Setting up an acoustic tips?

imalrightjack

Hi,

Just got a used Faith Venus Electro-Cutaway.  Nice enough guitar it seems but the action on the high E is over 2.5mm at the 12th fret.  There's a little relief left, so I can adjust the truss - that aside, any tips on lowering it?  It's higher as it goes up the fretboard and would definitely like it lower.

Cheers!

sev112

Check the relief (sounds like you might have done so/ know this already) with the 1st fret capod, 14th fret held down, tap at the 7th fret - that seems to be the biggest guide to me whether NUT/RELIEF/STRING GAUGE/SADDLE HEIGHT / (ANY BELLYING) are all set up sensibly together.  There should be just a bit of a gap at 7 and a nice “ting” when you touch it.  If you get that, then things are generally all working together. If you’ve got that, then it’s goodish.  If you don’t, you have to look at  the nut and saddle and where a long straight edge of the top of the frets meets the bridge/saddle (hopefully just about or below top of bridge) and also check your lower bout is not bellying up, leading to higher action,

 But 2.5” at high E is high, as you know prob under 2 and a bit more.  What’s it like at the low Evat 12 - typically maybe 0.5mm greater ?  

So now I’m moving away from expertise and yo7 now need to see whether your nut is correctly set, before you start playing with the saddle like lowering it.   There is no good lowering the saddle if the 7fret tap is tiny/none to start with.

id personnly look at those key observations , possibly make some little tweaks of relief/truss rod but anything more let someone really knowledgable look at it
Bur see if you can find then culprit first 

you may have already done these, if so sorry

imalrightjack

It has a wee bit of relief left - but it seems about right.  It plays okay at the nut but rapidly whizzes up in action.  Low E is around 3mm, so more like .25mm higher.  The nut on the high E is ish 1.5mm, a smidge more.

 The case actually has some spare saddles.

@sev112

Tannin

Good advice from @sev112 (as usual). I am an advocate for actually measuring the relief. An experienced tech can estimate it accurately, but for ordinary mortals a true measurement  is best. Buy a set of feeler gauges from any car parts shop - that will cost you about the same as a new set of strings and last forever. Handy thing to have in your tool kit. 

You generally want relief in the range of roughly 0.1mm to 0.2mm. (You may already have that, but measuring it provides peace of mind by removing any lingering doubts.) With that done, you can turn your attention to the saddle height.

(I am assuming here that your nut is more-or-less right - that is easy to check. Capo first fret: if it feels wildly different (not just a little, a lot) then the nut needs attention. Best to have that done by a professional as the cost of the tools is way more than the cost of having someone do it.)

After that comes shaving the bottom of the saddle. You may or may not want to do that yourself. I take it to the chap who looks after my guitars (and made a couple of them); he charges me $20 if he feels like it but mostly doesn't bother. But normally expect to pay maybe £25. People here say it's not so difficult and (unlike the nut) doesn't need special tools, but I've never done it myself. Having watched Paul do it many times, it does look very easy - but watching an expert make something look simple and actually doing it yourself can be different things!

Mind you, 2.5mm is not all that high. It's a little more than most people would prefer, but far from unplayable. Most good makers ship ex-factory at about that height, because a little too high is a simple adjustment while a little too low is a much more difficult one. We all have our own styles and likes, but as a guide I generally set an acoustic guitar to somewhere between 2.0 and 2.6mm on the bass side, 1.5 to 2.0mm on the treble. Any lower than that and I start to lose tone and volume and start to buzz a bit. A more delicate player with a lighter touch might prefer half a millimetre lower. 

BillDL

Tannin said:

Mind you, 2.5mm is not all that high. It's a little more than most people would prefer, but far from unplayable. Most good makers ship ex-factory at about that height, because a little too high is a simple adjustment while a little too low is a much more difficult one. We all have our own styles and likes, but as a guide I generally set an acoustic guitar to somewhere between 2.0 and 2.6mm on the bass side, 1.5 to 2.0mm on the treble. Any lower than that and I start to lose tone and volume and start to buzz a bit. A more delicate player with a lighter touch might prefer half a millimetre lower. 

This is very much what I look to achieve when setting up an acoustic too.

@imalrightjack
If the relief seems OK to you and the action at the nut over the first couple of frets is OK (you mentioned that it plays OK at the nut), then I would loosen the strings, remove the saddle, compare it with the spares provided, and try it with one that is marginally shorter in height.  On some acoustic guitars you can remove the saddle without removing the bridge pins.  I have a soft piece of rectangular rubber about the same bounciness as a very soft pencil eraser, and after loosening the strings I ease it up under the strings to lift them up.  I keep loosening the strings bit by bit as I slide it up towards the bridge.  I can usually get enough clearance to lift the saddle out of the slot and slip in another one, but without the rubber block being pressed down much onto the soundboard.  This way the strings don't unravel at the tuners.

imalrightjack

Cheers, chaps. 

I’ll try @BillDL ’s suggestion!

ToneControl

When did you get it?
I'd let it acclimatize to your house for at least 2 weeks before doing more than a truss rod tweak

ToneControl

Put a capo on the first fret, how does the action feel higher up now?
ah Tannin said that.

The pro way to check is to press the string down with the left hand between frets 2 & 3.
Then tap the string down between the nut and the 1st fret.
You can do the same thing one fret up with the capo.
If the nut is too high it feels like a huge movement, and you get a louder noise when the string hits the first fret.imalrightjack said:

It has a wee bit of relief left - but it seems about right.  It plays okay at the nut but rapidly whizzes up in action.  Low E is around 3mm, so more like .25mm higher.  The nut on the high E is ish 1.5mm, a smidge more.

 The case actually has some spare saddles.

@sev112

you mean first fret string height from the fret?

Jaycee

I adjusted the saddle hight on my acoustic this week. 

I was happy with the relief.   I put a capo on the first fret and played each string checking for buzz, did this for every string up to the 15th all good.

The height at the twelth fret was 4mm and 5mm  (treble - bass)  I removed the saddle scribed a line at 2mm and sanded it away' I put the saddle against a block of wood which was 90 degrees to the paper and this kept the bottom of the saddle nice and square.  It reduced the gap by just over one mm but it feels much better and it could probably do with another mm or so coming off.