hpr_transcripts/hpr2974.txt

Episode: 2974
Title: HPR2974: Guitar Setup pt. 2
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2974/hpr2974.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 14:09:35

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This is Hacker Public Radio episode 2,974 for Thursday 26 December 2019.
Today's show is entitled Guitar Setup PT. Two inches. It is hosted by NY Bill
and is about 52 minutes long and carries a clean flag. The summer is. NY Bill finish a guitar setup.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15. That's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at AnanasThost.com.
Hello this is NY Bill and I'm back to do part two. We'll see if we get through it in
just one extra part if it takes three. Back to continue on this square telecaster.
It's been here since I did the last episode. It's been sitting on this bench. It's got to be
months now. It's been so long I forgot what I said in the last episode so I just had to listen
again to what I said. I made some notes while listening on things I trailed off on when I talked.
That other place you can get guitar parts and like wood and stuff like that is warm up.
They make decent stuff and if you like part a guitar if you get a telecaster body and a telecaster
neck from them and then the nice hardware and you build it up they actually retain their value.
So they're kind of known in the industry but in the builders and makers and players market they're
a known maker. The thing I trailed off on was when I was describing the wood of fenders and I
said stacked wood. I was talking about like cheaper guitar being plywood and the sides not being
opaque so you wouldn't see where all that laminate was but they just put a thin veneer of a
nicer wood on top and bottom and then you know do the sunburst or whatever or do a binding to
separate the two and I mentioned stacked wood and I trailed off. So fender American will be stacked
in two or three pieces of alder or ash sometimes mahogany but that's kind of a rare special edition.
I mean stacked... geez I'm finding a I'm not finding a way to say it anyways. Boards are
stacked next to each other. They're not stacked up in layers like a laminate. It's
these ones I'm looking I don't I don't have a my fender in front of me but so a fender
would be two pieces of two inch or two and a half inch board that gets plain to the right
height and they would be like six inches wide and then the two of them are stacked together.
Sometimes they're bookmatched. Sometimes that will just be like a fender American elite or
something that's two pieces then you usually go to three pieces when you get to like an MIM
telemex it's like five pieces and it's all like chunks of solid wood. Every once you take one big
giant chunk of wood and carve a whole entire guitar out of it you're gonna stack it up in some
way. You're gonna bookmatch your sets you're gonna it's it's just you got to deal with it but it's
not like plywood laminate like that's what I was saying so this uh what else did I trail off on
oh the when I was doing the repair on the the 56 les Paul and I said I stacked some mahogany and some
maple plugs and I put them in the tuner holes it's because the wood had gotten so
warped over the years and people I put different tuners in it over the years they made those holes
too big so I had plugged them in I just in that picture I hadn't drilled them out yet to put the
old tuners back into the proper size what else did I trail off on that sounds like it looks like it was
here okay so this has been here forever I just took a picture of it again just uh just to show
you that it's just been sitting here I'm hoping that when I peel this painter's table off it hasn't
been sitting here so long it it doesn't want to pull off easily but it hasn't really been hot or
humid down here uh in that picture I mentioned yeah the other thing I drilled off on in that picture
I mentioned uh fret work if you're installing new frets in the foreground of the picture
so in the foreground of that picture I'll just I just show it quick the the tools I use to install frets
new
and I'm not finding one more tool but I'll describe it it's not really a tool but it's a mask
anyways on the left is the uh the fret press so this goes that goes into a drill press
and the brass collar that you see inserted in it there's different brass collars for the
different radiuses of necks like a 12 inch or 16 inch or uh I think martin's 16 uh gives
since 12 what is fender uh it's not coming to me now but they all kind of use a different radius
on the tops of the next so when you buy this tool you get the different radius brass inserts
you stick them in there this goes into drill press when you have your fret board all uh
all your slots put in your fret board you cut your frets to length you bring them over the press
and you press them in with this you can also use a hammer I just I didn't want to risk uh marring
up the finger board with a hammer I never tried it that way next uh to that is the fret level
