There was once where my friend came to me asking me to test his guitar telling me his strings were brand new. So I took the guitar, played a bit and looked at him and asked, "Are these .010s and the original gauge was actually .009s or lower?" The answer was obviously yes.
Many a times when many of us who aren't inducted into setting up our own guitars have no knowledge of the existence of different string gauges. What my friend did wasn't wrong but what wrong he did was to miss out another step commonly known to us as setting up. What happened to his guitar was that due to the higher tension of the .010s, the neck warped slightly, causing a pretty high action on the 12th fret. Before you go "Come on, it's only high action", it doesn't end just here. The other side effects of a warped neck are that it causes buzzing, usually from the 13th fret onwards.
So the next time you decide to just change your string gauge, please take note that if you are changing to a higher or lower gauge, make sure that your neck is still straight or a slight bow.
Hi, as mention in your posting, how to make sure that your guitar is still straight after changing the strings?
ReplyDeleteThanks for advise.
Hello, thank you for your question.
ReplyDeleteAfter changing the strings to a different gauge, you will have to check it after tuning it to your desired tuning. Let's say after changing it to the standard E tuning, you will then have to sight down the neck, and make sure that the neck is straight and not warped. If it is warped, you will have to do a standard setup, usually adjusting the truss rod of the neck. I'll post up an article on truss rod adjustments one of these days.
Hope this helps.
Ok. Thank you for your reply. You got any good place to intro to do fret leveling, cheap and good lol. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteWhy would you need fret levelling? Are all your frets worn out? I've written an article about Whether your guitar requires fret levelling or not. Do take a look.
ReplyDeletehttp://theguitarotaku.blogspot.com/2011/08/fret-wear.html
If a fret levelling is really needed, I will recommend Guitar Workshop at Bras Brasah 03-09 or Standard Value Music at Peninsula.