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I'll be adding some more pics this week as I set-up more guitars and have an opportunity to take pics. For now let's get started on the final section of setting up an acoustic steel string guitar.

For me Section 4 is the fun part when I sit down with the instrument and dial it in to the final settings and check it out before preparing it for delivery to the customer.

We have cut the nut slots after adjusting our truss rod and again this is all sequential so that nothing we have already addressed has to be revisited and so our future adjustments are not skewed by something unaddressed that there was a prior dependency on.

The instrument has been cleaned, the board conditioned, the frets shined up to play like glass and the new strings are on.

I do check the truss rod once again especially if the gauge of strings or brand has changed that can change neck relief and tension.

Once I’m certain that I like the neck shape and relief I take my 6” engineer’s scale, I like the StewMac one or Starrett and in the playing position I measure the action of the low e and high e at the 12th fret.

You may find this hard to see and I do too but I can and do see it clear enough to be accurate with my reading.

We in our shop have kind of invented our own language to discuss action height and it is fractions with decimals included. A combination of both if you will but whatever measurement you choose to use is fine there is no Lutherie standard but just be sure if you need to convey this to someone else that they are on the same page as you are with measurements.

We will describe action again in our shop with the high e first and the low e last. So for example I might say to Dave that this one is 5.4 and 7.2 which means 5.4/64th” for the high e and 7.2/64th” for the low e. Again whatever method you use to describe the action you see is up to you but I would suggest that your increments be as small as you can possible reliably see.

I do put on 2.5 readers for this now a days and that helps a great deal.

If you have noticed combining a decimal into a fraction permits us to work in increments of 1/10th of 1/64th” and that my friends is pretty small.

Do I really see 1/2 of 1/64th? Sure I think that I do moving my head back and forth changing the viewing angle I can see I am measuring around 1/2 of a 64th? So I call it .5 and go with it. If I am slightly over a 64th” but clearly less than 1/2 of another 64th” I might call it 7.2/64th” and so on and so forth.

What works for you is up to you but it is important to be able to see and measure less than 1/64th” for this activity.

So with the clean guitar tuned to pitch and truss rod adjusted in my lap I measure the high e and then the low e and return the guitar to my bench. I then write down what the action is and I annotate it as “IA - 5.4 and 7.2 meaning high e is 5.4/64th” and the low e is 7.2/64th”. “IA” means to me initial action even though it’s not how it came in. I like to record the initial action which is not really the initial action since we already lowered the action perhaps substantially by cutting the nut slots properly and adjusting the truss rod of which more times than not is a reduction in relief bringing the action down as well.

If it occurred to you that action is not about the truss rod or the saddles, etc but instead a combination of relief, nut slots and saddle height(s) give yourself a gold star you're right. And doing them in that order if that occurred to you you get two gold stars.

The picture I took is very difficult to take when you are alone. I had to hold the guitar in the playing position, the camera in one hand and the engineer’s scale in the other hand. I do know the scale is a bit cooked and skewing the read.

So when I look at what we have in real life without the camera I can be sure to have the scale level on the two frets and move my head around to different angles to see what the measurement really is. In this case the low e on one of my living room guitars is 5.5/64th”. This is not the guitar we are working on this pic is only a reference.

So my recording of the action at this stage really has one purpose and that is to have this as a reference when I mark the saddle for material removal.

So here is what you will want to record and perhaps print for your shop wall. These are the action specs that I have set over 16,000 guitar to and with that resulted in a very small return rate and lots of happy clients.

The acoustic guitar specs here originally came from Martin and the rest are simply what Dave and I do and find work very well for folks. Electric guitar specs will be provided in the electric guitar set-up tutorial if that gets to happen…

Be advised these action setting are a function in the sequence I have taught here of having adjusted the rod and cut the nut slots first before ever measuring action the 12th. If you do this out of sequence you will have to do it twice…. or more.

Six String Steel String Acoustic Guitar

OOO or similar or smaller bodies 12’s:

4 and 5.5 (high e first and in 64th of an inch)

Dreads w/12’s:

4 and 6

OOO and similar of smaller with 13’s:

4 - 4.5 and 5.5 - 6

Dreads w/13’s:

4.5 and 6.5 - 7

There is wiggle room here and I use it. If I know someone is a hard hitting bluegrass player I will go on the higher side.

If I know someone has a light touch and is a finger stylist I may go on the lower side especially with 13’s which are harder to play.

