Guitar How-To

This is a brief, no-frills listing of the stages of setting up an electric guitar. I am assuming that you are familiar with guitar playing and if there are any terms mentioned in the guitar setup list that you don’t understand you will probably get the answers you want from guitar forum. Also you can get more info from Guitar Setup at http://playaguitarforfree.com/

Change all the strings. As you tune them stretch them so they will stay in tune while you play. Use an electronic guitar tuner to tune your strings.

Check whether the neck is straight or very slightly bowed.

This is hardly ever necessary but you need to do relief adjustments just turn the truss rod nut about a quarter turn then see how you feel.

You should have already decided how high you want your action. You will, of course need to adjust the action if the strings are buzzing. If you want a really low action you will have to adjust your pickups so they won’t be touched by the strings.

Now you can adjust the bridge, one string at a time starting with the first string. You will be adjusting allen screws or phillips head screws. You need to position your strings so they are barely missing buzzing on the frets, so lower each one till it hits the frets, then raise it till it stops buzzing when you are playing a note at the very highest fret.

Get the guitar back in tune with your electronic tuner.

Now adjust the intonation which is the length of guitar string between the nut and the bridge’s saddle. There are screws to turn to adjust the intonation. Use your tuner to check that each string played open should be the same on the tuner as the note at the twelfth fret.

Now you adjust your pickups. You need to plugged into an amp that has some kind of visual display for volume. Start with the guitar in tune. Now adjust the bridge pickup upwards till it touches the strings then down until the strings are still clear of the pickup when you are playing at the highest fret.

Now write down your volume meter level. Make sure there’s no overdrive. Go to the neck pickup and go through the same procedure as you did with the bridge pickup. Lower it till your volume reading is down a couple of notches. Do the same thing again with the middle pickup if you have one. Make it to the same volume as the neck pickup.

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