to do with this and it's real easy to do and I've done this on all my guitars with humbuckers where you've got a screw sticking out here I just like to get like a little tiny nut like this put the nut over it so it'll never collapse you just tighten it against that and you can you know this will never fall through and never let you'll never lose the spring or the screw and it fits right down in there sometimes depending on the guitar you might have to do a slight bit of routing which usually you don't because the way these most Gibson's in and Gibson style guitars have these cuts for the for the legs here you know and it fits right down in it so that's an easy like literally five cent thick so you know fixer-upper for for this problem so how do you how do you dial in your pickup height though first of all just plug the guitar in and go through each string and see that see how the definition is between a harmonic and open string play it all the way you know just go up the neck each note and see which notes tend to be popping out more than others and as you're doing that just adjust the pole and see if you can find you know get a nice medium with each one on a humbucker it's the same principle as the p90 what I like to do is always you know if you're gonna be adjusting this stuff don't don't adjust it like this so where you can slip and hit the top of the guitar always put the guitar flat and guide this I like to guide the the actual screwdriver with my finger like this so if it does slip off it doesn't hit the top of the guitar and simply adjust this up and down you can see where the pickup is moving up and down here what I like to do is set the humbucker we're the string height is I'd like to keep the the the humbucker depending on how powerful what kind of magnets there but if they're normal likes PAF style pickups in the 8 to 9 K range I usually like to have maybe oh I don't know probably maybe like a like an eighth of an inch a quarter of an inch from the top of the the cover to the where the string is so again use your ear though because all pickups are different they're all rated different they all sound different and they sound different in different positions so use your ear find you know find what sounds good to you or best you and don't know don't be wigged out about the visual like say you know if you've got a couple of pull pieces they're really lower than the others but it sounds great leave it ok wise member this gets hard this is but I've been seen this thing in years this is the best feature of this guitar right here you ready for the moment look at this yeah you got a built-in yeah pick holder yeah whatever you do do not put this on the Internet plan your shredding you're up here you're doing all things dive-bombs right oh I dropped my pick fret not because you've got your handy dandy pick dispenser right here and you're right back to just melting face and oh this is my new signature guitar by the way yeah yeah I can hear Floyd Rose all over no records yeah for sure I mean dude yeah all right so those are five tricks that you need to know to keep your guitar playing and sounding great as always thanks Dave for helping me out with the video follow him on instagram at dojo guitar repair I'll have that linked down below and if you're in the Atlanta area and you need any kind of guitar work done yeah this is the dude I have to do out-of-state work too so people send me guitars all the time if you're interested in picking anything up that we talked about in the video all the links will be in the description box down below those will be affiliate links so if you buy anything through that I'll earn a small Commission which helps me up in making these videos that follow me on instagram at Rhett shoal subscribe here if you haven't done so already click the bell to be notified when I'm going live and posting new videos and let us know in the comments what do you want to see Dave and I do next yeah yeah we're always open to ideas you know and we'll tell you know now definitely I sent him in we're always you know always looking for cool different stuff to mess around with or if you got crazy questions about stuff whatever yeah great thanks everyone and see on the next one

Channel: Rhett Shull

Views: 454,097

Keywords: guitar setup string height, guitar setup tools, guitar setup tips, guitar setup guide, guitar setup low action, guitar setup intonation, guitar setup kit, Rhett Shull, dojo guitar repair, Guitar Setup, Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Tips and Tricks, Hacks, rhett shull guitar, beginner guitar, guitar tips, guitar maintenance, guitar tricks, guitar lessons for beginners

Id: yDgm2D1pBrM

Length: 19min 16sec (1156 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 23 2020