so this is just it's basically a rough pretty aggressive level and the ends have all been
beveled off so you're not gonna dig into any wood with the ends or the sides you either get the neck
as flat as you want it or there are some jigs where you can get the neck and tune it up to pitch
so that you get the relief in there set your relief and then little uh screws come up and support
straps to support the body down and uh screws come and support the neck and you take the strings off
you know relieve the tension but because the jig is holding the neck right where it is
the neck is held with the string tension relief in it if that makes sense either way you're going
to do it you put your brand new frets in and they're going to be some of them are going to be in
different heights what I usually do is mask it off again or I use this template which I can't find
they're little tiny thin pieces of stainless steel with a slot in the middle that fits over the
fret so you can do some work on them without hitting the fret board so you level the fret board
with the rough file which is kind of where this uh this square is at it looks like they did a rough
file on it and just a touch of polish but anyways that's how you level your frets to begin with
and that's where the recrowning I mentioned might come in so next to that was the recrowning tool
and again in the front are different inserts for small medium jumbo frets you put in whatever
crown you're trying to achieve again and back and forth on the fret usually with that template I
use the stainless steel template again to get the crown back into the fret you can also use this
to start your round over at the edge but I use files as well what would I usually do next oh at
the very end I skipped over it but fretting this should have been over by the fret press but there
is a red and blue handle that the very end that's just nippers that I use and I got them flush cut
so there's there's just bevels in the back of the cut and at the top it's right at the point
if that makes sense so once the frets are hammered in they're all staggered and sticking out and jagged
I use this to go along and clip and get everything as close as I can to the fret board
and then it's files again to get rid of all those points that are sticking out on the sides
the black tool that was right next to it this is a fret nipper so if you have something like a
les Paul that has binding on the neck and you want your fret to overhang the binding but there's
no slot in the binding for the fret you nip the ends of the fret the tang in the bottom of the fret
you nip it with this black tool and then you have the tang that's going to go into the wood
and two pieces of just fret just too little like a 30 second of an inch of fret that's going to
overhang into that binding so that's another tool I use and then I use files just to put the
start the roundover going up and down like so at treble and bass side I will hold and
either that same fret level I used to level the frets or other files at like a 30 degree bevel
towards the center of the fret board and run that up and down to get rid of the edges of the fret
and then from there you're going to get into just like finesse work so the next step
on a fret job I keep mentioning this work and don't take anything I'm saying and go take a guitar
and if you're not comfortable just start doing all this crap to it because I don't want you to
ruin a guitar or you know think what I'm saying you're going to make it play better or be better
and you know just screw it up so don't do any of this beginning part with the frets unless you're
absolutely comfortable with what I'm mentioning and you've got the tools and yeah you're working
at your own risk risk here so after the fret level with the file I use progressively smoother files
and then I'll start getting into sandpaper you start with a coarse sandpaper I do at least
and go to finer and finer grits tricky can use is use a sharpie on the top of the fret you got
you got it masked off with tape so you're not going to mark on the fret board but use a sharpie
and go over the top of each crown and every pass of a file or sandpaper your well the file actually
not the sandpaper you're going to see which frets you're hitting and taking that sharpie off
and which frets are still low so you want to get it so that it's all even the sharpies going away
you do your re-crown and you start coming in with I don't know what I would start with
I would just go and feel the sandpaper and I probably start with maybe a hundred grit and that
might be too much 120 or 200 grit so you're going to start polishing up the frets you want to go
until you stop seeing scratch marks and just like doing a finish when you're sanding and buffing
out a finish don't see a scratch mark and think you're going to go three grits finer and get that
scratch you know I'll get that scratch out later you got to get all your you got to get everything
to the same dullness if that makes sense so you start with a let's say 200 grit and then you go
