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Just wondering what you use for high, medium and low action on a steel string. I started with the Cumpiano numbers for 'normal action' but have found them on the high side.

What do you use?

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

I go .090 bass .070 treble as my standard. People can ask for adjustments from there...

Meddling... if my math is right that would be just under 6/64" on the bass and 4.5/64 on the trebble. That sounds like a pretty good medium action

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

Joe ...I am a huge advocate of the imperial system, even though my country has adopted the metric system, but pleeeeeze ... I cannot stomach " 4.5/64 "

Express these measurements in thousandths of an inch ...just like meddlingfool did ...you know it makes sense ...

I just use it because that's what is on the Stewmac action guage that I use. Available in imperial too. But I find thousandths easier to grasp at such small divisions...

Exactly.

That is why guitar string diameters are measured in thousandths of an inch , and not in 1/128", or 1/256".

The same thing applies when measuring action on a guitar.

Bryan Kimsey is the one (and only ) man who boldly expresses all his parameters in thousandths of an inch.

When I see action measurements expressed in 64ths ...I kind of sigh ...

I have a very basic set up.... a little 6" General ruler with 1/64" graduations, reading glasses and a bright light. For me 'kind of between the two lines is close enough to call it 1/2 of a 64. Not exact by any stretch of the imagination close enough for a dummy like me.

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

On a spec guitar, I shoot for .092" E and .065" e.

Chuck

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what's wrong with 9/128ths?

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Old growth, shmold growth!

I think most repair folks and road tech's seem to use the half 64th as a standard, usually wrote as follows.
4.5-3, which is my typical low action and 6-4.5 would be my high action.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Brian, Thank you. I rest my case

Whisperer, whats wrong with 9/128? well... nothing except maybe it implies I can read accurately to a 1/128”, which sadly, I can’t. Not with my little general ruler anyway

Chuck, I think that is mighty close to Brian, Meddling, and what my good friend Hesh just sent me. Great minds seem to think alike.

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

NECK RELIEF
Fret string at the 3rd and 12th fret
.004” - .006” of relief above the 7th fret for light pickers, jazz, and medium gauge strings
.008” - .012” of relief above the 7th fret for hard strummers or extra-light strings

STRING HEIGHT AT NUT
Fret string at 3rd fret
Look for 1/64” (.015”) clearance above 1st fret

STRING HEIGHT ABOVE 12TH FRET
LOW ACTION: Treble: 3/64” Bass: 5/64”
MEDIUM ACTION: Treble: 4/64” Bass: 6/64”
HIGH ACTION: Treble: 5/64” Bass: 7/64”

LOW ACTION: Treble: .045” Bass: .075”
MEDIUM ACTION: Treble: .060” Bass: .090”
HIGH ACTION: Treble: .075” Bass: .105”

It was included in the instructions...

James, good stuff !!! Thanks for posting

Todd 1000ths are good, if you have the gear to measure it.

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

I kinda like millimeters




Sorry....

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The Biggest Little City, Nevada
www.hammondguitars.com
I love building guitars!

For me 64ths are easy to read on my best small ruler so that's what I think in terms of. 5 - 3.5 at the 12th fret is generally a very good low setup for light gauge PB strings from 6th to 1st... I'll take the 6th down to 4.5 with a medium gauge set depending on playing style.

That's just a general rule though... the individual guitar's neck relief and the individual player's style really determine how low you should go, and those two should depend on each other. The guy who pulls strings with his fingers perpendicular from the top is very different from the guy who feather picks with a plectrum. Understanding and then dialing in a good setup is a pretty sophisticated thing... action numbers can be a good thing to shoot for but context is everything.

Ringo, yep! Ruler works fine for me. If you are shooting for 1/1000 of an inch accuracy for action setup you are working way to hard

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

C'mon guys, let's get real about some of these numbers!


Why so high at the first fret? For every other fret trio, you'd put a fret rocker across and expect it not to rock - every fret trio, all over the neck. Here you'd have a 0.015" gap over fret 1 if you used a fret rocker between the nut and fret 2. So fretting at 3, clearance over 1 should be veeeerrry close to zero. I leave just a puffteenth to allow for a bit of nut wear.

So take the nut height down to zero, and that takes the action at 12 down by ~0.0075" which leaves you with an action at 12 of 0.0385", or ~1mm for the rest of the world. On an acoustic guitar?? Medium/high action at 12, first string, acoustic guitar (lights, 12-53) is 2mm. So with action at 1mm you're reducing the dynamic range by a factor of 4 (power is proportional to string amplitude squared). As a bare fingernails player, I'd struggle to pluck with a string amplitude of less than 1mm and why sacrifice so much dynamic range?


Exactly. The trick is to make a 2mm set up (1st sting, fret 12) feel like a 1mm set up, which, as Ringo suggests, means a lot more than just action numbers. It's about string break angles (both ends), straightness of string pulls, length of string "overhang", fretboard curvature, string spacing, neck profile, etc. etc. etc. You know when you've got it right when a player asks "Are these 10s?" when, in fact, they're 12s.

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

Just wanted to point out that the SM set up gauge is marked in increments of .010" which is roughly equal to one half of a 64 th. So it would appear accuracy is about the same and the rest is semantics.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Subtle.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

I shoot for .070-.090 too. The Stewmac gage is great. The decimal measurements staggered horizontally are very easy to read.

I was born into fractions. Unsatisfied and idealistic, I experimented with metric. Then, decimals saved me.

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Pat

Trevor, those are my notes from Kent Everett's setup DVD. They feel pretty good to me. Are you saying a good medium high action above the 12th fret with light gauge strings would be twice as high?

Edit.

I went to a guitar makers festival recently and found that most of the instruments on display were set up far too low for my taste.
Some were really difficult to play fingerstyle without buzz on the bass strings and the trebles sounding choked.
Unfortunately many use a 12th fret string height as the measure of an instruments quality, but having string clearance is just a physical necessity, however well levelled the frets are.
Don't sacrifice sound and dynamics for numbers, play hard in a big room and hear what it sounds like.

Words to live by I would say.

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust