INSTRUMENT SETUP 

A Word About Setup
Having a properly set up instrument is one of the most important things you can do for your instrument and your playing.  It can take your guitar or bass from something that fights you or doesn’t ‘feel right’ and holds you back, to a friend that opens up new doors for your playing and feels like an extension of your hands.

Unfortunately, most places you go for a set up seem to define it as “throw strings on, tune it, maybe set the intonation or the truss rod, hand it back”.  It also usually means that it gets set up the way the person setting it up thinks it should play, regardless of the way you think it should play.  Often this work is done by music store employees hired off the street for minimum wage, who know very little about how to work on an instrument or set one up properly.   Sometimes they are done by otherwise good techs that are not serious players and therefore don’t know how to look for the fine details a serious player knows to look for, and can’t feel the difference. 

When you bring a guitar to me for a setup, you will get the most accurate, picky, detailed set up anywhere, and it will be based on your play style.  I don’t setup a guitar for a slide player the same way as for a non-slide player, for someone with a heavy attack the same as someone with a light attack, the same for someone that likes medium action as for someone that likes low action.  There are, however, things you can do that all players will feel and appreciate, things that I as a long time serious player who is very picky about his instruments knows to do, but you don’t have to be a long time serious player to notice.  Most people who do setup work don’t know to look for those things. 

The idea here is to get your guitar to play as well as it can and the way you want it to!

Electric Guitar Setup Includes:

• • Neck & Frets cleaned
  • Fretboard oiled (doesn’t apply to maple)
  • Nut slots adjusted
  • Tuning Pegs Tightened
  • Tuning Keys Tightened
  • Truss Rod Adjusted
  • Bridge/Tailpiece Adjusted
  • Trem Angle Adjusted if applicable
  • Bridge Saddle Height Adjusted for optimum string height/slope
  • Intonation Set
  • New Strings Installed
  • Strings Stretched
  • Instrument polished

Note:  Saddle adjustement on Floyd Rose style Trems involves shimming (and usually filing shims if you want it done right..) and is much more time consuming to get correct, additional charge based on time involved. 

RE Floyd Rose Type Locking Nuts:  Optimal playability involves having the nut slots cut to the proper height to match the finger board radius and string size.  This is almost never the case with a stock Floyd Rose, Ibanez Edge, etc, nut.  Some companies are using nuts cut to 10.5” radius on guitars with a 16” radius, which is a huge mismatch and greatly impairs the playability of what might otherwise be a great playing instrument.  It is possible to correct this on a Floyd Rose nut.  It involves filing hardened steel and is time consuming and therefore not cheap.  It is never done at the factory in spite of what some guitar companies will claim (until you really press them).  However, if the locking nut on your guitar is very mismatched to the fret board radius and you are picky about the way your guitar plays, you may want to have this done (I do it to all my guitars with locking nut).   If so, contact me for details. 

Acoustic Guitar Setup Includes:

• • Neck & Frets cleaned
  • Fretboard oiled
  • Nut slots adjusted
  • Tuning Pegs Tightened
  • Tuning Keys Tightened
  • Truss Rod Adjusted
  • Bridge Saddle Height Adjusted for optimum string height/slope
  • New Strings Installed
  • Strings Stretched
  • Instrument polished

NOTE RE ALL SETUPS:  Sometimes minor fretwork will be required due to improperly seated frets etc.  This will increase the cost based on time involved.