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Question for Measuring String Height

ThomasTronics

ThomasTronics

Nov 21, 2011
724
1,293
Ontario
#1
God I missed this place when it was down.

This is probably a very common question. But I feel like I'm over analyzing... Naturally.
I've been spending lots of time working on setting up my basses and getting them to that beautiful playing level where the guitar sings and plays like the sound in your head.

I've been measuring the height at the 12th fret to get 5/64 to 4.5/64 - E to G. I then like to measure the string height at the very last fret to see something like 5.5/64th to 5/64th. Which to me signifies good action and.... good relief? Good grief?

Is this worth while doing this? And what is the "standard" place to measure relief? 12th fret? Last Fret? Does it depend on scale length?

Trying to get my setup skills to a high level.
 
#2
Well ..... My starting point has always been to set up at makers specs. I work on the assumption that if I can't get it playing well at makers specs, there is an issue elsewhere. I can then tweak to my hearts content and get it right for me. 12th fret does seem to be the normal place to measure, but that's why I start with the where and how from the maker.

I've seen comments from, I just play it out the box, to, I measure and adjust every week.

No hard and fast rules in my opinion, if you're happy with how it plays, my view doesn't matter.
 
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#3
Most of the techs I know, myself included, measure string height at the 12th fret. Measuring at the last fret is reasonable if the neck doesn't have a ski-jump (12th fret kink) which is very common. But I always find it best to take a possible ski-jump out of the equation. Much the same as the reason for fretting at the first fret when measuring neck relief - you want to take a potentially poorly-adjusted nut out of the equation (a poorly adjusted nut is also very common).
 
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#4
for me it's string height at the 12th. relief between the 5th to the 8th fret with a capo on the 1st and finger pressure at the body joint fret. you may want to move this one about to look for a hump though depending.
 
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#5
I try and keep my necks dead straight so I'm not too worried about reading relief. Although the Lakland setup guide has measuring relief from capo on 1st, fretting 12th fret and relief measure at 6th fret. Different!!

So measuring at the 12th is pretty standard than. I'll stick to what I'm doing.

I do agree who cares what all the measurements are and just play what feels right but I like to measure what's right and keep all the axes in line so they pickup and feel right.
 
#9
I set up using the makers specs as my baseline, then fine tune it from there. For string height i set my E and G with a scale, them eyeball the A and D relative to the E and G. I’m sure that sounds confusing but i try to match the strings to the neck radius after getting the two outside strings where I like them.
 
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#10
“A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.”

It seems that a dying culture also exhibits poor sentence structure.
 
#11
Turnaround said:
“A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.”

It seems that a dying culture also exhibits poor sentence structure.
Click to expand...
Indeed! This should be on everybody's bookshelf:

LSBmDwAAQBAJ.jpg
 
#14
Turnaround said:
“A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.”

It seems that a dying culture also exhibits poor sentence structure.
Click to expand...
Proper grammar, sentence structure and punctuation seems to be dying out. I blame the media for trying to portray the teen idols possessing poor language skills as being cool; young people emulate this and it soon becomes habitual. Worse yet, is when you hear school teachers using the same poor skills.
 

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