And before someone pops in and says they can go lower, good for you so can I but I find in my experience that unless you know the attack and player style it may not work for everyone to go lower.

In my world the three guitars that I will set-up tomorrow will all have action considerably higher than I am quoting here. Whatever we do is often a vast improvement for folks.

For a 12 string steel string acoustic guitar we go lower on the action and it’s pretty OK if the ax is a bit jingly and rattles a bit that’s part of the 12 string vibe.

So for a dread sized guitar 12 string I might go <4 and <5 if that specific guitar will do this without issues. Again a little rattle is OK on a 12.

For an acoustic bass I might go 5 and 7

So I wanted to point out that there is an inverse relationship between the nut slots and the saddles for action height. If I lower the nut slots it also reduces the action at the 12th by 1/2 the amount that I lowered the nuts slots. The same is true of the saddle when I lower the saddle the action at the 12th gets lowered 1/2 the amount that I lowered the saddle.

What’s important here is this is why we cut the nut slots very early on and maintain a properly adjusted truss rod so that when we measure at the 12th and approach the saddle to correct what we see nothing else matters but the saddle now. We also can’t add material to the saddle so it’s important to observe the sequence of the set-up.

Lastly for this post this inverse relationship with the nut and saddles in respect to what happens at the 12th fret is critical to understand when setting up a guitar.

So since the 12th is located at 1/2 of the “speaking length” of the strings, the distance from the face of the nut to the break point on the saddle any height change at the saddle is seen as half that at the 12th where we always measure action.

For example if in this example I want to on the bass side of the saddle for the low e reduce the height of the saddle from 7.2/64th” to 6/64th” or 1.2/64th” of reduction at the 12th fret I now want to lower my saddle under the low e twice that amount or 1.2/32nd”. Please note that the fractional denominator has changed from 64 to 32.

The same holds true for the high e if I want to go from what we read in the playing position as 5.4/64th” to 4/64th” I want to lower action at the 12th fret by 1.4/64th”. This means the saddle will come down on the treble side under the high e double what I need at the 12th fret or 1.4/32nd”. Again the denominator changes as the distance doubles.

Make sense, we double what we need to gain or lose at the 12th fret when we address the saddle?

So with the guitar back on the bench safe and sound and we have measured existing action tuned to pitch, nut slots cut, rod adjusted, instrument cleaned and current action recorded (written down) we detune the strings, all of them.

Now I only remove from the bridge the low e, a and d once the strings are detuned and can pull the saddle up and out the bass side. I also capo the strings before detuning at the 2nd or so, not critical exactly where to keep the strings sorted out as I am going to remove three of them from the bridge.

I’ve noted prior in the tutorial how easy or difficult the saddle was to pull and corrected it so we should have no trouble removing the saddle.

For may years I would place a dot across the bottom of the saddle where I wanted my line to be for say the treble or bass side as I am going to remove material from the bottom of the saddle.

For years I also struggled with mechanical pencils to get a line fine enough that I could still see it but the dang line was not thick and as such prone to errors. I keep some 220 sand paper taped to my bench to sharpen the point of the mechanical pencil every time I use it.

So I would draw a line and then head to Dan Erlewine’s Dad’s belt sander that we have in our shop since Dan got started in our neck of the woods too.

Now a days I simply make two fine dots one on the treble side under where the high e contacts the saddle and one on the bass side where the low contacts the saddle.

It’s a good idea to know your platen on your belt sander and know where you will find a flat spot to sand a saddle bottom.

You also can touch up the saddle bottom on a surface plate or known flat surface such as leveling beams by drawing a line along on the very bottom of the saddles and lightly sanding it on a flat surface until the line is gone. Don't do too far, just remove the line.

I mill the saddle bottom down to my dots and stop in the middle of a dot. Before leaving the belt sander and with it now turned off I hit the bottom edge of each side of the saddle at 45 degrees to removing any excess material that is sticking out from the bottom edge of the saddle so that it continues to fit in the slot well and easy. Plastic saddles melt a bit on the sander and flashing is created. These swipes nix the flashing.

I am also sure to hold the saddle when I am milling the bottom of it upright and not leaning to one side of the other. Be sure you maintain flatness on your saddle bottoms too.

Now I return the saddle to the guitar and insert it into the side of the slot on the bass side and return the three strings and bridge pins I removed and tune to pitch.

In my lap again it goes as I sit down and again measure my action. If we did the math correctly and milled the saddle correctly we should now see action at the 12th of 4/64th” high e and 6/64th” low e.

