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Had some heart issues last week but am doing fine now except for a heart rate hovering around 50 that I see my Doc for today to get a medication reduction. I only weigh 145 lbs, exactly what I weighed when I barely graduated from high school because I majored in parking lot....

So I thought I would make a post worthy of saving for those who love setting up guitars or even just have to set-up their own creations. If you are commercial and make money doing this these specs are what I use to set-up around 600 guitars annually and the satisfaction level is very high.

I'm a numbers guy, addicted to data and science and that's my North Star in guitar set-ups. I've also set them up for some very famous players and they tour with my set-ups.

As you may have noticed I'm a stickler for providing attribution too so some of this is previously published to Martin service center specs, some is Fender, some is my own and much of it is from Dave Collins who I apprenticed for for three years and have been with now in business for close to 17 years.

For the last year I've worked nights by choice to avoid people because of my health and even more my 90 year old Mom in assisted living. Hesh here does NOT want to be the one to bring covid into an assisted living facility... As such I do not have the benefit at present of speaking with or observing how a client plays before I set-up their ax. This means that my set-ups have to be rather generic and one size trying to fit all. With this said these specs that you will find below have to work and they have to work the vast majority of the time for people and they do exactly that.

My return for minor adjustment rate is less than .5% so I think this is pretty reliable stuff. Not saying that a specific player may not need a minor tweak or that some folks require custom set-ups, they certainly do. But for the generic player these will serve you very well as they have made us a lot of money and earned hundreds of five star reviews. The proof is in the results.

Acoustics:

Traditional D, OM, OOO and all Martinesque traditionally built acoustic guitars with 13's high e at the 12th 4.5/64th" and low e also at the 12th 6.5/64th." A heavy handed flat picking blue grasser benefits from 5/64th" and 7/64th."

We always measure action at the 12th and Dave and I use a combination of fractions and decimals to quantify because it works for us. We always indicate the treble string specs first and then the bass string.

With 12's - 4/64th" and 6/64" for a blue grassing or generic D size flat picker.

for finger style players with 13's 4 (64th) and <6 and now I am going to call it simply 4 and <6.

for finger style players with 12's 4 and 5.5 a tad lower than with 13's

12 strings 3.5 - 4 and the fret work needs to be decent. 12's are already hard to play so it's very important to lower that action and a quality fret plane is required. Some rattling on a 12 is acceptable and audible on the most famous recording of our 60's heroes, well mine any way...

Electrics

10's - 4 - 4.2 to 4.5
11's - 4 - 4.5 or a tad less, more massive strings lash out less because they have more inertial to overcome which was very counter intuitive to me when I started and is old hat now.
9's - 4 - 4.5 and at times a tad higher again because 9's lash out more than 10's with LESS inertia to overcome.
12's - 4 and near 4 if the player is not a heavy hitter.

Now with my fret work I can go lower on any of these situations but better players are not fans most of the time of uber low action nor am I. We want to be able to get under a string for bends and vibrato deep in a bend and we want the option of digging in and trying for that angelic note that rings and sings sweetly with emphasis when appropriate and in my case even when not.

There is a phenomena in guitar set-ups these days with the shredders who often like 9's, very low action, and they may tune down to C...... so for them: They like Ibanez guitars too with Floyds.

Tell them that their guitar is going to rattle if they hit hard and that's to be expected and if that's an issue take it elsewhere we set expectations accurately in advance. Conventional 5 string guitars were never intended to be tuned to C. We do it all of the time but it requires a customer set-up as below.

This also includes 7 strings with an even lower bass string. There may not be enough travel in the B string saddle to intonate exactly for C either.

9's 4/5-6 again for people tuned to low C.....
10's 4/ 5-6 low C again

Bass

long scale 5/7
short scale 4.5/6

five string with a B set the B at 7 and the low E at 6 transitioning to the g at 5ish or a tad lower.

Mandolin

3/3.5

So there are some dependancies here that will force us to raise action and all of these numbers presuppose that the truss rod is properly set, we like a very flat neck with minimal relief on the treble side and a bit more on the bass side. This is not always available either so we may do a work around.

Nut slots have to be cut with great skill very low but never buzzing on an open string.

For us, for me it's:

Before starting always, always tune to pitch to set the exact tension of the strings. This means whatever pitch means for this client incase they do drop tuning or alternate tunings.

For alternate tuning players I set-up for the tunings that they use MOST of the time.

