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guitar action

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7/2/2004 3:00 PM

guitar action

I have a G&L commanche, and eventhough i have been playing guitar for about 5-6 years now, i know nothing about the technical stuff of the guitar. The bridge is a dual fulcrum bridge, just for info in case you need to know for the answer. I would like to detune my guitar to B F# B E G# C#, but the strings bottom out. I have noticed that the action of the guitar towards the top of the neck(by the tuners) is really low, and one of the strings is pretty much touching. I would like to know how to drop my guitar down to B F# B E G# C#, and fix the action to where it isn't so low that its touching,yet not to high to make playing harder. Thanks.

7/2/2004 7:57 PM

I think you need to get a new nut on the guitar to raise the action on the low frets (by the tuners). You could do it yourself, but given that you said you have no knowledge about the technical stuff of the guitar, then you should probably take it to a luthier to do it. It's not too expensive really, just tell him what you want to do, and it should be done in no time. There is a link to the side that talks about how to do a guitar setup, but if it really is the nut height (as it sounds), those set-ups won't help much, but they are worth a try.

7/3/2004 11:25 AM
Soapbarstrat	What gauges are the strings ? You probably should use heavier strings. You'll probably need to put the neck relief back in if you keep the same gauge strings, or the heavier strings don't pull the neck into enough relief. Rob

7/3/2004 11:33 AM
justin	i don't have a neck releif.... don't know what it is.?

7/3/2004 12:42 PM

The 'neck relief' is a very slight bowing the necks has, in order to keep the strings from buzzing when they are adjusted to be as low as possible. There is usually an adjustable nut at one of the neck to fine tune the amount of neck relief. The most basic way to check the relief, is to have the guitar strings all in tune, and hold the guitar in the playing position, press the 6th string down at the first fret and with your other hand, press the 6th string down at the body joint area (15th fret or so), then look at the slight gap under the 6th string at the 7th fret (gap between strings bottom and the top of the fret). There should be a real slight gap. I like a gap of about .004" (that's 4 thousandths of an inch-- like a hair)

There are better methods for finding out what such slight measurements really are, besides just using your eye (too hard to do, really), such as straight-edges and feeler-gauges.

With the method I mentioned earlier, I usually use a capo at the first fret to keep one hand free to use a ruler and feeler-gauges to measure that gap at the 7th fret.

When you tune down the strings, you change the neck bow. If it was set pretty much just right, the neck will loose the slight bow it needs when you tune down. It will probably cause the neck to go into a back-bow ( the opposite of forward bow) . The needed neck relief is actually forward-bow (but real slight as I explained).

When adjusting the neck relief with the nut at one end of the neck, you only turn the nut a small amount, then check to see how the neck bow changed.

That nut is called the truss-rod nut. It puts pressure on a metal rod running along the inside of the neck, called the truss-rod.

7/6/2004 12:46 PM
Earl Norton	Check this out. http://www.musicianshotline.com/archive/monthly/guitar_er/02_04.htm

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