5 Step Guitar Setup Every Player Should Know

so for the last two or three months I've spent a lot of time out on the road with my band Noah Guthrie in good trouble and we just finished up our last run for the Year this past weekend with two shows in Florida now the guitars that I've had out on the road have absolutely been through the ringer most of the shows we did were outdoors and crazy heat they were living in the guitar vault in the back of the trailer they need some TLC now for a long time I've been the type of player that just outsourced all my guitar setup and maintenance work I didn't think I was capable or handy enough to do my own basic setups but that's been changing it's something I've wanted to learn about so over the last few weeks behind the scenes I've been practicing and learning some of the basic techniques and in this video we're going to talk about five guitar setup techniques that every guitar player should know no matter what type of electric guitar you might be playing this is something we should all be doing ourselves to keep our guitars in the best playing shape possible and that actually brings us to the sponsor of today's video and that is music Nomad music Nomad very great graciously sent out a full Suite of their guitar setup repair maintenance cleaning tools and I was able to finally get my guitar workbench area set up down here in the basement and they also provided me with their keep it simple setup system which is perfect for a player like me who's relatively new to setups but we'll walk you through all the processes necessary to keep your guitar in Tip-Top shape if you want more information on the tools that I'm using from music Nomad that's going to be linked down below and they've also agreed to give away a full kit set up to one of you watching the videos so to be entered in the giveaway follow the link down below a quick note about the giveaways as many of you probably know there's a huge problem with spammers on YouTube right now you will see the official giveaway Link in the pin comment below and that is it I will not be replying to any comments with giveaway links and I will not be asking anyone to reply to me on any other apps to do this giveaway so let's jump in and get started so this is my Fender Venter era tele custom I absolutely love this guitar and this has been used as my open G slide guitar on the road and I've decided to leave it in openg because Keith Richards but when I transitioned it to openg I never did a proper setup on it so it needs some slight adjustments with the action the radius and the truss rod but before we get to all that our first step is to do a full string change and clean on this guitar as you can probably tell with it being a black finish it's in desperate need of some cleaning first thing we're going to do is pull the old strings off [Music] okay so next up we're going to polish the Frets and this is something that I actually used to skip all the time just out of laziness I'm a little bit embarrassed to admit but since I started doing it it makes such a huge difference so I'm going to use this fret polishing kit that musicnomads sent over it's these nice little metal strips that fit over your Frets and guard your fretboard from the rag and the Polish so all you got to do is take a microfiber Rag and this is one of those just a dabble duty of situations just go to town now if you've never paused your Frets before it does make a huge difference in the feel they feel super smooth there we go guitar is clean Frets are polished so the next step is to actually check our fretboard radius this is something you probably don't have to do every time you set up your guitar if you already know it but I am just going to double check here because this is going to be important when it comes to getting our actions set correctly so as part of their guitar setup kit music Nomad has these radius gauges and with this being more of a vintage style instrument yep this is a seven and a quarter fretboard radius so that's going to be important when it comes time to set our action all right so now the next thing we need to do is put new strings on the guitar so we can continue with the setup but before we do that I'm actually going to use some lube in the nut slots and on the Saddles to help prevent any pinging or catching of the strings when you're tuning or playing them you don't need a lot but anywhere the string contacts either a saddle or a nut slot this will help keep it from binding up so for Strings I'm going to go 10 to 46 because this is primarily a hybrid setup guitar both slide and threaded playing I'm going with a slightly heavier gauge string than I normally play with most fenders I play nines but I'm gonna go tens on this Telly and this tele is equipped with the vintage style tuners which are actually my favorite the way I've always measured my strings to length especially with these vintage tuners is to come down to the headstock here pull some tension on the string and then use the actual tuning machines to measure so I know this is my low E string it's going to go in this first tuning machine here and on my wound strings I want about three wraps on the post two to three wraps because these are vintage style the string end is going to go down into the tuning machine and then wrap around so I need a little bit more length so I'm going to measure off of the next tuning machine and then the next one and that's where I'm going to clip my low E string clean nice uh two wraps on the post and then we just rinse and repeat so one machine two machines clip okay so strings