Acoustic Guitar Action: Final Tips and Considerations

Just wrapping up the acoustic action series with a few final thoughts on split saddles, shims, and break-angles. This will see you set to adjust pretty most acoustic guitars.

SetupGerry Hayes23 March 2022action, acoustic, saddle, undersaddle transducer, setup

Acoustic Action: How to lower a guitar saddle

We’ve just seen how to figure out your target acoustic guitar action using some easy geometry. Let’s see how to modify the saddle to get there.

Guitar RepairGerry Hayes16 March 2022guitar, bass, repair, luthier, action, acoustic, saddle

Acoustic Guitar Action: Geometry Class

Lowering the action on an acoustic guitar is a little more fraught. It’s not easily reversible so it’s important to get things right. A little geometry will help.

SetupGerry Hayes8 March 2022acoustic, guitar, setup, saddle, action

Can my Neck Take The Strain?

Is it necessary to drop a guitar’s tuning to prevent its neck from bowing or deforming under string tension? Should we tune lower and use a capo to preserve our guitar necks?

The answer is no. Mostly. Read on…

OpinionGerry Hayes19 November 2019neck, bow, relief, string tension, repair, setup, action, neck relief, guitar, bass, acoustic, 12-string

String radius from the top or bottom of strings

If you set your string action by ensuring the bottoms of each string are a consistent distance from the frets, doesn’t that mean the tops of the strings are now inconsistent because of the different string diameters? Is this a problem? Do you need to be concerned?

SetupGerry Hayes3 July 2019setup, action, strings, guitar, bass, radius

Integrated Pickup: Revisiting Action Setup

Another look at the integrated saddle/piezo pickup. You’ll most often find these in Takamine guitars but there are variants around. Like this Epiphone pickup. The action needed a little finessing here and this version presented it’s own challenges.

Guitar Wiring, SetupGerry Hayes28 June 2019electronics, piezo, takamine, epiphone, guitar, repair, setup, action, acoustic, pickup

An Electric Guitar is Not an Acoustic Guitar

Time for a slight rant. I often meet players who insist on treating an electric guitar like an acoustic guitar. And, that’s something that comes with some compromises.

What am I talking about? Read on…

SetupGerry Hayes17 January 2019guitar, bass, archtop, acoustic, electric guitar, player, action, setup, compromise

In which I disagree with Steve Vai on setup

“…as low as possible without any buzzing…” says Steve Vai. That’s one of those phrases that really rattles my cage. Simplistic and missing an important nuance. Read me disagree with Steve Vai.

SetupGerry Hayes9 November 2018action, setup, guitar, bass, ibanez, steve vai