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  #31  
Old 05-22-2015, 10:51 AM
kydave kydave is offline
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Thanks for a better & lengthier explanation than I'd have come up with.

Look at it this way: IF lowering the saddle makes the first fret buzz, then you improperly cut the nut slots too low.

IF you cut the nut slots properly, you can't adjust the saddle so low at to cause first fret buzz without causing buzz everywhere.

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  #32  
Old 05-22-2015, 11:37 AM
SgtV SgtV is offline
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Accomplished guitarists have never asked me to set the action almost good enough..... They want it set as low as it can be depending on the strings and their picking style.

Cutting the nut is the last thing I do after the guitar plays clean when fretting.
If it makes it palettable set it up anyway you want but be aware of what I've said.
And if you lower the bridge and it buzzes everywhere you have other issues causing that.
" you've cut the nut incorrectly if it then buzzes when lowering the saddle" nonsense. I can't believe someone said that.
If you all have been getting away with almost setting a guitar up as good as it can be, then you open the door to another guitar tech luring the players away.
Whether you've been doing it for 50 or 10 years get the action low and clean playing and your skills with always be in demand.

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Last edited by SgtV; 05-22-2015 at 12:14 PM.
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  #33  
Old 05-22-2015, 11:39 AM
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devellis devellis is offline
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Another way to think about this is to imagine a zero fret rather than a nut. The height of a zero fret isn't messed with unless all the frets are being leveled. A saddle adjustment won't necessitate a change to the height of a zero fret. If a guitar is buzzing, either the saddle height or the relief is the culprit, not the zero fret (unless it's come loose and raised up out of its slot). A properly notched nut is functionally equivalent to a zero fret and, likewise, normally shouldn't be messed with once it's properly set.

In practice, many people set the nut slots just a whisper above the plane of the frets (so that when you push down a string between frets 2 and 3, you can just barely see daylight between the string and the top of fret 1). That provides a little cushion against slot wear as the strings saw back and forth through them during restringing. But if the string just barely made contact with the top of fret 1, you'd be fine until such time as the slots deepened a bit through wear.
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  #34  
Old 05-22-2015, 11:58 AM
SgtV SgtV is offline
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Sorry double post.
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  #35  
Old 05-22-2015, 01:09 PM
Ned Milburn Ned Milburn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Howard Klepper View Post
Relief is both first and last. The action and playability cannot be reliably optimized (i.e., you might get lucky and hit it just right when you first set it, but it is very unlikely) without coming back to relief at the end.
Good point, and fully agreed. I never thought of it when instructing on setups, but when I think of it now, I check every setup's relief after setting the other variables, and adjust if/as necessary for fine tuning.

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Originally Posted by Howard Klepper View Post
And you do not set it accurately (one or two thousandths of an inch matters here) using the strings as your straightedge; that will only ballpark it, which is probably why so many people don't come back to it at the end--they don't have the means of fine tuning it. A good quality machinist's straightedge is needed. The exception of course is a guitar with a non-adjustable neck reinforcement. The relief can be made right with these by how the neck is reinforced, board-leveled, fretted, and fret-leveled. That takes some experience.
I'll point out here that a straightedge is not in fact needed. It may or may not bring more consistency into the adjustment based upon the artisan's skills, eyes, and preferences. But consistency is not all that is needed for the final truss adjustment. Using all 6 strings as straight-edges and checking each string has the advantage of telling a tale about twisted necks, worn frets, and/or skewed fret-levelling. We should remember, too, that the final ideal adjustment can vary by guitar due to the string gauge, scale length, soundboard vibration (movement) range and other potential variables.
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  #36  
Old 05-22-2015, 02:46 PM
SgtV SgtV is offline
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Default The neck relief tall tale.

Having a bit of neck relief may be necessary and a quick fix when the
neck/fret plane angle ain't done right or has varied.
When done right the neck/fret plane is dead flat with a fade down at the body.
It ain't easy to get things perfect so retailers and manufacturers, like Gibson etc etc, came up with this modification story for setups.
Just because this has been around for many years doesn't make it correct.
Just as my 'years' with guitars doesn't make me correct.
The proof is in the pudding.

We used to take all the Gibsons that were made right and save them for the players and the slightly off ones for the general population.
NYC in the very early '70s.