I play the guitar often hiting every note up to the body joint and this is done very quickly less than 1/2 a minute. I might dig in and play Melissa on an acoustic with a heavy pick.

I’m checking for buzzing and part of my routine is to also hit every note moderately hard open to be sure my nut slots are not flat or have a hump in them.

We are very nearly done now and the guitar is set-up very well.

I have some health problems that try as will (5 - 6 hernia…) with covid in the past my surgery keeps getting cancelled. Most recently I had my surgery cancelled because my Israeli Doctor has to stay at her mothership hospital these days for security reasons…. Pretty dang sad state of affairs but I digress.

With the guitar locked into my bench I now stretch the strings and since I can’t lift more than 7.5lbs without paying a price for a couple of days for it I’ve learned to use my hands and my vice to stretch strings pulling upward on each one for a five count and retuning to pitch. I do this twice and think I get about 90% of the stretch out of the strings.

Stretching strings is optional I just try to reduce the initial retuning that people experience with new strings. Steel once stretched stays stretched.

The instrument is now done and you have set-up your first guitar very, very well with a professional approach.

Congratulations please pat yourself on the back. If you were in our shop I would be shaking your hand and thanking you for your good work. Dave might be telling you to do it again....

So back to the idea of my approach being sequential where there is a specific order to what we do here is that sequence/order all together and from a high level:

observe and adjust truss rod
Cut nut slots
Clean, condition and check the entire instrument for what needs to be addressed
Restring, tune to pitch, adjust truss rod
Measure action in the playing position at the 12th and record what we see
Detune, pull saddle, mark saddle, mill saddle, replace saddle
Tune to pitch again
In the playing position again check action

Truss rods were never intended to be for the purpose of adjusting action but people do this every day anyway.

If say we wanted action of 4 and 6 and it came out to 4.2 and 6.2 if there is any relief that could be removed for this player and playing style a very minor tweak of the rod can help dial in what we shot for with our saddle if we missed it by that much as Don Adams on Get Smart used to say. Likewise we can tweak the rod as well to add relief and raise the action a tad as well.

Again reliance on the rod for action adjusts in not the best way to do this but for very minor adjustments it’s available and it works. I won’t tell if you don’t…..

We did not and will not address intonation on an acoustic steel string that’s part of saddle making and you don’t make new saddles for simple set-ups we work with what we have saddle wise and budget wise for the client.

I do inspect the saddle though and will hit it with my favorite file to reshape the top if necessary for decent break points and worn-in groove reduction and elimination. Please see previous sections for pics of this.

FYI what we have covered here in these four sections of this tutorial is something I do every day and if the instrument is not awful to clean up or requiring additional operations such as string ramps for a poor neck angle I can do an acoustic six string set-up in 30 minutes simply by the economies afforded me and my time by this sequential approach.

When I was learning how to do this nearly 20 years ago what was missing for me personally was a defined start, ending and definition of success.

We start with observing and adjusting the truss rod and we end with reinstalling the saddle after milling it down (or shimming it up…) and then playing the instrument to check every note for how clear it rings and that none of the nut slots are too low. A stretch of the strings and we are done.

The definition of success is when your client sits down, plays for a minute or two, looks up at you and says “wow, this is amazing I had no idea that it even needed a set-up but boy did it…”. We hear this all of the time and since this is my third career in my life time it’s very gratifying to me personally on a number of levels to be able to deliver this value and even happiness to the folks who make the music that I love.

Or, in other words it is a great source of pride for me to be able to help folks with this skill set and I hope that you take what you learned and help folks too.

Many thanks to Dave Collins for much of what I know and shared here.

Thanks for reading this and I’m happy to answer questions that are actually questions.

Steel String Set-Up Tutorial Addendum:

Wanted to address a few other important and related subjects that you may encounter.

First how do we know if a guitar can be set-up?

During triage when a client brings us a guitar while they are present if there is any question as to if it can be set-up we might tip the neck and sight the neck angle as it relates to the bridge top surfaces. We want to see the neck angle come into the bridge with the fret board top surface approximately matching the bridge top surface height if you placed a straight edge on both. We also may have to take out a truss rod wrench and straighten the neck to evaluate it. This goes very quickly and we do it with the client present.

If the neck angle has deteriorated and is coming in below the top surface of the bridge there is now some question as to if the instrument can be properly set-up or set-up to any of the specs I have provided.

