Grandpa's First Build

[m0j0]

Thanks Trevor,no worries. I have 4 other guitars, {acoustic}. Havn't seen that before

Take a close look at the bridge on your acoustic guitars. I'd be surprised if they aren't slightly angled also. This is to compensate for the difference in thickness between strings.

[Simon Barden]

Unless they are all a classical style, you will have. Whilst the bridge is mounted square, the saddle on steel-string acoustics is always slanted to improve intonation (and sometimes the saddle itself is moulded with staggered peaks to improve it further.

The amount of intonation travel on those Tune-O-Matic style bridges is less than on a Fender-style bridge, so the bridge is installed at a slight angle to put the saddles in roughly the right place to start with, reducing the saddle adjustment length requirement. Gibson T-O-M bridges with their two posts suit arched-top guitars well, but the design does limit saddle travel, making the angled installation necessary. Fender style bridges with their flat bases allow for much greater intonation range, but won’t fit on a curved surface without an adapter plate. The original hand-carved nature of the Gibson tops meant that a stock adapter plate wouldn't work. With CNC machining you could do it today, but tradition has set in.

A 3-post bridge would have worked with an arched top, and Gibson did use one on their early basses as basses need more intonation travel than a guitar, but it’s execution was poor and it wasn’t a great bridge.

[Longprong7]

Shes finished apart from some obvious tuning. Got a scare when I couldn't get any sound from the neck pickup, even after removing the connections from the pickup to the pot and re soldering. Then I woke up that the volume was at zero.
The guitar sounds amazing with open strings ,But, put my fingers on the frets for the bottom 3 strings and its dead. And huge buss on the rest
Obviously I need to lift the strings up higher. Do I do this by lifting the Bridge or where the strings end go through. HELP

THankyou

Grandpa

[nitroburner1000]

Shes finished apart from some obvious tuning. Got a scare when I couldn't get any sound from the neck pickup, even after removing the connections from the pickup to the pot and re soldering. Then I woke up that the volume was at zero.
The guitar sounds amazing with open strings ,But, put my fingers on the frets for the bottom 3 strings and its dead. And huge buss on the rest
Obviously I need to lift the strings up higher. Do I do this by lifting the Bridge or where the strings end go through. HELP

THankyou

Grandpa

2 things to check, firstly your neck adjustment as you said that your neck is perfectly straight, they usually have a slight curve to them, this will lift the strings and secondly the bridge should have adjustment you can make to lift the string esp at the bridge end.
One of the experts on here will tell you exactly whet to do with this model guitar.

[Simon Barden]

Your nut height is OK (it is probably a bit high but ignore that for now)

You probably have a combination of two things;

1) A convex neck curve so that there's a small hump in the neck which the strings hit on the first few frets, coupled with...

2) The bridge is too low, which is why the other strings are buzzing.

Item 1) needs to be sorted first.

Your neck relief probably looks like the top example below, with convex relief.



The middle example shows the neck straight, whilst it should look a bit like the bottom picture, with just a small amount of concave shape to it.

Hold the bottom E string down at the first and last fret and see what sort of gap you have between it and the 7th fret (you can tape the strings down at these positions if you want for this bit, as it helps to see what's happening in a moment). I expect you'll find there's no gap and the strings are resting on the first few frets.

You need to get the truss rod Allen key/hex wrench (should be a 5mm ), and looking from the headstock down the neck, you turn the trussrod to the left/anticlockwise. Do no more than 1/4 turn at a time. You may need to slacken off the D and G strings a bit to turn the wrench.

This first loosens the truss rod, allowing the neck to flatten. You may then find that the truss rod nut goes loose for a bit and then starts to bite again. This is perfectly normal as the truss rods are bi-directional and there's a dead spot in the middle. Keep looking at the gap between the 7th fret and the E string and at the neck in general. You should see it straighten out and then a small gap start to appear between the E string and the 7th fret as you get a concave shape to it. I'd stop when you've got about a 0.013" gap (diameter of a typical B string). Too much relief makes it hard to get a good action, so if you get too much of a gap, then turn the truss rod wrench clockwise/to the right, to reduce it again until correct.

