personal experience as a musician, engineer, and guitar technician. ...
illustrations that show you how to care for and maintain your electric guitar. You
will be ...
Contents Page
3 4 6 7 10 11 12 15 16 17 18 19 21 22 25
Preface Getting Started De-String Cleaning Fret Board Cleaning Checking Frets Restring Correctly Tuning & Stretching Neck Adjustments Checking the Bridge Adjusting the Bridge Intonation Tremolos Finishing Up Closing
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Preface
This manual was formulated and written after 15 years of personal experience as a musician, engineer, and guitar technician. I have repaired, setup, and worked on hundreds of guitars. This step by step manual has dozens of illustrations that show you how to care for and maintain your electric guitar. You will be shown how to completely setup your guitar for best playability, including the proper way to string lock your axe to stay in tune better. I guarantee this manual will give you all you need to keep your guitar in top shape. This manual is independently authored and published and is in no way affiliated with Fender or any other guitar manufacturer or company. This manual is copyrighted by Trade Star Services, Inc., and may not be copied, distributed, or resold in any way under penalty of law.
© Copyright Trade Star Services, Inc. 2006 All Rights Reserved
Getting Started Before you begin you should prepare an area to work. Cleaning and working on your guitar is usually messy. Use old rags or towels to help keep your work area clean. Electronic Guitar Tuner with Needle Indicator Suitable Guitar Workstation Fret Board Conditioner Phillips Screwdrivers Short Guitar Cable Fine Sand Paper Peg Winder Alan Wrenches Steel Wool Eraser Cutters Pliers Ruler
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Guitar Workstation You can buy a Workstation at a guitar store or online for about $40. You can make your own, as I did, for less than $5 bucks. I simply got a 36 inch rug from Wal-Mart, and made my own head block from some scrap wood. Cut out the end of a 2x4 in a U shape to hold your guitar. Cover it with foam or carpet . If you’re in a pinch you can also use an old towel doubled up, rolled up, and duck taped. This will give you a neck rest to set your axe on.
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De-string Your Guitar In order to completely clean your axe, you should first remove the old strings so you can get to the pick guard and fret board. Start by loosening all of the strings to remove tension on the neck. It is not good to cut the strings while they still have tension on them. They can fly back and stick you, and also cause an instant tension change in the neck of your guitar. Loosen them first, then cut them.
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Cleaning How often you clean your axe depends on how much you play it. If you play it every day then you should do once per week cleaning. If you don’t play it as often then you should do it once a month, or when you replace your strings. It is best to work on your axe with the strings removed. It is much easier to clean, you have access to polish the fret board and remove dirt and grime from the pick guard and around your tremolo hardware. Your guitar masses great amounts of dirt and grime from playing. The oil and sweat from your hands, mixed with dirt, dust, smoke, and other things in the environment make for a very sticky film on your axe. You can see the dirt and grime in some of my illustrations in this manual. Now that you have your work area setup, you are ready to begin.
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Cleaning Start by applying a small amount of your favorite guitar polish to your polish cloth. Any cotton cloth will work. Smear the polish evenly around on all surfaces of the guitar BODY, including the pick guard. The Polish should dry quickly and leave a film on your axe. If your guitar is really dirty, apply a second coat of polish over the first, and allow it to dry. Guitar polish is much like car wax in that the “polish” comes when you wipe it off of your guitar and buff it into the finish. Once the polish is dry, buff all of the areas where it was applied. It will take some pressure and scrubbing to remove all the grime and bring out the luster of the finish. As you can see from my polish cloth, there was quite a bit of dirt, sweat, and oil buildup on the body of my guitar.
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Cleaning There are many areas on your axe that will be hard to clean. I recommend using and old toothbrush. Put a small amount of polish on the brush and apply it to those hard to reach places. This is a great way to remove the dirt in and around your tremolo hardware, around pickups, jacks, and other hard to reach places. Use the brush dry to polish and remove dirt in those areas after the polish has been applied. Use the corner of your polish cloth to shine and clean up the area after you have used the toothbrush. This should leave your hardware and your pick guard clean and polished. Now that you have cleaned the body, you can clean the neck.
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Fret Board Cleaning Some maple fret boards have a lacquer finish just like a guitar body, and you should use your guitar polish on them. Rosewood fret boards are unfinished and more exposed to the elements. You should condition your fret board every time you change your strings. Apply Fret Board Conditioner, (lemon oil, or any good wood conditioner will work) to your cloth and apply to the fret board. This will not dry, as most conditioning products contain oil. Work it thoroughly into your fret board, and use a toothbrush to get the dirt around the fret wires. Buff dry. Use a small piece of very fine sandpaper over an eraser for fret polishing and to get in the cracks under the fret wire.
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Check Your Frets With your strings still removed, it’s time to check your frets for wear. (If your axe is fairly new or un-played, you can skip this for now). Using a ruler, place it down the frets as shown. All of your frets should touch the ruler at the same height. If you have frets that are worn down, they will not touch the ruler where they are worn.
Worn fret wires will cause your action to be off and may causing buzzing or rattling against the strings. If you spot places of wear, you can use a small crown file or sandpaper to dress them slightly. If you are not experience in this, or if the wear is great, you may want to seek the help of a trained technician for fret dressing or replacement.