So say it's on the low side the next thing we look at is how much saddle is left. If there is a goodly amount of saddle to come down and the neck angle is not terrible it still can be set-up but it will have a low saddle and may not be capable of action as low as our specs.

We inform, educate and show our client all of this and if they still want us to set it up we proceed to take the instrument in.

What's important about this is client expectations we do not want people to think that they will be receiving back a perfectly set-up instrument when without a neck reset that simply is not possible.

Set expectations correctly and honestly and they will beat a path to your door.

Next my friend Steve Smith brought up a very good additional consideration the condition of the fret plane. I generally only check frets for loose frets if I notice a problem such as when I sight down the neck one fret or fret end proud of its brothers and sisters. Tapping the fret with my engineer's scale in the middle and on both ends and comparing the tone of what I hear to the frets next to it and you can hear a loose fret.

4/64th" is considered low action for a high e but if you have any loose frets all bets are off and they really need to be addressed with a proper gluing of all frets even if only one is loose since they all went though the same whatever and then a fret dress (level and recrown) is advisable.

Loose frets are another reason that is not all that common but it will prevent a great set-up until it's addressed.

Loose frets ARE very common on small builder early instruments.

Steve also brought up the on board electronics. I only do a functional check and if the client did not ask us to address the electronics I don't. When I take my car in for an oil change I'm not keen to pay for other services that I did not ask for, etc...

Also many clients have guitars with pick-ups that came from the factory and they never use them and there may not even be a battery installed.

I do the functional check though and note if the pup works or not unless there is no battery and it was not mentioned.

Loose jacks are very common and if it has a jack 4 times out of 5 it's loose. If it's a conventional jack my jack the gripper Frank Ford tool has tightened thousands and thousands of jacks with no sign of any wear or needing replacement. I believe that StewMac sells these, highly recommended and I do tighten loose jacks on acoustics when they are in for a set-up.

Tuners are often a mess with some of the nylon washers broken or even having fallen off. We stock these, it's common to need to replace them so when I service the tuners I also snug them down, make all knobs turn with the same level of resistance (generally speaking) and snug up the screws on the back if there are any.

For open back tuners I clamp the guitar face down in my vice and use a pipette to apply a very small drop of 3 in 1 oil to the journals and worm gear and any moving metal part that bears on another. Then with my tuner adaptor on my drill I spin the tuners for maybe 5 seconds to distribute the oil. A quick wipe of a paper towel and they are good to go.

Again our set-ups are a catch all of sorts and we will go out of our way to fix other things if they need it so long as it's not structural work or something that is a separate job such as a fret dress.

If you do enough set-ups you will learn that it's often the case that when a guitar needs a set-up the client will bring it to us and be completely unaware that it needs a neck reset or even what a neck reset is. Neck reset time may often commonly include a crack below the bridge, a lifting bridge and a damaged bridge plate. These things go together and often are tell tales of the need for a neck reset.

You can often see a guitar needs a neck reset from across the room or at least I can. If you are viewing a guitar head on and the shoulders can be seen to be depressed downward into the body from the front that is the body distortion that happens when the neck starts to fold into the body and it needs a neck reset.

Lastly for now if you encounter a VERY dirty guitar cleaning them up well can take a few hours and is really a separate job. There is also the risk that our cleaning on the surface level may create a can of worms that requires an hour or more to clean your way out of. If you create an obvious smear you really should make it right until your smear is gone.

With this said if the instrument is exceptionally dirty and really needs to be detailed we will do that as a separate service for time and materials. I'm mentioning this to you so you don't start cleaning a bad one and end up wishing you hadn't. Been there, done that and it sucks.

Also be aware that in the age of the relic you also have clients who want to have a guitar that looks like Willie Nelson's Trigger. We have a client who got mad at us once for cleaning his Martin the day before he was having a photo taken for his new album cover.... So be aware that not everyone wants a clean guitar...

We mentioned lowering the saddle but what if we want to increase saddle height because the person who did a set-up last time did not know to adjust the truss rod and cut the nut slots first? I make my saddle shims out of either mahogany or rosewood veneer that is very close to 0.032" thick which is a great number since I measure things in 32nds and 64th. If you can find veneer like this I recommend it.

What if you need to raise a saddle and there is an under saddle transducer in the slot? Raise the transducer and place the shim under the transducer so the saddle is in full contact with the transducer.

If there are any other situations that you think you might encounter please let me know I am happy to address.