1). Adjust the truss rod
2). cut the nut slots
3). adjust action at the 12th with the saddle(s)
4). go home

Please note that many guitars, many have bad necks and crappy fret work. Then these specs may not be achievable until the fret issues are resolved and if that's not possible we set higher. Many Fender style guitars with bolt on necks have ski ramps on the fret retention over the body. This forces us to set the high e, b, g higher than most people may like unless again "fall-away" is milled and it has a quality, proper fret dress first.

Now I just gave it up, the holy grail and I believe the most useful post I have ever made here on the OLF and with my multiple IDs I'm now well over 30,000 posts.

So my hope is that this will serve you very well for a long time and make many people happy with very well set-up guitars. I also hope that people will fall in love with your guitars because when they try them they play like butter and play better than any other guitar the prospect has or has played.

People are thrilled with our results and tell us so nearly every day and this has been the most rewarding thing I have ever personally done and made more people happy than I can count. I love what I do and plan on doing until I can't.

Lastly we have just over 1,000 square feet of commercial guitar repair shop in the epicenter of Ann Arbor. We have several rooms including a tool room in a 120 year old historic building in the center of town. Here is a shot of my bench, a small corner of our world but where most of our revenue is generated. Around 60% of our revenue is from set-ups and that's what I mostly do with some bridge reglues, fret work, crack repair, pup instals, tuner replacement, unslotted pin conversions and lots of other stuff etc. With my hernias these days Dave does the neck resets since you have to get on the floor and wrestle with the things.... . Kidding of course. Nothing to get steamed about...

Point being to do great set-ups you don't need much beyond a nice work space, good lighting, an engineer's scale to measure with, a belt sander and the knowledge to make it happen. You do not need a professional guitar shop to set-up an instrument superbly. There is no reason why you can't do this at home as well or better than this old dude.

And really lastly and this has been a repeated point from me over the years and this time thanks to a friend here I am going to be sure to try to have a more friendly, less judgmental tone . Hesh may be a lot of things and some are not good but I am trainable.... and I do "hear" people. Many of us like me come to the OLF wanting to learn about the woodworking of building a guitar. Along the way we learn that ultimately as our project approaches completion it's no longer a woodworking project but a soon to be "tool for a musician." This means it has to play great and you have to know how to set it up to play great. That's why I am posting this today, your final steps if you don't know this stuff or your methods have you back tracking with issues at times. I never have to back track. Once I cut nut slots there is no reason to change it, ever. Once I set the rod same deal, I get to move on. Just be sure to tune to pitch, the player's preferred tuning pitch.

Hope this helps and of course if you have any questions let's help you out!

PS: The pic overlooking me and my work is Sammy Davis joking around with Mohammad Ali and makes me smile seeing it every day.

A few more things:

My set-ups take about an hour on a bad case and less for guitars needing less. We charge about $100 for a typical set-up, more for a Floyd or 12 and MUCH more for a RIK 12 hoping they go elsewhere. This is called "punitive pricing" on the Riks.

For us a set-up is make it play and sound great and address many things depending on what the individual instrument needs. I treat them like they are my personal guitar and I want it perfect and something to be proud of.

We do not address structural or fret dressing issues in a set-up, that's an additional job that may have to happen first.

Some examples of what my set-ups include:

Adjust truss rod
tighten and if possible lube tuners and adjust all screws for their individual function
replace tuner plastic rings that often break or have broken and are no longer present...
Degunk the fret board and shine the frets
Check and tighten all bolts and strap buttons.
If a stop button is stripped we drill it out, turn a dowel like piece of similar body wood and redrill and it's better than new
tighten output jack and clean, I use Jack the gripper and mine has done over 10,000 guitars now and worked flawlessly. Jacks are ALWAYS loose too so always tighten them.
check battery if applicable and replace if necessary with our over priced Costco Duracells
check pups for proper height, balancing is done on request because some folks prefer to balance with their own rigs and we recommend this too and will advise folks how
check saddle(s) for burs, excessive wear, defects in radius and correct if possible with files
for electrics I notch the saddles for correct break angle and to ensue no burs. This stopped string breakage on a famous player's ax when I was doing this for only the first year, he was thrilled because his signature SG was eating strings...
Clean the electronics to eliminate any static or distortion
tighten if need be pots, switch, pick guard, etc
If I pick up a #2 Phillips head I hit every screw on the ax that has a Phillips head with the screw driver before I put it back down. Efficiencies help me do more with less effort and time.
I cut the nut early on with the existing strings before taking them off but I cut to the specs of the strings I am putting on
Clean and polish entire gutiar (this can suck time because I hate dirt, I hate it, hate it, hate it.... )
Restring, I require that we replace strings with our's or the players but they have to be new as it impacts intonation.
set action at the 12th
play every note on the neck, every single one to be sure it does not buzz or there are any proud or loose frets
set intonation tuned to pitch with action set and in the playing position. I try to simulate the generic player's touch because we can pull a string sharp with finger pressure an that skews things.
I spend most of my time on intonation and am an intonation snob. Even though we humans only hear about 4 cents of difference I try to nail the exact number. It's why I have heart issues
Play Story Monday note for note with Dickie's solos
Place guitar back on my bench and stretch every string for five seconds, twice.
Move back to it's case being careful not to bang it on my bench vice.
Do invoice
next