up to maybe a 300 and a 400 go right up to 800 and you can even go up to a 1200 grit you can wet
sand this if that's helping a little soapy water to soap in some water so once you're up in like
the 1200 grit you have to switch to a different type of sandpaper and that's
basically how long do we just go like 12 minutes on the recorder to get to where we can actually
work on this squire so this squire came and it's to the point it's to after that point I just
talked about all that stuff we're up to at the final polishing stage which I don't think they did
at all or if they did it's very minimal for that I use a special type of sandpaper and then I
use polishing compounds so the special type of the sandpaper that I use is the Zona tool company
it's called 3M wet or dry micron graded polishing paper so this goes from 30 microns then there's 15
nine micron three micron two micron one micron at the end you're sanding with one micron sandpaper
and it doesn't feel like you're doing anything but you're getting right up to that polish level
where next you can just go to like a rubbing compound and a polishing compound and you're going to
have a night like a mirror finish so this Zona stuff I took a picture I should remember I don't
think I had very complete show notes I wasn't a rush last time today I have all day so hopefully I can
like put stuff from last episode and stuff from this episode in the show notes this Zona
sandpaper what I do is I have these red scissors which were sacrificial scissors they're not going
to be cutting anything else but this stuff it's cloth backed it's fairly thin it's folded over
and what I do is I cut about a half inch to a three quarter strip out of it
and then what you have I'll kind of fan it out I'll fan my strips out this is what I'm going to be using
and usually you can get right you can get to the next stage with just this bit I'm using so if you buy
this Zona I'm not a shill for them but if you buy this package of microfibers you're going to get
one two three four 12 to maybe 15 guitar worth of work out of the one package so there's the
strip I cut and you can see they're color coded so the most coarse one is on the left the green
then it goes gray blue pink and then the white is the one micron so I just use those little strips
so I start with the green and I'm going right I'm going right in now to this square so
you just start I'm starting on the first fret and that looks better already this looks like a better
shine I'm getting out of it than what's coming out of the factory so I just did like I don't know
I'm telling the tip of my finger and I just went up and down what eight ten times and it's shinier
and when I look it's evenly glossy so I don't have any I'm going to have to get those I'm trying
to get these scratch marks out so I hope I can get these with the with this green zone if not I
got to go to a rougher course but first fret looks better already so two
these three this is all it takes three
four I don't know if you want to count how many times I just went up and down so and then as
you go you might just have to move the paper on your finger a little bit but I usually get a
whole fret out of that one slice let me take a picture here and see if you can tell already
the two frets on the left I have just hit with the green 30 micron and the two frets in the
right in this picture are still factory if I turn the flash on yeah that may come out but
actually taking that picture and zooming in I realized I didn't get the all the scratches out so
let me start again all right I'm not going to
bore you with the whole entire board here
so you make your way all the way down the forebored with the Zona 30 micron if you're if you don't
find this sandpaper and you want to try and find stuff local you go to an automotive like a
repair shop and go into the the finishing aisle this is where you can get wet dry sand papers
that's going up to crazy 3,000 6,000 8,000 grit so you'd be able to find a pack or assemble a pack
of wet dry papers that you can use for buffing like lacquer buffing a finish or doing fret work
I just I found this stuff at some point and it seems to work well so I continue to do this
I'm not going to keep recording all the way through buffing it out but it's the same press
process go up with the green all the way through until you see an even polish on each fret
and then switch to the next one which would be gray 15 micron you're going to do the same thing
switch to the next one it's eight what how many was I doing 10 passes up and down
until you go through all these papers through to the white so I'll pause here so you don't have
to listen to like 20 minutes of you know this sound all right okay I'm on the one micron now
and like I was saying you won't feel like you're doing anything
I'm having trouble if I have to use my thumbnail to scratch the back is a felt and the front
just has a little tiny grit to it so let me do this final pass
it just feels like you're rubbing a cloth across it but it's it's doing work
