Lowered action

Took my Takamine in because my “B” string was getting a bit jazzy. The shop luthier lowered the action and put new strings on. All I
can say is “Hallelujah all my brothers and sisters.”
No longer feel like I’m wrestling with an alligator when attempting the F chord! Sounds great ! Very happy as the F chord was getting to be a real drag.

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Know the feeling, I did something similar a while back and it transformed my guitar feel :+1:

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Conversely, I raised the action on my Revstar recently, and it made a huge difference.

When I bought the guitar it had 10s on it, although I didn’t really take much notice at the time. When I did a string change a few months later, I replaced with 9s because that’s what I had available. I’d did a bit of a setup at the time.

I recently did another string change and, having checked the specs on the Yamaha website, realised that 10s would be better, as that is what the specs suggested. I did this having suspected for a while that I needed thicker strings, partly because the Revstar has jumbo frets, and I was finding I would often go out of tune due to fretting too hard.

Having done that, I also raised the action a bit because I was having trouble bending at the higher frets.

The combination of thicker strings and slightly higher action has made it much more playable.

So I think the message is to have the appropriate setup. Often guitars can have too high an action, but sometimes the opposite is the case

Cheers,

Keith

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Have recently changed strings from 10s to 9s and low E is buzzing. Suggestions?

Is it only buzzing on open E string, or when you fret further up the fingerboard as well?

Smaller strings can buzz if you are heavy handed with picking. I have 8-38 on one guitar and I can get a lot of string slap on the big E when I play too hard. It frets fine if I don’t pick too hard.

Also, string tension is less, so a slight nudge to the truss rod is likely the fix for that. Won’t take much, somewhere around 1/8 of a turn (45 degrees) would probably be more than needed. I’d start with about half that.

Could be a bit of both. :slight_smile:

Buzzing when open, but more pronounced further up the neck.

OK, so not the nut. Then it sounds like truss rod might need adjusting as @sequences suggests. Thinner strings = less tension.

But…but…nudging the truss rod! Egad! Dare I do such a thing, knowing my track record for screwing things up?

if it gets worse the first direction, then apply double the turn the other. :slight_smile:

He He, sounds pretty simple. You haven’t seen me fixing a lawnmower…

I did my first truss rod adjustment a few months ago and it is a little scary. The main problem I found is that people tell you what clockwise/anticlockwise or to the left/right adjustment does, but they never say looking from which direction! Looking down the neck or up the neck?

Anyway. I am pleased to say I didn’t destroy my guitar. Take it a 1/4 turn at a time and keep a record of what you did, so you can always go back again.

at about age 12, I decided to do that. I had a lot of parts and none of them would go back properly. We bought a new one and I was told not to take it apart. :wink:

I had it down to pistons and rings. Took me the whole afternoon.

Over the years the biggest issue I’ve seen with truss rod adjustments is damaging the nut or allen bolt due to a poorly fitting tool. Make sure you have a really good snug fitting tool before you do it. Other than that then there really isn’t much to worry about if, as Alan has already mentioned you take it slow and note what you are doing. If you find it’s very tight you might want to loosen the strings first, but that will make the process a little longer.

It depends where the truss rod adjustment is. Some (most?) are at the headstock end, but some are at the heel of the neck.

Either way, you treat it like any other screw/bolt: you consider as facing the top of the mechanism, where you insert the tool to do the adjustment.

As an example, if I asked you to tighten a screw that was in the top of a table by turning it clockwise, would you ask: “looking from the top of the table or from underneath?”

It’s a little less obvious with a guitar neck, but it’s the same principle.

So if your truss rod is adjusted from the headstock end, you do it looking from the top of the headstock where you inert the allen key down towards the body.

Then it’s “lefty-loosey, righty-tighty” (left is counter-clockwise, right is clockwise).

Tightening the truss rod will make it stiffer and flatter. Loosening it will allow the strings to pull it less flat.

Cheers,

Keith

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Ah… excellent! That explains it perfectly. Mine is at the headstock so I need to think about it from that viewpoint (ie looking down the neck towards the bridge).

Thanks @Majik :+1:

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