have changed we've got it tuned up to open G now we're going to adjust the truss rod we're going to check the truss rod and see if it needs to be tweaked one way or another my gut is telling me that it's going to need a little help because of all the temperature swings it's been going through over the last few months one important note here whenever you are tuning your guitar when setting up you don't want to tune with it on the neck rests like this because this is actually putting some upward pressure on the guitar and it's affecting the tuning so when it comes time to set your action and your intonation you want to get your guitar tuned up in playing position like this it's important to have your guitar in tune in playing position because as the string tension changes the neck is going to move slightly one way or the other so we want to check the truss rod while it's in tune [Music] so there's plenty of different ways to check whether or not your truss rod needs to be adjusted first way to know is if you have an excessive amount of fret buzz the neck is back bowed or B you can actually just cite down the neck and this has been my most used method and it works pretty well I mean I can see there is a slight uh back bow in the neck right here but the way music Nomads suggests doing it in there keep it simple setup system is actually by using feeler gauges and this is not something that I had ever tried before but it's way way more accurate they include a few different feeler gauges for different guitar types we're going to use this one the 0.006 feeler gauge for electric guitar our first step is to fret the low E string at the first fret the way I've got that done is just with a pick shoved in between the bottom three strings here and then we're gonna check by putting the guitar in playing position and I'm going to fret the 12th fret and I'm going to slide this feeler gauge underneath the sixth fret in between the sixth fret and the sixth string and what we should be looking for is a very very slight touch between the feeler gauge and the string so we're pretty close here but I do think we could use a small adjustment it is touching the gauge relatively heavily so we need to turn the truss rod counterclockwise to allow a little bit more relief in the neck if you have the opposite problem where the feeler gauge slid in between the string and the Fret and they weren't touching at all you'd have to go clockwise so we're going to use an allen wrench to adjust the truss rod because this is a 70 style tele it's got the bullet truss rod adjustment so I'm going to go just one little bit at a time when you're adjusting your truss rod you want to go a quarter turn an eighth of a turn at a time let the neck settle in let it adjust check it and then go from there and if you run into a situation where your trust Rod's not spinning at all don't force it that's how you break truss rods instead take it into a local Tech or your luthier and have them look at it right on the money that is perfect so step three is setting your action now because I've transitioned this to primarily a slide guitar in open G I'm going to set the action slightly higher than I normally would for one of my normal guitars quote unquote but not too high because I also like to be able to play fretted easily with a slide setup guitar now this is the string action gauge that comes with the keep it simple setup kit from music Nomad and it's super useful you've got a couple of different scales on here you got your string action here and then on the other side in 60 fourths and what's really cool is on the actual gauge they give you a table for electric acoustic and bass for common action Heights from high high medium medium all the way down to low so for this I think we're going to go with a medium action so on electric guitar with the low E we're looking for a 0.065 so the way we're going to do this we're going to fret the low East ring on the first fret with a capo or a guitar pick and then we're going to take our string action gauge and we're going to put it on the Frets behind the low E string just like this and we're going to measure right on top of the 12th fret and what we're looking for is a line to appear on the bottom of the string we're measuring from the bottom of the string to the top of the Fret so right now the the highest line that I could see on the gauge is 0.06 so that's actually good for the low E string but I know from playing slide on this guitar that the higher strings the first second and third string the action is a little low so I'm going to do the same thing but for the high E string and it is a little low I'm seeing 0.03 so we need to make an action adjustment on this saddle now because this is a tele we have three shared Saddles instead of individual Saddles so that's going to impact are set up a little bit now again the name of the game here is small incremental adjustments and it actually helps to kind of keep track of your turns so I can see where the set screw is facing right now it's parallel with the neck so I'm going to start with just one full turn clockwise and that's going to raise that Saddle Up okay yeah we're right on the money just above 0.05 so next step is to set the radius of your Bridge of your Saddles to match the radius of the fretboard and like we checked when the strings were off we know that the radius of this neck is seven and a quarter because this is a vintage style instrument it's a really really round fretboard now because I'm setting this guitar up to be primarily a slide guitar I'm actually going to deviate from