If your settings at the nut are too high and you want to lower your action at the nut then check out my post on how to lower the action at the nut end? The safest way is to get a professional to do it. But you can save yourself some money, learn a new skill and have the satisfaction of doing it yourself too. If at all possible I would try this first on a cheaper guitar first if you have a higher end guitar. Though if you are only adjusting the bridge or the nut, then it?
So it depends on your risk aversion. Thanks for reading and if you have any questions or comments you are very welcome to leave them in the comments section below. Hi Nate! I love acoustic guitars! Thanks for visiting.
The action on a guitar refers to how high the strings sit above the frets on the fretboard. Very informative. Nice job in laying this process out in an easy way to follow. Yeah I find the engineering aspects of acoustic guitars really interesting — the different materials used and the specific materials that are suited to different parts, and, like you mention, how environmental factors can affect those materials.
Glad you liked the post and I hope you found it helpful. Very informative and good explanation making it easy to understand. I have a vintage Gretsch Wayfarer and I am having a professional do a complete re-fret and bridge tuning job. I was experiencing that buzzing noise and it always sounded out of tune.
What I am afraid of is that the new frets will make the action harder to play. Is there a way to get a easy action with the new frets? What should I be telling my professional luthier? Excuse the French. You may find that the buzzing almost completely goes away. If you mainly use distortion or overdrive when you play, a slight buzzing will have zero impact on your tone. There are many electric guitarists who are happy to have some slight buzzing in exchange for super-low action height.
Unlike electric guitars, any buzzing due to low action is obvious on an acoustic guitar. This is why acoustic guitars usually have higher action than electric guitars. This gives you a clearer tone and allows you to strum chords without ending up in a buzzing mess.
The action you set on an acoustic guitar also depends on whether you use a capo often. A capo will lower the action across the fretboard and the further up the neck you place it, the lower the action will be.
So even if your guitar has high action, you may not notice it if you always use a capo and play mainly open chords. You may find that a slightly higher action works best when you regularly use a capo. High action is recommended for slide playing because it gives you some extra room to move when pressing the slide on the strings. The worst sound when playing with a slide is the strings fretting out. You want to hear a smooth glide between notes and having low action can completely ruin it.
If you play fingerstyle on your acoustic guitar, you will be able to play with a lower action compared to a guitarist who strums chords. It is easy to tell when the action is too low. You end up with fret buzzing. But how do you know if the action is too high? There are two ways to tell if the action on your guitar is too high: intonation and feel. The distance you push the string causes the note to bend out-of-tune.
If you hear a difference between the two notes, it means your intonation is out. High action can also be a result of a poorly set truss rod. If the neck has too much relief, it will cause high action. Read through this guide to learn about Truss Rods and how to properly adjust them. The key point to remember is that everybody has different preferences when it comes to action height.
If you feel the action is too high on your guitar, try lowering it. Learn more about intonation in this guide. The guide includes diagrams and step-by-step advice on how to adjust intonation. Some bridges allow you to adjust the action height for each individual string, while others only allow you to adjust the height across the entire bridge. Important: if you want to raise the action on your guitar, keep in mind that this will cause the strings to raise in pitch.
Guitars with a Gibson Tune-o-Matic bridge give you two points where you can raise or lower action. In the above photo, you can see that there are two screws you can adjust on the bridge posts. This gives you some control over the action on your guitar but not complete control over each individual string.
If your guitar has this type of bridge, you only need to measure the action height on your low and high E strings. If the guitar has been setup, it will have been setup in accordance with the gauge string. By switching from the default gauge will change the tension. If you increase the gauge then the tension will increase, which by changing from a high to low or a low to high-tension will cause bow or relief in the neck.
As a result, the intonation might adjust slightly which can have knock-on effect of the guitars actions over time. Furthermore, heavy playing, banging and even carrying the guitar such as travelling can speed up this change process.
Adjusting the saddle or nut heights is the primary reason that affects the action. The Nut and saddle should be adjusted in parallel together, whereby if you increase the height of these parts then it will either increase or decrease the action.
If these parts are not adjusted in parallel then it could lead to uneven across the fretboard. However, if a guitar has not been setup well then only one of these components may only need adjusting to even the action out. Further, you have to be careful when altering either the nut or the saddle because it can mess with the intonation.
As the intonation is set, and increase the height of the nut or saddle, when you press down on any fret the distance will because greater whereby as you press down you are lengthening the string and this will sharpen the note. Therefore, if you raise or lower the saddle heights or string heights, you will need to re-intonate.
When changing the Intonation on your guitar it will affect the action. It may be only affect it ever so slightly that you cannot notice it but there are times it can be more noticeable.
What happens when you change the intonation of the guitar you are either tightening or loosening the strings effectively making the strings shorted or longer in length. As you adjust the intonation, you are either adding more or less tension on the neck. This will adjust the Bow or relief of the neck. When setting a guitar up you will find yourself going back-and-forth. As you alter one component, it will have a knock-on-effect to the other components.
Overall, if the intonation is changed then the action must be checked and vice versa. While adjusting the truss rod does affect the playing action, you should not use the truss rod to do so.
Even though the truss rod does affect the action, this is a bi-product and not the purpose for the adjustment. As a general rule, once the nut and truss rod is set, all action adjustments are done at the bridge, by raising or lowering the saddle. The action height will change with a proper truss adjustment; however, if the action is too high lower it at the saddle. In this article, we looked at the basics of guitar action and why it is important consideration.
We discussed the following topics in detail:. Generally speaking if your guitar has high action then you want to go and get a good set up as having a higher action. However, high action is not all bad and you can use if for practice. It will strengthen your fingers and improve your playing faster. If you liked this article and you feel it helped you then please leave a comment and share it with someone who might find it useful.