Don't let the truth cause any pain.
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  #37  
Old 05-22-2015, 02:53 PM
Howard Klepper Howard Klepper is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ned Milburn View Post
Good point, and fully agreed. I never thought of it when instructing on setups, but when I think of it now, I check every setup's relief after setting the other variables, and adjust if/as necessary for fine tuning.



I'll point out here that a straightedge is not in fact needed. It may or may not bring more consistency into the adjustment based upon the artisan's skills, eyes, and preferences. But consistency is not all that is needed for the final truss adjustment. Using all 6 strings as straight-edges and checking each string has the advantage of telling a tale about twisted necks, worn frets, and/or skewed fret-levelling. We should remember, too, that the final ideal adjustment can vary by guitar due to the string gauge, scale length, soundboard vibration (movement) range and other potential variables.
The straightedge can, and should, be used to check relief across the board. It simply is more accurate than using strings as straightedges. Because of its stiffness, a string held down at its ends is not a straight line between the frets at either end of it; and because of its flexibility, there is not a clear line between a feeler gauge just touching the string, and a feeler gauge pushing up on the string.

You are right that a straightedge is not needed, in the sense that no measurement is needed. It's only needed for accurate measurement. One could do all the adjustments on a guitar by tweaking and eyeballing and playing and listening, and never measure anything. Years ago, that is what I did. But I found that along with variables among different guitars come commonalities, and that the variables have mostly predictable effects. There also is the matter of time; if one can get near-perfect quickly by measuring, one can take that much more time for any final tweaking by hand, eye, and ear. Relief is a factor that is very consistent in its effect, and by measuring accurately, variables such as string tension and neck wood are accounted for and compensated for.
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Last edited by Howard Klepper; 05-22-2015 at 03:11 PM.
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  #38  
Old 05-22-2015, 03:19 PM
Ned Milburn Ned Milburn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SgtV View Post
It ain't easy to get things perfect so retailers and manufacturers, like Gibson etc etc, came up with this modification story for setups.
What modification...?? Curious.

Quote:
Originally Posted by SgtV View Post
Having a bit of neck relief may be necessary and a quick fix when the neck/fret plane angle ain't done right or has varied. When done right the neck/fret plane is dead flat with a fade down at the body.
Nah. Not even going to entertain a response...
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  #39  
Old 05-22-2015, 03:27 PM
Aaron Smith Aaron Smith is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ned Milburn View Post
Aaron, something for you to think about


So, there is a look into some concepts of advanced "graduate level" fretwork.
Hey Ned, I understand and agree with everything you wrote. I appreciate you taking the time to elaborate it... I learned a few things from your post. I've had some experience working on older guitars without steel truss rods, and understanding the difference between fingerboard plane and fret plane is crucial, in addition to the knowledge that under tension, the fingerboard doesn't make a perfect parabolic arc. Had to learn those lessons the hard way unfortunately.

I mentioned fret leveling only because I usually find that there's ONE proud fret somewhere, or maybe two, that make it difficult to get optimal action. And it only takes one. I've seen this on new guitars and old, good and bad. I don't think you can get an optimal setup without at least examining the fretwork.

I agree with Buck, Dave, Howard and a bunch of others on the order of setup steps. I think the nut is crucial, but I leave myself a few thousandths of "cushion" above the theoretical lowest setting. In addition to user error (taking one swipe of the file more than I should), I've had the slot compress slightly over time, and a guitar that was perfectly set up on day 1 was buzzing on day 14. I don't mind slowly creeping up on the best nut action over time.

Some more food for thought. When the nut slot is too low and the strings are buzzing, I'm not convinced they're always buzzing on the first fret. Sure the 1st is the fret that is tallest on the "ramp" of frets, but it's also near the point of least excursion of the string. I've had strings buzzing up around the 5th or 6th fret on guitars that had low nut slots, but were set up well otherwise.
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  #40  
Old 05-22-2015, 03:58 PM
SgtV SgtV is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ned Milburn View Post
What modification...?? Curious.



Nah. Not even going to entertain a response...
The mod is setting the relief in the neck.
Sorry but I should have added that the neck/fret plane is raked back a bit on many guitars.
I like classical and flat tops straight and electrics/adjustable brides and arch tops back as necessary.

There are both sides of this discussion on the net.
If I gave a player a guitar with a bow in the neck they'd ask what the problem is.