this step just a little bit but for your normal guitar setup what you would do is take your radius gauge with the proper radius and you would rest it on the strings about a quarter of an inch or so in front of your Saddles now on this guitar I'm actually having an issue where the radius gauge is running into the ashtray Bridge so I'm going to come up here just past the bridge and what you're looking for is all six strings to touch the radius gauge without there being any gaps so right now I can tell that my uh D and my G string are actually a little bit flat flat they're not quite touching the center of the radius gauge but I actually want that because this is primarily a slide guitar and the fretboard is so round the radius is so round it actually can create an issue when you're trying to Bar all six strings with the slide or even four strings with the slide that it can be quite difficult you actually have to press down on the strings with the slide and it can cause issues of fretting out so instead I'm actually going to flatten this radius out just a little bit now it's going to make it a little bit more difficult to play fretted because my high E string and my low E string are going to be higher off the neck than they realistically should be but again this being a slide guitar I want the flatter radius okay so the next step is to adjust the intonation because we've adjusted the action and the string height and we've gone to a different string gauge we need to adjust our intonation so essentially intonation is the length of the string from the saddle to the nut how long or short the string is adjusts how in tune your guitar is up and down the neck now because this is a tele with the shared saddle ashtray design we're not going to be able to get it absolutely perfectly intonated also because these Saddles are not compensated meaning they don't have the proper adjustment between each individual string to get it to intonate even closer now I probably will put compensated brass saddles on this guitar that's one mod I do to basically all of my telecasters I think it's a really really great upgrade to make but for now we're just going to get it as close as we possibly can so if you've never done this before the way we check intonation is again in playing position we want to go one string at a time you want to get it absolutely as perfectly in tune as you can helps to have a really good tuner to do this and then you're gonna fret the note at the 12th fret now if you notice my tuner here this low D is reading a little bit sharp so what that means is we actually need to make the string a little bit longer if it's sharp you adjust the saddle backwards if it's flat you adjust the saddle forwards that's one of those things I could never remember I always have to look it up when I check my intonation and if I check my G because they're both on the shared saddle the G is a little sharp as well although it's not quite as sharp as the low D is so this is what I was talking about with compensated Saddles I sort of have to split the difference between the D and the g string so I'm going to make this out a longer by tightening this screw and again this is a game of millimeters you really don't need a ton of adjustment and because we've made the string longer now we need to re-tune so there we go sixth string right on the money fifth string right on the money so now I'm going to go do that for the remaining four strings and we should be perfectly intonated so there we have it that guitar is cleaned set up and ready to go now I've got to do this to about six or seven other guitars that have been out on the road with me now there are some slight differences when it comes to doing this with a tele versus a strat versus a Les Paul for instance we didn't get into setting up a tremolo to be floating or decked if you guys want I can make a separate video on that in the near future let me know in the comments section down below but the basics are all the same adjusting your truss rod getting your action and your Bridge your Saddles adjusted properly cleaning and maintaining things like the Frets and the nut slots and the Saddles will keep your guitar sounding great and playing in tune and playing well and this is something to keep in mind as seasons change and temperature and humidity levels change you're going to need to be doing this a few times a year to keep your guitar in the best playing shape possible huge thanks once again to musicnomad for sponsoring today's video if you want one more information on the tools and the setup kits that I was using as well as their keep it simple setup system which walks you through this entire process I'll have them Linked In the description box down below as well as a link to enter to win the giveaway from music Nomad that's all in the description box down below while you're down there leave a comment a like and please subscribe it helps the channel still according to my analytics about 60 of the people that watch this channel on normal basis aren't subscribed so clicking that little red button and that Bell really helps me out in keeping this channel going and I greatly appreciate it my name is Rhett Scholl thank you so much for watching and remember there is no plan B foreign [Music]

Channel: Rhett Shull

Views: 70,358

Keywords: guitar setup, guitar luthier, electric guitar, low action, truss rod, string action, guitar tech tips, guitar neck, best guitar setup, guitar tips, guitar maintenance, Rhett Shull

Id: j84nSxlhQ04

Length: 16min 59sec (1019 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 17 2022