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i was just settin up my new gibby and thinking...gawd, it would really suck if i couldnt do my own setups. there are so many little intricacies in the way different people play, and you really need to tailor a setup to both what you play and how you play.
from the analogy vault, it's like asking a total stranger to go try out shoes for you and bring back a pair, without telling them what size you wear.
ok that analogy is a tad clunky.
anyway it's a pole so get poleish please

I only set up my own guitars because I can't stand to think of paying somebody like $50 to do the same thing. They'd probably play better though.
My main guitar has a locking trem too, takes me nearly an hour just to restring Don't even start me on trying to change tunings..

ooh, fuck a locking trem.

I have never had a guitar set up at a shop. Like you said, my guitars would probably play better if I did, but I just don't want to pay someone to do something I want to learn to do anyways.

Everytime I've had a setup done at a shop it came back completely unlike what I wanted. So I eventually read a bunch of tutorials and decided to give it a whirl. Now I can do all kinds of stuff and even have friends ask me to do their setups. Around here very few people will up-gauge strings and do setups for low tunings and do it correctly, which i've gotten very good at doing. The other reason is when ever I asked someone to set my relief at flat most guys cringe, I know your "supposed" to leave a little relief but I set my necks flat as I can get em and I'm able to get my action lower then usual with thicker strings and have no dead spots or buzzing.

yeah thats what i do too, and i tune down a whole step so thats how i set up my guitars... it's like we are long lost brothers or something.
do you have a birthmark in the shape of a barbell on your right buttock?

pigmaker wrote:yeah thats what i do too, and i tune down a whole step so thats how i set up my guitars... it's like we are long lost brothers or something.
do you have a birthmark in the shape of a barbell on your right buttock?

hahahaha not that I'm aware of but seeing as its physically impossible to see your own buttocks without the aid of a mirror (which i've never felt the need to do...) it's possible.

lol touche

heres a pic of the neck relief on my sg afte ri adjusted the ROD and bridge last night https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos- ... 3180_n.jpg

Nice!!! Looks straight as an arrow, just the way I like it.

yes yes, it is impossible to get perfectly flat relief, but that is pretty close, i think it is almost exactly one hundredth of an inch off the top of the 6th fret when holding down 1st and 13th frets. i found a six inch ruler with 100ths on it somewhere many years ago, pretty awesome. just got my feeler gauges out but they were all rusted and ruined

I used to use feeler gauges on everything but I lost them in a move and then switched to going of of feel. In audio recording school they told me " The Science of sound will dictate one thing but your ears will tell you something different, trust your ears." I use that same mentality with my setups, I go by feel, I don't care what the gauges say. I sometimes (very rarely) used them if I was working on a guitar with a compound radius or if I was having issues with matching the radius of the fretboard. I've played too many guitars that were setup to "factory spec" and hated how they played, trust your hands not the gauges.

I'd like to but I never know what I'm doing. I adjust the saddles sometimes by never the neck. I have a mustang so I'm fearful of messing up tension of the tremolo. Haven't even had the thing setup. Probably should

Yeah, couldn't imagine paying someone for something where it's fairly simple to do a decent job myself. I don't do much because I'm not that picky, but I'm pretty confident I could sort out nearly anything to a standard I'm happy with. It find it more satisfying doing stuff myself anyway.

Although Walter at Alpha Music is a truly excellent guitar tech, they charge $70 for a setup there so I do it myself.
I never measure it beyond pressing down on the two spots and eyeballing the string height. From there, as long as it's intonated I'm pretty much good. It might need some more tiny adjustments.
From experience I know that Walter could do a better job and the difference would be discernible but as far as setups go I'm not that picky, or at least not enough to drop $70 on it.
It's really just:
Is it intonated? Do the strings not rattle against the frets? Okay.

The sg special i just got was set up so horribly, that tells u right away that the previous owner sucked at guitar. Even andre the giant would have had a tough time bending the b string up a whole step