Anyway if your players are happy rock on.
The only relief, I guess, is not being made to make it right when you had that opportunity.
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  #41  
Old 05-22-2015, 04:00 PM
Ned Milburn Ned Milburn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Howard Klepper View Post
The straightedge can, and should, be used to check relief across the board. It simply is more accurate than using strings as straightedges. Because of its stiffness, a string held down at its ends is not a straight line between the frets at either end of it; and because of its flexibility, there is not a clear line between a feeler gauge just touching the string, and a feeler gauge pushing up on the string.
I'll give your opinion some consideration, Howard. Over time, I have changed my own opinion of things in some cases.

While yes you are correct about strings having stiffness so can sometimes exhibit deflection, with the tension they are pulling, there is very little error-induced deflection without having a significant amount of break angle to the main deflection of the string. At any rate, it is not difficult to find a holding position that negates any error that may blur an accurate sighting using strings as a visual guide.

And if that ain't enough to convince you, just think of most guitars. 6 strings pulling tension above a fretboard. If the strings in general exhibited enough deflection to blur this measurement on a regular basis, then the guitar wouldn't work. If, in fact, a string gives an inaccurate measurement, it is likely because there is a kink in the string (not entirely uncommon) and this will show symptoms similar to a high fret that will become apparent when doing a final check on the instruments chromatic scale.

Sometimes there is more than one method that works. My memory is not always correct, but I do believe there are other venerable members of this forum who, like me, do not prefer a straightedge to set relief. It is true that certain methods sometimes have idiosyncrasies, strengths, or weaknesses that must be understood to avoid potential issues. It is true too that our preferences can certainly change over time. We usually grow through gathering knowledge and experience. But still, sometimes moving to new methods does not improve our result, but just changes the method. For example, I used to use FFFF steel wool on frets, now I use only flexible abrasives. My results are the same.

I'll state again... There exists more than one successful method to achieve an end. To say otherwise is one's own folly. Even in the case of nut vs. saddle - which comes first for adjustment?? I have my preferred method of doing the nut first as many other people do, but still many other competent artisans do the saddle before the nut. I don't argue with people who say they do the saddle first; I only argue with people who say the saddle MUST be done first otherwise it won't work and it will be wrong. Quite simply, that is Bu11$H1+!! People who do the saddle first can do it first accurately, but an idiosyncrasy to be aware of is that if the nut slots are excessively high, cutting the slots to final depth will introduce a change in the 12th fret action measurement.

I do my utmost to avoid negating valid techniques others suggest just because they aren't my preferred techniques, for whatever reason. At times, I do, however, attempt to point out strengths and weaknesses of certain possible methods that are discussed on this forum.

If the straightedge works for you, that is spectacular. But I'd suggest you be careful going around saying that an accurate job can't be done by using the strings to measure and set the relief. You don't want to lessen the quality of your words.

That's all...
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  #42  
Old 05-22-2015, 04:02 PM
Ned Milburn Ned Milburn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SgtV View Post
The mod is setting the relief in the neck.
Sorry but I should have added that the neck/fret plane is raked back a bit on many guitars.
I like classical and flat tops straight and electrics/adjustable brides and arch tops back as necessary.

There are both sides of this discussion on the net.
If I gave a player a guitar with a bow in the neck they'd ask what the problem is.

Anyway if your players are happy rock on.
The only relief, I guess, is not being made to make it right when you had that opportunity.
So, if I understand correctly you think that an ideal neck setting has zero relief...??

Nah...
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  #43  
Old 05-22-2015, 04:12 PM
Finger Stylish Finger Stylish is offline
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I would suggest that before you go shaving,sanding,turning and twisting; make sure your string choice is settled!(at least the gauges)
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  #44  
Old 05-22-2015, 05:40 PM
charles Tauber charles Tauber is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ned Milburn View Post
So, if I understand correctly you think that an ideal neck setting has zero relief...??
Although not entirely clear, I believe he said he prefers electrics and arch tops with a back bow.

SergeantViolin.com really is worth looking at. It is insightful.
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  #45  
Old 05-22-2015, 05:51 PM
kydave kydave is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by charles Tauber View Post
Although not entirely clear, I believe he said he prefers electrics and arch tops with a back bow.

SergeantViolin.com really is worth looking at. It is insightful.
I already had done that. And while I like a good 1911 as much as the next guy, I didn't see any insight into the guitar methodology...
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