while I was doing this I looked to my left and there is a Les Paul Jr
that I built once I just had this piece of mahogany hanging around the shop that was too small
for like a larger like even a Les Paul which isn't particularly a large guitar but it wasn't
long enough this piece of mahogany it was bookmatched and I had it for you know 20 years before
even did something with it and then I remembered Les Paul juniors which are a smaller body
especially the DC type the double horn and I built one I didn't try and be like
historically accurate with it but I built one with my own like stylized inlay and
it came out well but I did the front work before I knew about this zone of stuff
so I pulled it over here and taped it up and I'm going to do that one as well all right
this
these are polished I can see my reflection in them
I'll take a picture I don't know if it's going to be like a good before and after but
so you should be able to see in this picture these are like mirrors now these this will play
so nice on a string if you wanted or you didn't get quite up to this mirror level you can switch now
to a dremel with a buffing pad and then start with like a polishing compound or even towards
the buffing get into a buffing range of automotive compounds and that's that's how I think I did
that DC that that junior all right let me pull it over here there's the little Les Paul I had
already taped it up I do prepared like you know while I'm doing this choir I'm going to do this
guitar as well there's pictures somewhere like me building this right from a chunk of wood
okay so these are as polished as I feel comfortable with this so let me start taking this tape
off and hope it doesn't be too aggressive with this no it's not bad we redid our kitchen
and the first thing I did was put up like a plastic curtain wall at the
dining room because I didn't want to get all that dust into the dining room
sheet rock dust and whatnot and it took us it was summertime and by the time we finished the
kitchen and I pulled up what's supposed to be non-stick painters tape from the floor it was taking up
some of the the polyurethane off the oak which I had to get in there and repair but it was
unexpected so if I mean this painter's tape it's easy peel but if you're in like a humid or in a hot
environment it's going to start turning into a glue some of this is kind of
wanting that to pull free not start to pull free but once you get the edge started it's pulling right
off all right I might I'll cut this out and edit just so you don't have to listen to me peel
tape for 20 what is this 21 fret actually this is a better photo to show you the mirror polish
once I start seeing the rosewood again it looks better than the blue tape so here's a picture of
the frets polished up to the one micron as I'm taking the painter's tape off that shows the
a little better contrast of the mirroring so that was the step I feel they didn't take in the factory
it took me what all told it probably took me 12 minutes well masking it then pulling the mask off
it's you know comfortably maybe a half hour job but that's the step they were skipping in my opinion
you know I was just thinking if you recall I said that this this neck has no finish on it it feels
like maybe just a satiny oiled finish or something like that this tape is pulling off nicely I don't
know how your mileage would be on a neck with like a hearthane or a gloss finish to it leaving this
tape on for months like I did I don't recommend it pick out a half hours of time and do the whole
buff job and then peel this tape off that's that's what I recommend just I was being lazy
after I get this tape off then we'll be to the step I was saying like
you're not going to do any irreversible damage if you file frets too low somewhere up higher low
you're gonna get buzzing you're gonna it's you're gonna get to a point where you'd have to take
it to a professional I have it either learn how to refret or have it refreaded so only do this part I
mentioned well I feel comfortable saying you can use that zona stuff on your existing guitar but
getting into files and stuff and start recrowning and re-leveling unless you feel comfortable
you can do like irreparable damage and need a refret job but this point doing that buff I think
anybody could do a buff and I mean you know I'm not being you know what I mean and all the rest of
the stuff I'm gonna talk about unless you over tighten the trust rod one way or the other and
like jam it in there or get things all out of whack that's a way you can damage things but we'll
just be moving that trust rod key just a touch and the setup that I'm gonna talk about you can
always just reset it up or fix whatever you set up wrong so there it is that is the blue tape off
it and there is just a little bit of residue I'm gonna go upstairs and get a set of strings and
on the electronic bench I keep lent free like towels and alcohol I'm gonna clean the rest of the
stickiness off this footboard and then we'll talk about straightening out this neck not dead
