Set up advice needed for valuable guitars

[Pickup Artist]

I am an experienced player that has not attempted their own playability set up before - I've always taken it somewhere else.

I would like to adjust the string action for my style (not necessarily to be super low) and the intonation. I  thought about having the nut changed to an Earvana, but have decided against that for now.

I think my pickup height is fine, but that might change also with new string height. Also I want to experiment with different string guages rather than just trying different brands, so it would be useful to know how to do a good set up without having to take it to a guitar workshop frequently.

The thought of turning the truss rod makes me nervous.

I would appreciate advice or links on how to do a setup.

Thanks.

[WezV]

how valuable we talking... i would say its best to learn these things on cheaper guitars!!

[MDV]

You can do the action, intonation and change strings with confidence of not doing any harm, I believe.

You may find that you adjust it to where you dont want it to be, or it gets a while to get used to some idiosyncracies, but you shouldnt do your guitar any harm. Its just use of a screwdriver and/or allen keys.

The truss rod is nothing to be terribly afraid of, but the scare stories arent wholly unfounded - you can permanently deform the neck in an undesirable way or unscrew the rod (I've done that one before, back when I was taking the first steps of teching about 10 years ago, very shortly after I got my first guitar)

theres a caveat to these things, a floyd rose shaped caveat. If you have one, there are some extra pointers you'll need to not lose parts of it. send it flying, or just pull your hair out. They get really easy when you know what youre doing, but they can be a pain before then.

However, how you actually do all these things varies from guitar to guitar, so what guitars?

[WezV]

The truss rod is nothing to be terribly afraid of, but the scare stories arent wholly unfounded - you can permanently deform the neck in an undesirable way or unscrew the rod (I've done that one before, back when I was taking the first steps of teching about 10 years ago, very shortly after I got my first guitar)

stripping the threads or snapping the rod are the main dangers.   They are avoided by having the right sized tool, only making adjustments with the string tension slackened, and always loosening the truss rod a bit to make sure its not siezed before tightening it again.

I know a lot of people do it at full tension and get away with it but i still recommend care

[MDV]

The truss rod is nothing to be terribly afraid of, but the scare stories arent wholly unfounded - you can permanently deform the neck in an undesirable way or unscrew the rod (I've done that one before, back when I was taking the first steps of teching about 10 years ago, very shortly after I got my first guitar)

Hmm, never encoutered these. Thanks for the lesson :D

stripping the threads or snapping the rod are the main dangers.   They are avoided by having the right sized tool, only making adjustments with the string tension slackened, and always loosening the truss rod a bit to make sure its not siezed before tightening it again.

I know a lot of people do it at full tension and get away with it but i still recommend care

[Pickup Artist]

I've found quite a few web resources and some stuff on youtube also. I need to take it all in and think about it first before getting out my allen keys.

Thanks for the tips. I'll post again if I mess it up.

And finally do you think it's worth investing in a metal ruler and calipers? I understand a metal ruler can be useful to check neck bow.

Here's one of the links I found:

http://www.icepoint.com/guitar/Setting%20up%20your%20electric%20guitar/

[Matt77]

If you have a good eye you can measure neck bow with the off cuts of unwound strings.
On my Les Paul I like the neck relief at about 0.010in.
I put the guitar in standard tuning, place a capo at the first fret and fret the low e string at the last fret. Rather than use a feeler gauge to check the gap between the top of the 8th fret and the underside of the low e string, I measure the gap with two off cuts, one from a 9 and one from an 11.

If the 6th string moves up slightly when I put the 9 under it I adjust the rod one way, if it moves when I put the 11 under it I adjust it the other way.

[Pickup Artist]

I'm thinking about taking off all the strings at once so I can clean all the dirt off the fingerboard.

Is there any disadvantage to that other than possibly having to adjust the truss rod more when I restring it?

In the past I have always removed and replaced one string at a time to avoid the setup going off, but since I'm redoing the whole setup from scratch I suppose it doesn't matter.

[MDV]

No, it'll be fine.