Do I need to re-setup if I change string gauge? What about string brand?
The TL;DR on this is, almost certainly, yes.
Here's a few considerations to help you make the assessment though.
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You've got a shiny new guitar and you're wondering why on earth you'd want to get it setup. I mean, it's new. Isn't it already perfectly set up?
Well, there's a chance that it is perfect for you.
And there's a really good chance that a setup might just be worth considering. Check it out…
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If you hang around with guitarists or bassists, you’ll probably hear them talk about setups. “I got my guitar setup and it plays great.” “I think my bass needs a setup.” “I think I’ll do my own setup on this one.”
Setups, setups, setups. From the time you start playing and hanging out with other musicians, you’ll begin to *absorb* the ‘setup’ thing. It’ll become part of the world.
I get a lot of questions on setup so this is the first in a series of Setup FAQ.
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From time to time I’ll have conversations with players about intonation issues. Often, they’re worried about weird tuning inconsistencies that have crept in to their guitar or bass. Maybe, they’ll even have done the 12th-fret intonation check and found that it seemed ok but the problems persisted.
Here's why you should consider your frets…
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So here's the problem:
You’ve got your guitar plugged in. You’re not playing it and there’s a noise. A hum. It’s not terribly pleasant.
Thing is, you touch the strings and it’s gone.
The response: It's ok. It's not a problem. That’s all as it should be. Guitars pick up interference and that comes out the amp as a hum. When you touch the strings, it's supposed to get quieter.
Because, 'grounding'.
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Removing a neck to adjust the truss rod is a bit of a pain.
Some Telecasters, however have a channel cut between the neck pocket and the front pickup cavity. Because the neck pickup is often mounted direct to the body, removing the pickguard on those Teles is easy. And, if you're lucky, you'll have a little notched channel to get at the truss rod.
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I love the way that the three pickup Gibson Les Paul and SG looks. Crazily cool.
Their wiring, however, seems like an afterthought. That middle pickup is pretty much wasted with the standard wiring scheme.
So let's mod it for heaps more flexibility.
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In an electric guitar or bass, it's usually necessary to 'ground' the strings.
By this, I mean that all the strings should have a path to ground — a wire that connects them to a ground point inside the instrument. Usually that ground point will be the back of a pot or the sleeve of the output jack.
When it's properly grounded, you can touch the strings of your guitar and you'll usually hear the background hiss reduce. Yay.
There’s a common misconception that by touching the strings you are grounding the guitar.
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This is an acoustic guitar bridge and there’s something wrong with this picture. Well, the picture’s ok, but there’s definitely a problem with the guitar.
You can see how low the saddle is. The string’s have no ‘break’ angle over it—that first string sits almost horizontally on the saddle.
This means the strings impart very little downward pressure to the saddle. No downward pressure means that much of the strings’ vibration is lost rather than being transferred into the guitar top (which is what provides most of your tone and volume with an acoustic instrument). Poor tone and poor sustain.
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This guitar's see better days. You can see a couple of nasty cracks along the shoulder. They begun at the preamp cutout and because of the tension on that area of bent wood, they easily spread as the centre 'relaxed' while the edges stayed in place, bound to the top and back.
Someone has had a go at repairing this damage already. The previous repairer tried using fibreglass and some mesh tape to secure things. A brace was added near the preamp cutout to reinforce it but that and the fibreglass weren't enough. The arrow shows where that brace has broken. The crack's back.
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In the very old days*, guitars had no truss rods at all. This wasn’t so much of a problem with gut strings but, once steel strings came along, builders realised that some sort of strengthening was required and so various things began to be inserted into guitar necks to help make them stronger.
A while back, I realised I had a couple of Martin guitars of different vintages in for neck resets. So, with the necks off, I took a photo showing the steel rods they've used over the years.
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