String action on reissues - How LOW can ya GO?

[Guitar Rod]

Not according to Gibson's product and care guide.

http://archive.gibson.com/files/_gbme/GBME_Guide.pdf

 

[unlisted]

Scott Lentz is a wizard luthier and found he sets up his electric guitars as listed below. This is a great place to start.



Strings tuned to pitch, guitar on its side, and in good light


Measure from top of 12th fret to top of string

1st (high E) – just below 3/32”
2nd – same
3rd – same


Measure off fingerboard to top of string

4th – 4.5/32” (9/64&#8221
5th – just below 5/32”
6th – just below 5/32”

 

[Zakmichael]

I have gradually gotten higher action over the years, but I played a low action guitar today and it felt good. I'm just under 5/64 bass side 4/64 treble side. Joe Bonamassa runs 5/64 on the high side and like 6 or 7/64 on the low side and it doesn't slow him down a bit. SRV had it way high and he could fly too.

 

[jamman]

Not according to Gibson's product and care guide.

http://archive.gibson.com/files/_gbme/GBME_Guide.pdf

Good find . But ,,, It's for USA guitars and they are made different then Historics . And so they get a different set up

Scott Lentz is a wizard luthier and found he sets up his electric guitars as listed below. This is a great place to start.



Strings tuned to pitch, guitar on its side, and in good light


Measure from top of 12th fret to top of string

1st (high E) – just below 3/32”
2nd – same
3rd – same


Measure off fingerboard to top of string

4th – 4.5/32” (9/64”)
5th – just below 5/32”
6th – just below 5/32”

Nice info , Only the measurement is to the bottom of the string ,not the top and why, for the bass strings, measure from the FB ? Never seen that .

I believe , it's from the top of the fret to the underside of the string for all strings .

Point being , if you drop the bass string down that much , you end up with fret buzz. For full motion of the bass string(because they are thicker you need More room/space for them to fully ellipse .

 

[Fritz]

Played around with string height on my Epi LP tonight because it is easier to adjust. Gibson recommends 6/64 or 2.38mm on the low E at the 12th fret, and 4/64 or 1.59mm on the high E. That was too high. David, Gibson's final inspector on their forum said they set it up to 5/64 or 1.98mm and 3/64 or 1.19mm. That was great on bass strings, but felt way too low on the treble strings. So I used a hybrid of the two. Feels perfect for me. 5/64 1.98mm and 4/64 1.59mm. Had to readjust the pickups and intonation. Will try it on the R9.

5/64ths to 4/64ths is the rule for every electric guitar I've owned since 2001. All my guitars have the same action. It's high enough so that I can dig in with the pick and get my fingers under the string for bending, while producing the least amount of fret slap when I hit 'em hard.

 

[rich85]

You can study it all you want at home but you never really know what set up suits you until you use it live IMO

 

[Guitar Rod]

I've now got the R9 set to 5/64 and 4/64, all intoned, and it is bliss. So easy to play now. Not too low, not too high.

 

[ashbass]

I got in a 1998 R7 a bit ago and have all of the setup done except for action and intonation. The guitar came to me with the strings at the 1st fret so low that I couldn't see any movement when tapping the string in the 1st fret with my left hand while fretting the 3rd fret with my right hand for any of the strings. This is very low. For me, if there is no noticeable movement on the high E string then I'm ok with that. All of the other strings need to be increasingly higher B-G-D-A-E off the 1st fret. I check all of this by eye and address the nut as needed. This guitar nut needs to be addressed.

A low cut nut leads to "ramp up" which to me feels wrong as in the lower frets I have low action but as I go higher up the neck the action gets higher and higher and higher. The top neck in the image below shows the ramp up.

The nut can change this. The 2nd neck in the image below is exaggerated, but the point is that raising the string at the nut reduces that ramp effect. This way after some tweaking I can get the neck to feel like the string is at the same height all the way down. I've raised the high E nut cut already and the ramp effect is gone for that string.

The second neck also shows where to check your action. With no frets pressed look at/measure the distance between the bottom of the string and the top of the 12th fret. The difference between them is your action. Action can change by cutting the nut slot deeper or making it more shallow, by changing the height of the bridge or cutting its saddles deeper, by changing your string gauge (affects relief--see below), and by adjusting your neck relief. People typically have a lower action for their high E string and a higher action for their low E strings. This is usefull because the heavier strings need more room to vibrate than the thinner strings.

The circle on the 3nd neck is where you check neck relief. Relief is the compromise between the stiffness of your neck and the pull of the strings against the stiffness of the neck. If you change your string gauge to a higher or lower tension, the amount of tension against the neck will change and you will likely need an adjustment to the neck's relief to get your action back to what it was before the change. To determine your neck's relief, on the low E string hold down the 1st fret with your left hand and the body fret (press on 17 but 16 is the body fret) with your right hand. Then look at fret 8 and see the gap between the bottom of the string and the fret. The larger the gap, the more relief your neck has and you probably have higher action. The smaller the gap, the less relief your neck has and you probably have lower action. When someone says that they have zero neck relief they mean that there is no visible gap between the string and the 8th fret.

 

[TheX]

I've had guitars where the neck angle or a neck twist made it impossible to get low action on the upper frets.

Neck angle has nothing to do with it. All that does is change the bridge height for a given action.

Twist is a different story of course.