In short I don't have any check list I simply move from the tip of the headstock to the body strap button addressing everything that is not perfect and not a structural defect. We make it happen and don't get caught up in the small stuff.

Now with all of this offered you can do this too since it's easy enough that even a Hesh can do it Remember I'm a retired corporate exec I came to Lutherie in my 50's.

And lastly - when you hand it to the owner be prepared to see a ear to ear grin as they look down, play a bit and then look up and smile and often thank you. The nut slots alone, cutting the well and low is something that factories do not do and is immediately noticeable to the player as the F barre chord and for the first time in their lives it rings true and the effort required is substantially less.

Make folks happy with your skills and gifts and you will never, never be sorry. It's the highlight of my life now and it all started for me long ago here on the OLF.

Thanks guys (always meaning men and women)

Happy to help with questions too, always!

Hey Hesh,

Thanks much for this post. I like the numbers too, and it's always fun to get a peek into someone else's shop and see what their guidelines are. Especially when they are so nicely listed in a compact form and easy to compare.

I'm just getting ready to build an electric or two and have been wondering about set up differences.

So very much appreciated and first thing I did was print your post off and will stick it on the shop wall with very few others that rose to that level of value.

Thanks!

_________________
Brian R, Wood Mechanic
N8ZED

Needs a sticky.

_________________
Insta - https://www.instagram.com/cbcguitars/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/cbcguitars

Right on! Printed and ready to hang on my wall for reminders!

_________________
Tony Thatcher
Bozeman, Montana

Good stuff Hesh.

I love the Roland and the Peavey classic too.! Nice amps.

Thanks Brian and you are very welcome. This is exactly what I had hoped some folks would do, find this very useful. For folks who do not have a decent set-up methodology this has a sequence and numbers to set to.

Good luck with the electrics, I've never built one which is rather odd but I wish that I had when I was still building. My first love is electrics.

Yay that makes my day too, thanks Brad my friend.

Fantastic Tony very glad you like it!!

Thanks Jf, the amps are kind of beat up cosmetically but they work well and sound decent. We have a Roland cube 60 on the other side of the room for the rectifier crowd who wants to shred. We kind of wanted our shop to look like the shop that time forgot, these amps help

Hesh, really appreciate the effort you have put into this post. Perhaps especially given your health issues.

As an amateur builder this is an area that I, and I suspect many others, am weak on so this is incredibly helpful.

I have a build on the bench that is good but needs exactly the quality setup that you are talking about.
I shall try to follow your guidelines closely.

All the best Dave M

Thanks for the great information, Hesh. Invaluable, as so much of your expertise is.

Thank You Don.

You are very welcome Dave and if you want to PM me if you need any help with the set-up I'm always happy to help OLFers.

PS: I was suffering from being over medicated and I got that resolved today and feel MUCH better already. Whew!

Glad you are feeling better Hesh, I am sure you have lots left to do and share.
Thanks for the detailed setup specs.
Over the years you have shared most of what you have posted here, now it is all in one place.
I too have condensed the post and taped it on the wall of my shop.
Cheers!
Rob

Invaluable info, thanks Hesh. I’ll be keeping a copy of these specs in the shop for sure.

An old Peavey classic is the customer test rig in my shop too! Retired to the shop after 10 years hard gigging with not a single breakdown or failure or even needing a tube replaced. I reckon I’ve sold a few for Peavey too after customers play through mine and prefer it to whatever they’ve got at home …

Nice string display - is that a retail display, or just how you organise your own stock? I’ve been tossing up whether to go down the road of setting up a small retail display …


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Great post, Hesh!

My "default" action height on my own builds is 5-1/2 64ths bass and 4/64ths treble for 6 strings.
3-1/2 to 4-1/2 on the full tension 12 strings- considerably higher on my long scale low tuned 12's

I have been doing a lot more repair and restoration lately sub-contracting for a very busy repairman in the area so I have been doing a lot more fret work which has vastly improved my own builds.

