Neck Tweak

[jeff h]

Tom, A few months back I received my new Hollow T Classic,04-23-08P.
Love the guitar. When I recently pulled it out of the case, I noticed the action had changed. It is now too high. I suspicion it only needs a neck tweak. Will tweaking the neck back into spec require an intonation change or saddle height adjustment? I really dont want my tech to play around with the bridge unless necessary.

[tom]

a neck is all that should be required. it is uncommon for the bridge to change position. neck adjustments on our post 2005 guitars are simple. there is a blurb on how to do it on our site under tech stuff.

[dave]

ancilliary question - which direction do you tighten - is it 'right is tight' looking at the guitar face-on?? i.e. a (counter-intuitive) anti-clockwise direction?? :confused:

[tom]

looking straight at the nut, clockwise tightens.

[Pietro]

small moves...

[ConnemaraGuitar]

Funny thing, Pietro...I was going to respond with the same advice. A buddy of mine called for advice on adjusting the truss rod on a new acoustic. I told him to bring it over and I'd show him how it's done.

Well, he went ahead and tried to adust it himself, and I'm surprised he didn't break something (although that might have been a good thing since he's become a decent player but won't spend more that $500 for a guitar).

After making him play my Martin OM-21 for a while, I took him down to my shop and showed him what a truss rod looks like and let him bend it a bit with an Allen wrench. He was amazed at how little the truss rod screw needed to be turned to make things right.

So you gave good advice!

[dave]

thanks guys - small clockwise turns it is! :)

[csd]

it may take less than a quarter turn

[dave]

supplementary ancilliary question - if I wanted a really low action (play with fingers rather than pick), is there any reason why you wouldn't go for a totally flat neck - i.e. no clearance at the 7th fret??

[tom]

it's all a matter of how hard you hit and what you can tolerate for fret noise when you do hit hard. the straighter a neck is, the more even it will feel from end to end. i know people with super light touches that have crazy low action and dead straight necks. they make it work beautifully. others will pickup the same guitar and can't play a note and have it ring. experimentation is all you can do. i find i set my guitars up a little higher than our normal action for playing live because i play harder than when i'm just sitting around. i remember back in the old days i was doing some work on pete t's schecters. i was all proud of myself for checking the string gauge and putting on these .012-.056 strings for the set up. when his tech picked up the guitars, he asked if i had the live strings and i said sure i measured them and they are .012's. he said those were his practice strings. for shows he used .013's.
it all comes down to what works for you.

[Pietro]

For me... I just don't like that flat action super low stuff. A couple guys I play with here do that, and the action is just too low. I don't hit really hard, but I want to dig in sometimes, and I just can't when the action is that low on a super straight neck. I like a little relief and the action is a little higher than some other guys. Fact is, if you have higher action, other people don't want to pick up your guitar and play it as much, and that's a good thing, although I'm generous with my guitars.

Also, it's different on different guitars. For some reason my Godin works better for me with really low action, and I don't like the tone of my PRS with quite as low action, and I like the Cobra just a little higher than that. That and the fact that 10s on my Cobra feel like 11s on the Godin. Can't figure that out (could it be the longer pull of the 6-inline headstock on the TA vs. the 3 + 3 on the Godin), but don't care, as both work great for me.

[dave]

thanks guys - I'm finding that the lower action really suits me. Felt I was in a bit of a rut for a while, and dropping the action seems to have helped me take off again :D