Dylan McKerchie — Guitar Setup

Intonation is Key.... No matter how good your guitar "feels" if it always sound a bit out of tune, it will be very frustrating. Not only will it sound bad, there will be harmonics and overtones the simply will not be possible. The Great Compromise As we discussed in the preceding articles, on the Neck Relief, the String Height, and the Nut, we saw how key each of these adjustments were to your overall playability and to your overall tone. Since there is no right answer for what each of these measurements should be, understanding how they all work together...

Keys to Tone part 3... Nuts After talking about Neck relief HERE, and string height HERE, the next section of our series on guitar setup is the nut. This may be the most important thing. The Nut When we discussed the role of sound waves in an electric guitar, we determined that the nut was a key factor in our tone. How the nut is cut and the material  that is is made of can have a HUGE effect on the tone. Less expensive plastic nuts can sound dull and wear quickly. Tusq and other synthetics are more "slick" and...

Keys to Tone Part 2... String Height In part one of our series on Setup found HERE, we talked about setting neck relief. The next step especially on a guitar that just needs a little tweaking, is string height. There are few different methods and tools that are used to do this, but the basic idea is to adjust the saddle height at the bridge to be as low as reasonably possible to give you the desired playing feel. One important factor in this is matching the string height of each string to the radius of the fret board. This...

Setup!!!! Why is setup the second most important part of your tone? The first is practice... your hands. No matter what guitar, effects, or amp you have.... No matter how much money you spend on boutique gear, if your setup is bad, it can ruin the entire experience. You may always fight to get the ideas in your head to come out through your amp. Conversely, even low priced "budget" guitars can sound and play great in the right hands.... if they are set up well. We will spend a few days on the basics of setup. Truss Rod Adjustment......

Does Cable Length matter? In a word..... YES... In our discussions about Scatter winding found here, we learned that anytime you have long runs of electrical conductors laying next to each other, there is a potential for capacitive loss. As we know, capacitors in their basic form are filters. The more capacitance something has, the more high frequencies it filters or cuts from the signal. Guitar cables, especially of poor quality are very susceptible to this. Cables longer than about 15 feet start showing signs of signal loss to a trained ear. When we add a pedal board, we usually almost...