straight but it's got too much relief in it as it is and then setting up the the bridge here
and then setting up the intonation I can talk about bridge height but that's that tends to be
personal preference but I can mention it when I get back okay I'm back from upstairs I got
the chemoids the alcohol you want to use alcohol for this because alcohol evaporates quickly
and it won't raise the grain on you water is going to raise the grain on wood that can be used
to your advantage when you're building if you put a ding in wood you can raise the grain and then
resan things flat if the ding is deeper you can take some paper towels and wet them you know squeeze
them out make them damp put them over that ding and use an iron and get steam going and that'll
actually in some cases get rid of that dent it'll it'll it'll swell that wood underneath that
is the dent and kind of restore it again to the point where you can sand things away but yeah don't
use water when you're I don't clean my guitars often in any ways but for what I'm doing here I'm
trying to get off sticky residue I don't want to use water or soap alcohol evaporates quickly and
I won't mess with the wood it's isopropyl alcohol sometimes after I get I might do that I'm
going to go back upstairs and get one more thing lemon oil for rosewood fretboards I like to put
lemon oil on them it keeps the wood from drying out it makes it nicer to play and plus it smells
cool it smells like lemons and surprise surprise I couldn't find it right away it's all right this
stuff is done-lop you can get lemon oil anywhere I'm sure they just get lemon oil and bulk from
a generic supplier stick it in this bottle and put them on it and charge more this is a done-lop 65
ultimate lemon oil and then for some reason you cannot buy that without getting the polishing the
done-lop 65 guitar polish which I hardly ever I never clean if I get like an old vintage guitar
and it's got like grime and stuff I like to just leave it in there and I don't I'm not one of
those people that every time I use my guitar I wipe it down so oh a little out of breath for most
there's so this stuff it's just got like a felt pad applicator and you squeeze the tube a little
bit just put it on the rosewood this would it I use it on Ebony as well
doesn't know anything to maple because maple usually has a finish on it or it's not worth it in
my opinion to use it on maple I'll just put it on it'll go on wet and then let the wood just
soak as much as it can and take the rest off of the paper towel so this is the same uh
when I change my strings on my uh American fender I put this stuff on as rosewood
remember to get behind the nut too you're not playing back there but it's got the wood wants to
dry out back there sometimes over at age you see cracks develop all right there's the lemon oil on
and uh I went upstairs like wouldn't I get the alcohol the chem wipes pack of strings I'm gonna put
nines on this different guitars I use different gauges for uh I'm just gonna start out with nines
on this see if I know my uh my other tally I got up to tens once I I heard that Stevie Ray Vaughan
played really uh large crazy strings look it up read a wick a pity or something I don't even
know how he was he used they said he used to uh blister his fingers and calluses could ripple up
he put them on with super glue again the guy was nuts but you know there was some legend that
that's where he's getting some of his tone from was these big you know giant strings I put tens
on my telecaster once way back when the same bill I was talking about in the previous one in
apartment mate and I come home in the nuts cracked off up on the e-string I picked a guitar up I
don't notice that I went to play and the e-string is just totally flopping down on the board and I
look at the nut and the whole end of it's gone so when I put those tens in that nut slot was not
prepared to take that large of a string and once I got it up to tension and I went to work or
ever I went and came back it just snapped that that's plastic I sure it would do it to bone no if
you're gonna go aggressively up in string size you're gonna have to have the nut slots in large
that's a whole other it could be a whole other show there's different there's different ways
doing nuts and bones and then what else I get the stringwinder my stringwinder has a little cutter
on the back but you just I cut my string ends I don't know why people leave them just waiting to
poke them in the eyes and a tuner I'm gonna need I got my old boss to you 12 digital tuner
I'm gonna need that for the intonation all right let me get these strings on
all these years I've been using one of these deodoros I still haven't memorized their color code
which one six is brass it was a different color to identify which string is what so when you get
into higher gauges you can tell or lighter gauges brass is the first string
and there's different ways to string a guitar to like the bot the way you're gonna retain it up at
the tuner end I tune mine so the holes are just a little bit perpendicular and I put my four
