The cheapest and surest way to get your guitar set up is to take it to the local guitar shop and have the repair man do it. However, I am going to tell you how an expert sets up a guitar, but if you are ham-handed, you could be sorry. This is a general set of instructions, and details can change depending on how you play; how hard you pick or strum, what kind of music you like to play, etc.

There are four likely reasons the guitar plays out of tune.

1. You don't know how to tune it. Go spend the $20 and get an electronic guitar tuner.
2. The bridge is improperly set up, that is, the bridge pieces (little metal things with screws south of the pickups) are in the wrong positions.
3. Either
a) the bridge is too high,
b) the nut is too high, or
c) the neck has too much bow.
4. Your strings are too light or too heavy. Get a good set of strings -- GHS roundwound steel strings with gauges .009 to 0.042 are a good choice.

If you haven't taken care of #1, go do it now. You will need the electronic tuner to set up the bridge.

Buy a new set of strings and put them on. Tune them using the tuner.

Make sure the screws holding the tuning heads onto the shafts of the tuners are tight, but not so tight that the tuners are difficult to turn.

Before you can set up the bridge (here I mean just the adjustment of the little screws), you need to check the height of the nut and the height of the bridge, but before you can do that, you have to check the bow of the neck.

Sight down the side of the neck from the nut end (where the tuners are). The neck should be almost straight, but with a slight back bow, that is, the neck should curve gradually away from the strings a little bit, being the farthest at the 12th fret. It takes practice to know just how it should look, so your best bet is to get an 18" steel ruler and place it over the frets down the middle of the neck between the middle two strings. There should be a little more than a 1/32" gap between the ruler and the fret closest to the 9" mark. To adjust the truss rod, you need to locate the truss rod access. It may be on the headstock beneath a little plastic cover, or at the otehr end, and it might be adjustible with an allen wrench or a phillips screwdriver, or it might be a nut that needs to be adjusted with a little socket. If the neck has too much back bow, or front bow, adjust the truss rod by turning it clockwise to bring the neck closer to the ruler, and counterclockwise to bring it away. If you bring it away, you should give it the tiniest clockwise turn after it is in the right position to tighten it up. It is helpful to flex the neck a little by hand between quarter turns of the truss rod.

Now you can adjust the nut and bridge height. Press a string to the first fret and measure the distance from the string to the second fret. Now measure the distance from the open string to the first fret. It should be the same as from the string to the second fret when the string is fretted at the first. If the string is too far from the first fret, lift it out of the slot and into the neighbor slot. Use a razor saw (made by X-acto and available at most hardware stores) or a jewelers file to file the nut slot a little lower (a tiny bit at a time! it is easy to take it too deep), with the fret or saw at a 15 degree angle off the fretboard. Pop the string back into the slot and measure again. Do it again and again until it is right. If you cut a little too deep, put a tiny drop of superglue on the tip of a toothpick and wick it in the slot. Sprinkle a little baking soda in the slot and get it right this time. Do this for every string.

Now we adjust the bridge height.

Depending on the type of guitar and how you play, the distance from the low E string to the 12th fret should be anywhere from about 1/16 to 1/8 inch. If you play hard, the larger distance is correct. On the side of the neck with the higher notes, th strings should be a little closer than on the low side, because the excursion of the low E string is larger than that of the high E. Adjust the height of the bridge using the screws in the bridge, or if the height adjustment is individual for each string, using those strings. Usually the neck will have a non-zero radius, that is, there will be a curvature across the frets, so the heights of the bridge pieces should be higher in the middle than on the ends, and should follow the same curvature as the neck. Adjust until the height is right, and you can strum the open strings without them buzzing on the frets.

Now we adjust the individual bridge pieces to assure the strings play in tune. Retune the strings with the tuner. Turn the tone and volume knobs all the way up. We will compare the octave harmonic (the pitch you get when you touch the string lightly at the twelfth fret while plucking it) with the pitch of the string when it is fretted at the 12th fret. Pluck the harmonic and make sure the tuner indicates that it is in tune. Now fret the string and pluck. The pitch indicated on the tuner should be the same as that when you played the harmonic. If not, and the pitch was higher for the fretted note than the harmonic, turn the screw on the bridge piece so that the piece move closer to the rear of the guitar. If it was flat, move the bridge piece closer to the nut. Do this carefully for each string. You will have to retune each string each time you adjust the bridge piece.

To do a really thorough job, you will need to recheck each of these steps at this point, because each adjustment changes the others.

Good luck, and good playing.

Sri Bodhi Prana

Tags: guitar, tyne, guitar setup, harmonics, intonation