I am actively updating these articles daily and so I will see any comments made within a few days of posting! To lower the action on an acoustic guitar, you have to physically sand a bit of height off the bridge saddle.
You do this by shaving the underside of the saddle which is already flat , NOT the top. The top of your saddle has been shaped a specific way at the factory and needs to stay that way. Sometimes, if you pull the saddle out, you might find little wooden shims under it. In that case, you can try simply removing the shim and replacing the saddle without sanding it and see if you get good results lower action without buzz.
If your guitar feels good to you, then it IS good. I measure relief around the 7th fret, using a precision straightedge and a tapered feeler gauge to measure the actual gap between the top of the 7th fret and the straightedge. Luckily, the fretwork is excellent, so the guitar tolerates a really flat neck and really low action. Oh my god. Thank you for explaining so well. You really love what you do.
Thank you so much. You rock! I currently have an acoustic guitar. I measured that the action of my guitar on low E was around 0. I played the guitar for a year or so, therefore I ended up having thick callus on each of my fingers, but I think having thick calluses does not really help me when playing my guitar, since it kind of feels irritating when I try to play barre chords and other stuff which I feel is beyond the limit of what I can do with my guitar that has a very high action based on your article.
Given my guitar action, is this considered unplayable for most people or is this still normal? Just curious haha. Thanks a lot! That kind of high action is usually only used by people who play a lot of slide guitar. My low e is around 0.
Are these measurements ok? I have no open string buzz and the intonation at the first fret is good on all strings apart form the low e where the first fret wavers one yellow bar sharp on the snark, also does this slightly on the a but the decays very quickly to being spot on.
Should I sand the whole nut or just file the low e down. One last thing is up to what point does the nut effect action, what fret? As well as this what action height do you use on your electrics, any specific measurements, just interested to hear what you use, thanks! Hi Harry. Your nut measurements are fine, even if they may not always be spot-on with those that have been written down somewhere. Again, this is especially true if the guitar is comfortable to you.
To your other question, nut height mainly affects action in the lower registers. Higher up on the neck, not so much. So, lowering your nut action will have very little effect on the action at the 12th fret area and higher. For that, the bridge will give you the biggest bang for you buck. The opposite is also true: action adjustments at the bridge will have little effect on the action in the lower first position areas. Hi, I have a tricky situation.
After filing down the saddle it measures 2. First question: How low can I go? Hi Zoltan. There could be an issue with the neck joint itself, or perhaps improper humidity has caused the top wood to swell. Would welcome your advice. Even the high-end Martins, Taylors, etc. They do this on purpose so the eventual owner can have the guitar setup and the action lowered or raised to their taste.
Consider using really light guitar strings, at least until you build some skill, dexterity, and finger toughness. Take the strings and your guitar in for a professional set up. Just checked my electric using a gauge and it seems bang on medium as listed in this article, 2. I also have a cheap Epiphone ajs acoustic and the action on that is around 3mm on the low e and around 2. I guess this is around medium-high.
I would like to get it a bit lower to improve playability. Ive done the third fret nut test and the nut height seems ok. Would I have to shave the saddle to lower the action or are there any other options. Would it be better to buy a better guitar?
Not the top. Also, when you pull the saddle out, keep track of which side is treble and which is bass. You want to put it back in the correct orientation.
Remove the shim, replace the saddle, and string it back up. You might get lucky and find that removing the shim gets your action exactly where you want it. I highly recommend you watch a couple tutorials first. Remove a little, string it back up, and test—checking the string height, playability, and checking for any new fret buzz that might result.
Wash, rinse, repeat. This takes longer, but is better than accidentally over-sanding and removing too much material. When you lower the saddle, even if done right you might get some string buzz depending on how good your fretwork is or the general condition of your frets. So if you only set the action on the low E and High E… what happens to the all the other strings?
For that, we generally only measure the two outer E strings to get a ballpark idea of whether action is low, medium, high, etc. If you tell your guitar tech that you want your low E at 1. The saddle is as low as it can go.
The other strings seem ok. Do I cut the groove deeper on the saddle, lower nut, or shim the bolt-on neck? They were created for this exact purpose—to ensure a solid, full-contact fit in the neck pocket. EDIT: I forgot to address your question about the nut.
Filing your nut slot deeper will only lower the action in those lower registers, and have VERY little effect on the 12th fret height. I used stew macs shim on my bass. I had a small strip of tippin before that but it made the neck distort at the top frets. Not a good idea. Pay stew mac for the full size shim and thank them kindly. I agree—those StewMac full pocket neck shims are great. I used to use little pieces of plastic, paper, etc.
The full-pocket shims are not only more accurate, there are multiple benefits to filling the entire neck pocket. Thank you for the great info! Essentially, the strings are a bit slinkier and floppier due to the shorter length.
Guitars with shorter scale lengths feel nice and slinky under the fingers, but can be a bit more of a challenge to get ultra low action. The opposite is also true. Longer scale length guitars Also, Acoustic strings can need to be strummed or plucked harder, requiring a slightly higher action. Cost me a wack. Neck relief at 7th fret 0. E String 1 height at 12th fret 1. E String 6 height at 12th fret 2. Whenever I play an attaching D Chord, it is pretty loud.
I returned the guitar to the Luthier who preformed the set up says that he dressed the frets. Hello its a new Guitar!!! I am now really disheartened. Could He have doe something wrong?? Hi Frank. So, I always avoid passing judgement on how qualified a luthier is or whether they did anything wrong. That said, here are some of my thoughts. First things first: no brand new high-end guitar should need a refret.
The answer is not to refret. Your action measurements are pretty low for an acoustic guitar. Regarding your neck relief:. Of course, that would alter everything else, including your action.
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