fingers at the 12th fret and I pull the string till it's top on my four fingers and that's enough
string left over to keep wind around the post so you don't start double winding and get this big
mess up there and I kink it good and I bring the loose piece I'm gonna cut I bring it around
the neck post and I get it up underneath the string that's gonna have tension and pull backwards
so I'm almost like making a knot some people their first line they go above the part you're
gonna cut off and then go below it there's probably a hundred different other ways
you just have to go online and believe me people will tell you their opinion about
the hundred ways it's better to do this so there it's coming back to life I won't have you listen
through the whole stringing process okay I'm doing the high E I thought I'd turn the recorder
back on because I realized something on the high B when I mentioned that little four finger trick
and then I still do the lock at the top but I keep pausing this I haven't figured out if it's
an easier edit to leave all the stuff I want to remove out or in and then cut it out
like that dropping a string I'm going to try and find it or hitting pause and then having
the stitch a whole bunch of audio files together at the end I'm sure if I did this
much more often I'd I'd come up with a flow so here I'm doing the high E and I don't do the
four finger thing I'm just holding my finger like almost eight inches I'm holding the string like
almost eight inches away from the board I do this with acoustics as well I just like to have
a whole bunch of the high the B the little B and the high E on the post
by the way these string winders will leave swirl marks at the top of your neck over time
so if you're concerned with that like our vintage guitar or something careful with them
okay let's hold the strings on the last thing I got upstairs was the right screwdriver it's
on my I went to get a Phillips off my electronic bench the proper screwdriver for the end of the
saddles don't get in there with something that's not going to fit you will strip it out
and just make a mess of them next after you get it strong you got to bring it to pitch
let me just do it roughly right here and then
and then when I was a kid and you get to these the B and the E you're just like cringing
getting back from the you know you're going to snap that string we usually went too far
like that that's a little too far
so
see how close I was one trick the guitarologist on I like to watch him he's funny on YouTube
just one video I was watching he did this trick I didn't use it there but I can't I suppose
he said uh if you do that black Sabbath I think it's black Sabbath the uh
generals in their masses that that thing if you do that and you do
a low E for the general like that and when you get to masses when as you get to masses if you do the
high masses and then you tune in between those you're you're pretty close just a trick if you don't
have a tune in it works uh let's see how close I was with the tune
black
she's I got the B and E pretty close
so on a new set of strings right now I just tug them all I'm just tugging up and
wiggling back and forth to get everything to seat in the nut and in the saddles especially
with an acoustic and then retune yes it's all out of whack now
and another trick I learned way back when if you go too far you go sharp
go way below flat and then tune back up to pitch because if you don't have like a perfect nut
you can kind of get it starting to pinch in there and you'll go sharp and then you'll
pull it back to where you think it is and as soon as you start playing that pinch will let go
and you'll go flat again so go below your below your pitch and then come back up to pitch
I'm using a tuner now
let's just roughly see how the intonation is so I'm going up to the 12th fret and just
I've got them tuned to pitch open string I'm going to see what they are in the tuner
12th fret flat flat that's in that's intonated slightly flat
little flat that's wish no
you can't settle on it that one's intonated the high-ease intonated which other what was the other one
the D these right on the high-ease right on the other ones are all flat so we got to do do that
setup but what I do next is look at the neck really again
I'm just siding down the neck
because it's not as bad as I recall I don't know if sitting down in this low humidity
environment in the basement for two months did something but I put my I fret it on the first fret
and then I fret it on whatever the last fret is 21-22 you can get
two active guitars I have one upstairs that's go up to 24 there's probably more
so uh fret it at the first fret it at the last fret and then look in the middle at the fifth fret
or the sixth seventh and see the gap that's in there that's your neck relief
you don't want too much you don't want too little there's still like a little bit too much
I want to just bring a little bit of that up you could take an e-string
it's the relief on this from the top of the fret to the string when I'm fretting the top