Thanks Brad. I like your default specs and you will see some of the same numbers from be above.

How do you like the repair work? I love it because I only have to look at one instrument for at the most several hours and for set-ups 45 minutes in average..

Hey Robbie thanks for the thanks much appreciated and you are right this is a consolidation of stuff that I have posted piece meal for the most part before. I wanted it all in one place thinking some of you would be like me and appreciate the big picture.

Thanks for noticing!

Hey Buddy Yes it's been a great amp. We picked it up used for $300 wanting a tweed for the shop and so far we have not had to do anything to it. It's in cosmetically rough shape but that seems to endear people to it even more.

Our building was a 50 year music store so lots of display materials were still here when we took over the third floor. We all along wanted to discourage anyone coming here who is not looking to have a guitar or an instrument that we service serviced. Our overhead is over $30K annually so we have to be sharp and focused on avoiding time sucks. We are also in a historic building that Clapton and Lennon were in and people know this since it was covered by the press back in the day.

So we have lots of people who want to visit and we can't have that because if we are not repairing an instrument we are losing money. I'll add the Hash Bash brings thousands of often old hippies wanting to hang out where they hung out in their youth at the music store....

We don't and won't sell strings so it's not retail but simply how we display for our own use. We also use it to show clients dropping off what some of their choices are if they did not bring their own strings. Our prices suck but again we only sell a set of strings when we are going to use them in our work and the client can take more packs with them but they have to be a client.

When we take pen to paper unless there is revenue there we lose money. That invoice will be completed, stored, sent to a bookkeeper and accountant and we pay them to record it too. So for a few buck pack of strings and with it taking us away from doing billable hours in a very tight business model that requires avoiding time sucks and diversions we don't sell a single thing and won't.

We also got in a tiff with the state over sales tax collection early on. Those fools... could not understand that we are not a $3.5M annually music store that was at the same address for 50 years and are a new, separate business that does not sell anything. We had sent the state our sales taxes that we do collect quarterly along with payment and they had cashed the checks but applied them to a now defunct music store's account...

Two years of this went on and they sent us nastygrams saying we owed thousands in back taxes. You could not get a human to speak with and it was a nightmare. We spent $3K on an accountant and an attorney and it took a year to resolve it in our favor. No one ever apologized, we were out the money we had to spend to defend against this and Michigan was again very unfair to a small business.

In the end when the state of Michigan pulled their finger out... they said, "oh you guys don't sell anything so why not just send us your sales tax once a year along with the tax return we have to do with the payment." Sheesh.... that's what should have been happening all along.

What resulted was Hesh here was unwilling to let the dang state have a dime from us going forward beyond sales taxes for the strings we use. I considered buying our strings at retail... and paying the sales taxes then and giving them to clients.... We used to order pick-ups and parts for our clients and we changed it to requiring them to order their own stuff and bring it to us to install. Benefit to us no inventory and the state gets nothing from us as vindictive Hesh here wanted.... I'm really not vindictive but this really pissed me off at the state.

Down side is our clients get less service sadly even though this is not how we want it because of big, bad government bullying a small, artisan business. This is a story that in the states plays out every day everywhere sadly. Sorry to get political but this is also business and the business of a Lutherie repair shop that you know too so I'm sharing it.

So after all this from me it's a display, appointments are required so we don't sell strings.

Early on we considered buying a vending machine and filling it with strings and placing it on our front porch as an emergency supply for the community since the music store was history AND as a self service option so people needing strings could find them and we could stay at our benches and meet our obligations and promises to our clients.

Thanks for the insight into your business Hesh. Sorry to hear about those hassles with the state, that sounds like a painful saga to have to deal with. That vending machine idea is kinda cool though!

Yeah I'm a liberal, old fashioned kind but when you go into business you gain an appreciation for conservatives and their disdain (I'm being polite) of parasitic government I think I just made my friend Chris Pyle smile and proud of me Sorry for the politics, I'll stifle myself now.

It's funny,because I always said I would rather build than repair.
Then this this opportunity came along to work for my long time friend who is a great repairman....

I actually do like it now.

We do a lot of major work like neck resets, new bridges, head breaks etc. etc. as well as the fret jobs.

Very cool Brad it is a good time and I enjoy the hell out of doing repairs. My only regret is that I would like to do more of it than I currently do.

Thanks Hesh! My specs are pretty similar. I do frequently go to 3/64 and 5/64 for players with a light touch.

I am doing more repairs as well and enjoying it.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.