Acceptable new guitar set up needs?

Paul7926

Yet again it's a noob question but hopefully it will help other people and not just me.

When getting a new guitar from the cheaper end of the market (£300 - £500) and especially if ordered via the internet it's probably going to need a set up.  The vendor may have not even opened the box or they may have done some basic generic setting up but either way it makes sense that sitting in a warehouse and/or transit would have effected that.

What I'm curious about is what is considered part of a set-up, what problems are borderline and what problems mean you should just be handing the thing back to the vendor?  People always say "budget for a set up" but what do they actually mean by that?

I've rationalised it this way but please if I'm wrong let me know.

Acceptable things that will need doing.  These all seem to be within the bounds of achievable by the player but of course plenty of places do this as a service.

New strings
Truss Rod Adjustment
String Action height setting
Intonation setting

Borderline issues that are either a little more complicated or might need a pro to do but might not put you off keeping a guitar you like everything else about.

Nut height adjustment

Things that can be addressed but now we are in the top end of home fixes / actual Luthier problems.  I'm assuming that when you get here, for a new guitar, you are probably just sending it back.

Badly cut nut
Fret problems that might need a level, dress, crowning


Are my assumptions correct?  Have I missed anything?

richardhomer

Issues like high/low frets I would consider to be ‘faults’ - and therefore unacceptable on a new guitar. Likewise a ‘very’ high nut - though unless it’s a high-end guitar, I wouldn’t expect it to be cut to its ‘optimum’ level.

randella

I think you're on the money.  If you did the first four things on your list to a £300-500 guitar and it still didn't play well it'd be going back.

When I first started playing nearly three decades back, lower-end guitars were often horrible - that's just not acceptable these days.  500 quid should buy a guitar that a decent player would be happy to gig.

Snags

More or less in agreement with the lists in the OP.  At a lower price point I wouldn't necessarily expect perfection on the nut, frets etc. but would certainly expect them to be within an acceptable tolerance such that it didn't massively affect the playability of the instrument. Kind of within a "good enough" window where they might be spot on, or there might be room for minor improvement, but basically they're OK.

I would hope the guitar would ship with OK strings, but that can be very variable. The handful of new guitars I've bought have come with strings that were certainly good for the first month or so of playing.  I would expect to probably need to make minor adjustments to action etc. because that's personal taste, and at that point you're likely to need to fiddle with intonation and ...

So yeah, I reckon you're more or less on the money, allowing for the fact that there's a spectrum of things that could full under "badly cut nut" etc.

Mark1960

The only other thing I might add is check the pickup height. Too high can affect intonation, too low affects sound.

randella

Mark1960 said:

The only other thing I might add is check the pickup height. Too high can affect intonation, too low affects sound.

Good catch.  There's a sweet spot - Strat pickups also might benefit from being raised slightly higher on the treble side.

It's one of those things that needs experimentation.  But you'll have a cool new guitar and tinkering's fun, so there's that

Paul7926

Thanks guys.

@snags I'm thinking that really the only nut problem I view as not disastrous would be the depth of the cuts and therefore the height of the strings and even then only if the strings were too high.  If the stings are too low or anything to do with bad spacing or not straight cuts is too much of a problem.  Having said all that I suspect that in the price range in question they are probably all going to be moulded plastic anyway so it's probably a non issue.

I do have a bit of an OCD when it comes to researching things and inventing potential problems... 

skunkwerx

Budget for a set up. For me that means add £50-£70 to a guitars price. 

General set up + fret ends made smooth if theyre stabby. 

ICBM

Acceptable to have to change or adjust - strings, truss rod, bridge height, nut height, pickup heights. To a large degree these are personal preference things rather than hard and fast 'right' adjustments, so they are assumed to be left to the owner.

The exception is the nut - there really is only one right height. It will *always* need lowering - at almost any price point. They are almost never cut correctly, because the last bit of the work to get them really right takes most of the skill, and hence labour time. If it is right, it's probably a fluke and you need to check that none of the strings is too low...

Poor string spacing is a different matter entirely and will need the nut replacing, so that isn't acceptable.

Uneven fretting or sharp fret ends definitely aren't acceptable either.