in the bottom fret is more than an e-string so that's too much now I got to find where
put that little package with the Allen yeah good luck the Allen wrenches oh here they're right
near the tuner halfway under a towel
we'll get it in there and I will just
yep I just tighten it well it depends on which way you're facing the tar if you're going to see
clockwise or counterclockwise I pulled this particular truss rod I pulled towards the low e
towards myself put some tension on it to put more tension on the truss rod to counteract that
backbone and it wasn't much the this Allen key is about three and a half inches long and I moved it
not even half inch at the top of the key so how much did the bottom of the key move not much at all
but there was a move now looking at the relief I'm just going to tweak a little bit more
sometimes you can take the neck and I'm bending it with my hands after I made a move just kind of
just help if that truss rods in there stuck a little bit all right that's where I'd have the neck
relief so the relief's done if you got a backbone you're going to lose or a up bow if your
frets are buzzing buzzing out you have to loosen the truss rod and when you loosen a truss rod
make your adjustment and give it time give it time to like settle things in or you know try and
help it with your hands but like make one little tweak and come back an hour later or day later
if you need to make another tweak do that so now I got to get it back up the pitch
through the rest of this process make sure you're tuning what the brand new strings are
going to go out of tune anyways and we're trying to work on the guitar and out the strings
so next thing I look at is string height they sell little like plastic do hickies you can stick
in there and they come in like 12 inch radius 16 inch radius all the different radiuses for
different types of manufacturers what does fender use I'm going to have to look that up I think
through 16 dips and uses 12 and there might use 16 some of their next are compound where they
start off like a real rolly 12 at the bottom and when you get up top they're going to a 16 you
in a 20 real flat so you can get up there and do your fret work down at the bottom you got nice
comfortable cords bar cords I'm just double checking the neck relief back to pitch
yeah now the buzz is gone because I got like meery fret
yep that's a good neck release good what are we doing now string height so I'm going to eyeball down
I'm looking at the back of the guitar down the strings at the bridge
and seeing how the strings ride over the curvature of the neck
just kind of rocking things back and forth of course you're going to want a little closer on
the higher strings and a little they did good job I think at the end what's going to happen is
NY Bill recommends squire guitars you know if you're if you're new and this is these are
decently set up guitars so I'm not going to change the the bridge height if you did need to
that you got that little Allen key sometimes it's a little tiny flat head sometimes you got
like on an old telecaster you got a one flat head and a brass barrel that's doing two strings
at once so you got to like compensate when I built mine I put that on at first and intonation
was a pain so then I went and got compensated brass bridge yeah compensated saddles for
the vintage bridge which you can do on any vintage guitar too and that made the intonation possible
but I don't know what they were doing way back when I think it was just covered up in the mix maybe
now we got to do intonation so let me get it make sure it's a pitch
yeah this is gonna it's gonna need tuning for a couple days until it kind of settles in but like
my fender upstairs I really have to tune I'm not out like a session player or out gigging it's
just on a stand and like when I'm watching TV I grab it it's usually like still right in tune
unless I just happen to get I think mine I know this is my theory but when I got it it was covered
in nicotine like it was dripping down the fretboard so this was either some recluse in his house
and never came out and played this guitar or that guitar I got used was I got it from elderly
instruments there you can trust them if you get a guitar from them they're they're good guys
but it came stinking like a cigarette and there was like sticky tar everywhere so I have a feeling
this was out this guitar had been out gigging and it had a tech taking care of it so that fender
played very well I just had to clean all that residue off of it and leave it sit in my basement
out for like a month or two months to get the cigarettes out of it it's gone now that
that guitars in good working order all right so I'm playing the E I'm looking at the tune or we're
right on I'm hitting the 12th so at the 12th it's showing flat so I'm loosening the screw
to move the whole saddle forward if you're going to take the screw because you're too sharp
take the tension out of the string because you don't want to turn this screw fighting the