You should now find that the strings on the first few frets can now be played. In fact all the frets should be playable.

Giving the neck some concave bow has also raised the nut relative to the bridge, so you may find that the strings now play cleanly on all the frets. If not, you want to raise the bridge height a very small bit at a time, no more than 1/8 of a turn on each bridge post at a time. The bass strings will normally need to be slightly further off the frets than the treble strings.

When adjusting the truss rod by a lot, it can take the neck a few hours to fully settle down to its new position, so leave it overnight and check again that the relief is still as it should be. You may need to do another slight adjustment if it has moved a bit overnight.

[Longprong7]

Hello Simon, thanks once again. I only had to turn the truss rod about half a turn anticlockwise to get that distance at the 7th fret and for the guitar to sound ok. Still pretty dead with G,B and E strings further down the fret board so I lifted the Bridge about half a turn and now it sounds reasonable down to fret 10 then those strings are dead again. Bottom E string has poor volume as well. That could be due to my high range hearing loss

[Simon Barden]

The upper frets determine how high the bridge needs to be, so I'd raise the bridge up a bit more until those upper frets play cleanly. Then turn the trussrod maybe 1/4 turn anticlockwise to straighten the neck a bit, which will pull the strings down a bit. You may then need to raise the bridge a bit more. It's a bit of a juggling act between truss rod and bridge.

But now you also need to check what the nut slot height is like. The kit nut slots are normally quite high, so there's probably quite a distance between the strings and the first fret. If you haven't got any nut files (which are expensive), then the solution is to remove the nut, file/sand the base of it down to lose some height, test, and then keep filing and checking until the strings sit quite close to the first fret, but far enough away not to buzz on them.

Doing this will pull the action down all over the neck (more at the lower frets than the top), so this may give more room to raise the bridge a bit without having too high an action.

You can normally do the above by loosening off the strings enough so that you can pull them to either side and below the nut position, then I'd masking tape them in place like that. You'll have to remove the nut, which should come off with some light taps with a hammer and a small piece of wood. Tap at each end and on the main edge towards the headstock. It should just be help o with some wood glue.

When it comes off, clean up the nut area on the guitar so its free from glue residue, then pace the bottom of the nut on some flat sandpaper or a file and file away. You should have an idea of how much the nut needs to come down form your first inspection, so I'd mark the nut with a pen by maybe 3/4 of that amount and file/sand away until you reach that point. Then put the nut back in place (no glue), refit the strings on top, bring to tune and see where you are. Now repeat the process of slackening the strings, removing the nut, filing the base a bit, and putting back and checking. Always better to be slightly high and the strings play cleanly, than too low and have them buzz (when its time to get a new nut).

You can use feeler gauges to check the slot height. Use them to measure the height of the first fret, then add 0.02"/0.5mm to that, and use that fret + 0.5mm height to check how high the strings are sitting above the fretboard at the nut. That's the distance you want to aim for. With nut files its easier to fine tune the slot depth, but with nut bottom sanding, you'll have to accept a very slightly higher than optimal setting.

Once you are happy with the string height, put a thin layer of wood glue on the base of the slot and the edge by the fretboard, and on the base of the nut and a bit on the lower front edge, and put it in place and press down, Wipe away excess glue with a damp cloth then refit the strings and put the strings under some tension, They'll clamp the nut in place. Make sure the nut is centred before you leave it. The strings should do that for you, but best to check and tap it into position if necessary. Leave overnight to dry, then tune up, and probably play with the bridge height and truss rod once more.

[Simon Barden]

If you are currently using the kit strings that came in the clear plastic wallet, then use them for setting up and replace with the Ernie Balls that should have come with the kit for playing. The kit strings are really poor and you often get dull quiet sounding strings (which is why PB put a packet of Ernie Balls in there as well).

[Longprong7]

Thanks again Simon, changed the strings. Removed the nut,( won't do that again, some of the neck wood under the nut came away with the glue so had to sand that flat then replace the nut).
Same affect I guess, the nut ended up lower. Still raised the bridge just a touch to get rid of all the buss and it sounds reasonably good. Comfortable too with the thin body .
Might try a bass guitar next.

Cheers Grandpa Longprong