ASK THE EXPERTS
A top panel of professional setup techs share their insider tips for achieving perfect playability and tone
GET TOOLED UP
“One really important thing is to get yourself a decent metal ruler,” Matt Gleeson says, with regards to the surprisingly small number of tools you need for guitar maintenance. “Choose one without a margin at the end of it, so it literally starts from 0 and measures from 1mm onwards. Then get yourself a decent set of imperial and metric Allen keys. Again, you can pick these up for £2 or something from any old place. I would then get a decent screwdriver set with Phillips and flatheads. To be honest, that’s pretty much the core essentials. There are a few other things that are quite handy, like three-in-one oil, but those are the basics.”
SET UP YOUR WORKSPACE
“Wherever you’re working, always keep it nice and clean,” Matt advises, whether it’s a work bench or the kitchen table. “Get yourself a neck rest, or you can even use a rolled-up towel or something similar so that the neck is supported and is not going to move around. You can also lay a towel down on the work surface, so the body doesn’t get scratched – but the downside of that is it will slide around. If you can, get some non-slip matting to place on your work surface instead – or there are things called Rockler Bench Cookies. They’re little non-slip discs that you can rest your guitar on so it doesn’t move. I’ve even used buffing wheels on guitars that are immobilised by Bench Cookies and they don’t move. In addition to that, you’ll want to have a little pot to contain anything you take off the guitar, such as screws and other small components, so you don’t lose any of them.”
TRAIN FOR SUCCESS
Ron Thorn uses his own mnemonic to guide the sequence in which he does his setup work. “There’s an optimal order for doing setup adjustments on a guitar,” he says. “I always work by the acronym TRAIN. The T stands for ‘Tune’, because the first thing you want to do is tune it up. And then R is ‘Relief’, meaning set the relief on the neck. A is ‘Action’. The I stands for ‘Intonation’. And finally the N stands
“IF YOU’RE DOING WIRING, TAKE PICTURES OF IT FIRST BEFORE YOU REMOVE ANY PARTS…” Matt Gleeson, Monty’s Guitars
“I AVOID KEEPING TOOLS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GUITAR SO I DON’T HAVE TO REACH OVER IT” Ron Thorn, Fender
for ‘Noodle’, because you want to noodle around and see how the guitar plays and then you can backtrack as necessary. That’s the order to do these fine adjustments – if you swap them around, you’ll just end up chasing your own tail.”
TAKE NOTE
“The main mistake people make when they’re carrying out maintenance or setup adjustments at home is not making a note of where the setup started and what adjustments they made as they went along,” says Matt. “We’ve all been there: you attempt something on your guitar that you kind of half-know and then you get snowblinded by other problems that pop up – and then you’re completely lost. So make sure you adjust things methodically and always note down each adjustment you make. So if you’re turning screws just make the adjustment a quarter-turn at a time and make a note of how many times you’ve done it.
“Simple things like that will help you stay on track or retrace your steps if you need to go back.”
BE PRUDENT
Ron explains how a little prudence can save costly errors: “I try to avoid keeping my tools on the other side of the guitar I’m working on, so I don’t have to reach over the guitar to get them – and potentially drop them on it. Also, be extra careful with vintage-style slot-head screws. We actually have joke around here: we say that the Phillips-head screw was designed on day two of somebody trying to put a guitar together because they realised right away slot-head was a bad idea… So it’s important to be careful and use both hands to steady the screwdriver when working on slothead screws.”
TAKE A PICTURE FIRST
“If you’re doing wiring or anything like that, take pictures of it on your phone or iPad before you remove any parts, so you have a reference,” Matt says. “If you don’t have a phone to hand you can even sketch it out with a pen and paper. That means if it all goes wrong, you can put everything back to how it was.”
GOING UP A GAUGE
“On a non-tremolo guitar, the main thing is to see how the neck has moved,” recommends Matt. “If you’re making a big step up in string gauge from something like nines to 13s or whatever, that is a huge shift in tension. The strings will be pulling the neck forward [into an upward, concave bow], so you’ll need to have a look at the truss rod and consider what adjustments you need to make there.
“You should also look at how the heavier strings sit in the nut slots – whether they’re sitting in slots properly and whether they now get stuck in the slots when you tune up. You can actually crack the nut if you try to force a string that’s too big to sit in there,
“IF YOU DON’T HAVE A SPECIALIST PRODUCT TO HAND, TRY LIP BALM TO LUBRICATE THE SADDLE” Jim DeCola, Gibson
which can then cause other issues – plus it means you’ve got to fit a new nut.
“If you have a tremolo, obviously you’ll have to change the tension of the springs in the back, and there are various ways to do that [see p62]. You may have to add springs to counteract the increased tension of heavier gauge strings or take them off if you’re going the other way.”
GETTING THE MOST FROM VIBROLAS
“For the Maestros, the key thing is making sure the saddles are smooth,” Gibson’s Jim DeCola advises of the notoriously tricky vibrato system. “You want to make sure there are no burrs or sharp edges and that each saddle has a proper back-notch, so you have a smooth break angle across the saddle from the vibrato, with a firm witness point where the string leaves the saddle but no burrs or anything like that at the contact point. I also like to lubricate the saddles. There are various things you can use like Nut Sauce, but if you don’t have a specialist product to hand, you might want to try lip balm, basically a ChapStick, as a lube for nuts and saddles. Be careful to use neutral shades of lip balm, though, as red or cherry-coloured ones can potentially stain your nut…”
GETTING THE MOST FROM A BIGSBY
“If I’m fitting a Bigsby, I always check the function of the Bigsby without any strings or the spring on there first,” says Ron. “There are needle bearings that the shaft passes through and you need to see how that feels without any other load on it first. Because I’ve found with brand-new, fresh-out-of-the-package Bigsbys, sometimes there’s some binding issues going on, so you’re going to be fighting that resistance without even realising it once the string and the spring are
engaged. My advice is to check that first and keep it lubricated and just make sure it’s functioning properly before you get the strings on there.
“Also I feel that, a lot of times, a Bigsby can be fitted too close to the bridge. That leads to a really extreme break-angle from the [bar the strings pass under] to the bridge – it’s almost to a right angle sometimes as the string passes up and over the saddles. It’s too severe. So if you’re building from scratch, my opinion is to keep the Bigsby as far back as possible – within reason.
“Now that Fender has Bigsby, there’s been talk of doing some revamping – I don’t mean modifying an existing model because we couldn’t do that otherwise we’d all be strung up, pardon the pun. But there was talk of coming up with a refined or modernised version of it. And one of the things I would like to do would be to maybe have some height adjustment on that front roller so you can control that angle over the bridge a little bit more. That might be a nice little touch.”
TRY A TUNING TRICK
“There’s one thing actually that I got proved wrong about, and it was about two years ago,” Matt confesses. “I think it’s Jeff Beck who has the claw in the back of his Strat’s [spring cavity] setup lopsided, so the bass side has more tension than the treble side. And I always thought that was complete rubbish and it just wouldn’t do anything, until we had a Strat that I just couldn’t get to stay in tune.
“One of the guys who was working with me was like, ‘You should try it, just try it,’ and I reluctantly did. And it worked. It was so annoying! It wasn’t a very steep angle, it just provided a little bit more tension on the bass side. I don’t know how, but it can help things stay in tune, especially if you have your trem set quite high – if you have a minor 3rd’s worth of pullback on the G – then it really comes into its own. So if you can’t get your Strat to stay in tune the traditional way, give that a go.”