Setting up a guitar. Properly.

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QuattroSte

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OK I am showing my ignorance here again. :p

When changing the strings on my ES100 I generally give the guitar a good clean. In doing this I take the bridge and tailpiece off and during the cleaning process I inevitably move the position of the hiring and lowering thingies(technical term!)

Generally I restring the guitar and raise the bridge to the point where I am happy with the action and there is no fret buzz. There are no measurements taken during this process and its all guesswork to an extent. Is this what the majority of us do or is there a set height the bridge should be? If so does anybody know where I can get this setup information.

What effect does hiring or lowering the pickups have?

I know I am all questions but maybe we can all learn from the answers.
 
QuattroSte said:
Is this what the majority of us do or is there a set height the bridge should be?
I don't know for the majority, but that's what I do, too. It just has to feel right, and if not, I raise or lower the action a bit.

What effect does hiring or lowering the pickups have?
Basically they're just getting louder or softer, i.e. feeding the input of your amp more or less than before. You can use it for balancing the output of a neck vs. a bridge pickup, so they put out the same volume for the treble and bass strings.
 
hans-j?rgen said:
QuattroSte said:
Is this what the majority of us do or is there a set height the bridge should be?
I don't know for the majority, but that's what I do, too. It just has to feel right, and if not, I raise or lower the action a bit.

I think it's the only way, really. You might also ant to consider the influence of string height on the tone of the guitar (higher strings tends to equate to a slightly nicer tone, though that hardly helps if it makes the guitar unplayable :))

What effect does hiring or lowering the pickups have?
Basically they're just getting louder or softer, i.e. feeding the input of your amp more or less than before. You can use it for balancing the output of a neck vs. a bridge pickup, so they put out the same volume for the treble and bass strings.[/quote]Exactly. Or you can slightly 'slant' them (put the treble side of a pickup lower than the bass side for instance) to slightly alter the 'balance' of each pickup.

Anyway, QuattroSte, if you don't already have them I'd highly recommend Dan Erlewine's books "How to make your electric guitar play great" and especially his "Guitar player repair guide". Both are excellent books and will help you for the rest of your playing career :)
 
I agree Dan Erlewine books and videos are really good(I have both).My only concern about them is being difficult to translate to foreign lenguagges and Erlewinepronuntiation is not so clear for me to get all the meanings.
 
Cheers lads. I'll spend some time this weekend playing around with the pickup heights and see what I get. The books sound interesting but I still have fretboard logic to get through vols 1 and 2 so that will take me a while!
 
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