Not all setups are created equally, and unfortunately there is a lot of bad information out there as it relates to the subject. Regardless of what brand your instrument is, or how much it costs, a good setup is the most important factor when it comes to your instrument’s playability and tone. The first thing you should do when acquiring a brand new instrument is to have it professionally setup. No instrument is ever setup properly from the factory. We recommend having any instrument setup at least once per year. It is particularly important if you live in a region such as the Northeast, where the humidity levels vary drastically throughout the year. In this case, a setup every six months would be beneficial. The ideal relative humidity level for your instrument is between 45% and 55%. However, the average musician is not keeping their instruments in a monitored environment. Therefore, your instrument is always taking on and letting out moisture, causing the wood to expand and contract. The wintertime is especially challenging as we tend to run our heat, which really dries out an already fairly dry environment. A good way to tell if your instrument is drying out is to run your finger along the fingerboard and feel the edges of the frets. If you can feel sharpness, this means the fingerboard is dry and the wood has shrunk, causing the frets to protrude. We can fix this by doing what’s called a fret soften. Another thing to keep an eye on is the bridge on an acoustic guitar. If a guitar dries out, the bridge may begin to lift. A good way to check this is to run a post-it note along the perimeter of the bridge. The paper should not be able to go beneath the bridge in even the slightest amount. If it does, this means the bridge is beginning to lift, and in time, the string tension will eventually pull the bridge off the top of the guitar. 

Contrary to what many believe, turning the truss rod to adjust the action at the twelfth fret is not a setup. It’s part of the setup, but there’s much more to it than that. If the nut action is not addressed in the setup (usually not), the intonation will never be right. If the action is too high, you’ll be pulling the strings sharp in the first position. If they’re too low, you’ll get buzzing on open strings.

The three major adjustments that should be performed in a setup in order to achieve optimal performance are: neck relief, saddle height, and nut action. Below, you’ll find a comprehensive description of all that we do in our setup. 

Clean/polish entire instrument, clean, oil, and condition the fingerboard, clean and polish the frets, vacuum the box, check for loose bracing, clean/lube tuners, tighten all hardware, set neck relief, adjust saddle height/radius, adjust nut action (each slot is individually filed to follow the radius of fingerboard), graphite the nut slots, electric instruments will have a thorough check of all electronics, any dirty/scratchy pots will be cleaned and lubricated if necessary, disassemble/clean/lube bridge and saddles, set pickup height, set intonation.