Guitar Setup
Last week I took my favorite electric guitar to Mike Lull for a set up. On a stringed instrument like a guitar or bass, a “set up” involves things like adjusting the action, intonation, neck relief and other mechanical aspects of the playing geometry. Generally, I do my own guitar work since I have a pretty good idea of how I want things to be on my instruments. But I wanted to have this guitar get a detailed shop setup from Mike. He’s considered to be one of the best – if not THE best – luthier in the Northwest, and his shop rates are actually fairly reasonable considering his reputation for excellence. All in all, I’m delighted with the results, and feel the money was well spent.
This particular guitar has always had a bothersome problem with the strings not being quite aligned with the outside edges of the fretboard. I’ve had this guitar on the bench of other local technicians, and they’ve all said that the issue arose from the string saddles being incorrectly spaced for the tailpiece. One technician replaced them with graphtech saddles that were the closest fit, but still the high E string was pretty close to the edge of the fretboard. It just meant having to be careful when fretting notes above the middle of the neck. When I dropped off the guitar to be serviced, I mentioned all this to Mike, including the theory of the string saddles. He put the guitar on the counter and gave the headstock a little tug to one side. My guitar went “crick” like a patient on a chiropractor’s table. And he handed it back to me. To my surprise he had centered the strings! The issue was that the neck was alignment was slightly off. It seems like such an obvious thing, but apparently it hadn’t been considered before.
Mike had my guitar for a few days, and when I got it back several notable improvements had been made. He floated the tremolo bridge, which has always been much too stiff for my liking. The trem action is now smooth, and I can produce that lovely David Gilmour “liquid chord” effect. The frets are a lot smoother now too. It also appears that he lowered the roller nut to improve the action and intonation on the first several frets. One additional aspect of the guitar that needed some attention was the electronics. Mike trimmed some excess wire length from the pickup leads, replaced the output jack, and generally inspected/cleaned up the solder joints.
Overall, this is a dramatic improvement for an already fine instrument. I’ve always loved this guitar since the first time I found it hanging on the wall of a local music store. All the elements were there, but it needed a craftman’s skill to really optimize this assembly of parts into a work of art. Ironically, I’ve already played about a thousand gigs on this guitar (seriously!) and recorded several CDs with it… and now it’s significantly improved. If there’s a lesson here, it’s that one should always go to the expert for best results. I’m already scheming to bring a few more guitars to get some of that Mike magic.