I cut this from a web site: "Simply put, guitar neck relief is a very slight cupping or concave shape of your guitar neck. It is this cupping that allows for the elliptical string vibration of a picked or strummed string to clear the tops of the frets at roughly the mid point of the neck, or halfway between a fretted note and the bridge." Thinking relief has nothing to do with action is false. If you stick with the dogma of how to set relief on an acoustic, then it is correct that it is all about the bridge and nut. More insight needs to be considered.
Depending on the amount of relief, action can be greatly affected. Of course, the worst combination is a high nut, high saddle, and incorrect relief. The nut and saddle give you the best gain in action, provided the relief is at first correct. Too much "bow" in the neck that cannot be compensated due to a broken truss rod, or a warped neck on the treble or bass side. This will will cause buzz too.
Shredders buy (electric) guitars with flatter radius necks and flatten out the relief. This will give you superb light touch action, with string buzz mostly unnoticeable with high gain distortion in amplification. On an acoustic guitar, the buzz is annoying, at least to me. I have set up an acoustic with very low action and had to limit picking hand dynamics to keep away from the buzz.
When I used to set up guitars for a living, many of my customers would simply buy more guitars! The store owner was happy.... of course. Depending on what you want to do with a guitar, options exist and there are always trade offs.... just like buying a boat!
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James
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