tension of the string going lower I mean you can hear it just went flat just by me moving the
saddle so I'll get it back to pitch that went way flat like a D almost check it 12 again
so now I just went you can see why a digital tuner helps this needle is what's helping me on the
meter you can do it with any tuner I just went too far I loosened it too far and now we're sharp
so I want to take some tension off the string and bring the saddle back again so tighten it
so I just less than half split the difference which with the amount I moved it forward
that's making sense
no I got to split the difference again loosen it just a bit you can see how fiddly it is
so I know on acoustic you you get that bridge you see the the bridge is slanted that's to help
somewhat with intonation but on a bridge on an acoustic you're making some kind of compromises
so you've you've picked a sweet spot with that slant in the bridge and then you'll notice some
they'll either do it by slowly changing the shape of the bridge itself the bone or when you get
to the B and the E you'll see like one is cut way back with a file and the next one's you know
halfway back up that's the way they're trying to intonate the acoustic but
intonating acoustic that's another one of those steps that if you don't get it right you got to
go get a new bridge blank and reshaped the whole thing on an electric when you got these just
the screws to mess with don't be afraid
all right the E is intonated over the A
get it in pitch 12th fret
that's only slightly flat so I'll just
I just gave like a quarter turn on this screw you can already hear it in the string the lower
it lowered the pitch
so even that quarter turn I needed to go an eighth turn let me pull it back a bit
yeah so if you've never done this before and you're trying it don't get in there and turn this
screw five turns
all right A's in turn I think the D was good out of the box but I'm checking it again because when
you intonate these others you might be stressing the wood in some way let me
you know that's still dead on
there's the G
it's a little sharp on the tuner so I went below it come back up
and then check it the 12th slightly sharp so I want to pull this back the saddle I want to make
the saddle string like longer I want to make the string like longer and that was the third of a turn
on to the B that looks pretty good
the E oh if you're doing this too make sure you have your volume up like get on the bridge pickup
with your selector make sure you have the volume up sometimes the tuner is trying to pick it up
acoustically and that needle is never going to settle on you I've done that before and I can't
forget why I'm not getting a feeling that needle to move well there's E check up the 12th
it starts to read real flat and then it comes up
I'm gonna maybe maybe the there's better output on the bridge pickup let me show that
yeah it's like we're getting more volume out of the bridge pickup
yeah the B and the E were intonated
and the A was good from the factory so now I got them all intonated the string is in tune up the neck
so an E down there should sound like a E up here nothing sharp or flat
and what would be next uh bridge height that's kind of personal preference you know the
closer you're going to get the louder it's going to change the tone I'm just going to leave this
stock I don't even really plug in anymore but and I can't vouch for the quality of these
the electric in this but like I said before where what was this 250 bucks delivered with a gig bag
this is a good value and the stuff I just did in these episodes it's kind of finesse
polishing the frets change to the relief in the neck I checked the uh saddle height which
all seemed to be good if you do a neck angle adjustment you're going to have to change the
saddle height again of course that's easier with like a fender style which is loosening screws
and putting a shim in there that's all their episode too but as far as setup goes you know strings
on check the relief if you're going to change to a heavier gauge string you're going to put more
tension on there and you're going to set you're going to pull that neck a little more and get
more relief you're going to have to counteract with the trust rod again uh saddle height we talked
about that and we just intonated the bridge and this guitar is ready to go back upstairs so for
250 bucks it's playing nice now sound good
that might be a buzz no that's my crappy playing
yeah there's no more scratch in the frets on bends so I think it's a good deal I'm probably
going to bring this upstairs and play it a while and see how it goes but as far as setup there
I just told you too I don't know how long it took this one might be like 60 minutes but I don't
know a few people like longer ones I might cut it into two once I start at anything we'll see
okay uh until next time enjoy messing with your guitar uh just don't do anything that's irreparable
and only do things that you're comfortable with uh talk to you guys later
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