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Re-String Your Guitar Now that your axe is cleaned and conditioned, you are ready for new strings. Before you install new strings, check to make sure all of your tuners are tight by using a pair of pliers to tighten the nuts on the top as illustrated. Now install your first string, starting with the thickest string (low E) first. Turn your tuner so that the string can go straight through as to be careful and not bend or crease your strings.
I will now show you how to professionally string your guitar so it always stays in tune. Pull the string tight throught the first tuner, then back off past the nut to give you slack for winding. Next, bend the string 90 degrees to the right to create your “lock”.
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Re-String Your Guitar Creating your “String Lock” will keep your strings from slipping and ensure that your axe stays in tune better. This is the way that every guitar should be strung. Wrap the string clockwise around the tuner peg and underneath where the string enters the peg as illustrated.
Now, while using your fingers to pull the string away from the neck to keep tension on it, bend the string over the top where you went under the string before. Continue to apply tension and wind the string over the lock to secure it in place.
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Re-String Your Guitar Keep applying tension and use your peg winder to take out the slack. You should have at least 2 complete windings around the post. Be sure to wind from top to bottom and not overlap your strings on the peg. This will give you an even slip-free winding every time. Now that you have enough tension on your string to sit firmly over the nut, use your cutters to clip the excess all the way down to the top of the peg.
This keeps the string short and there is less chance of it picking you, cut strings can be very sharp. Repeat this procedure for the rest of your strings. Once complete, your windings should be clean and tight like the illustration below. Now you know how the Pros do it.
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Tuning and Stretching Use an electronic tuner with a needle indicator. You will need the help of the needle in order to property tune and intonate your guitar. Some “lighted” tuners are just not accurate enough without the needle to indicate very slight pitch changes. Tune your guitar to the standard tuning as indicated on the tuner below which shows all 6 string tunings. You will have to tune new strings several times.
Now that you have your axes tensioned up and tuned, you need to stretch your strings. Bend all of the strings in both directions as shown below. You will have to do this step several times before they stop stretching. Once they stay in tune after additional stretching, you are ready to play.
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Adjusting the Neck d all Neck adjustments should be done in small increments. First you need to look at the neck for the proper relief and fall away. The illustrations below show how a typical neck adjustment should look. You should have “relief” at the headstock, level from the 9th fret back, and fall away where the neck joins the guitar body. An improperly adjusted neck will cause string buzz and may make you think you have improper action or other problems.
Relief
Level
Fall Away
Your relief should have a slight bow which you can check with an 18” ruler. The fret board should be level in the middle, (all middle frets should touch the ruler), and a slight fall away at the body (the string height will be the greatest here), as you can see from the illustration above. Use the illustration below to see how to look down your neck and eyeball the curve it has. The neck should only be slightly curved at the headstock end, and then look level the rest of the way down to the body of the guitar. Tighten or loosen the truss rod by using an alan wrench at the headstock as shown below. Start with 1/4 turn increments and check the neck’s curve each time you make an adjustment. Your adjustments should be minor.
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Checking the Bridge Your action is set by the neck adjustment and bridge adjustments. Before checking your action, lets first check to see if your bridge is setup properly. As you can see, my guitar had a bridge saddle that was way out of adjustment, this can happen from normal play and should be checked when working on your guitar. The bridge should have a slight curvature or “hump” from one side to the other. You can check this with your ruler. Keep in mind that some guitars are different and that this is used primarily for strat style bridge saddles. Les Paul’s, for instance, can only be adjusted on the sides to adjust the saddle as a whole and not by individual strings. They too have a slight “hump” in the way the saddle is made.
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Adjusting the Bridge Saddles Your action is set by the neck adjustment and bridge adjustments. Once the neck is properly adjusted, you can lower your “action” by lowering the bridge saddles. Using and alan wrench as illustrated below, lower the bridge saddles until you start to get a slight string buzz on the fret board. Now adjust each side of the bridge saddle up 1/4 turn at a time until the buzz stops. Be sure to turn each side screw the same amount to keep the bridge saddle level. Check all positions on the neck, you should have no string buzz on any fret position. As you can see from the illustration, my guitar had a bridge saddle that was way out of adjustment and caused string buzzing. Once adjusted to the proper height and curvature, the action is lowered and playability is great.
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Setting Intonation Setting the intonation is one of the most important parts of your guitar maintenance. “Intonation” refers to the tuning of your bridge saddles so that proper string length is achieved to resonate the correct pitch at both the open string, and the octave (12th fret) position. This is done on a string by string basis. As you can see below, some saddles are more forward than other, which adjusts each string to the correct length.
Tune each string with the guitar resting on the workstation. Once tuned perfectly, place your finger on the 12th fret as shown above and check the tuner again. As you can see by the needle’s slight shift to the right, the intonation is slightly off and needs to be adjusted in order for the guitar to be in tune at all fret positions.
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Setting Intonation The length (Intonation) can be adjusted at the back of the bridge saddle as shown below. Again, only slight adjustments are necessary in most cases. If the pitch is too high at the 12th fret, shorten the set screw, if is it to low, lengthen it. You will have to retune after every adjustment. Check it again and again with your tuner in the open position, and with your finger on the 12th fret.
This part can be tedious to get correct. Once you have found the property length (intonation) your guitar tuner should show the exact same pitch with the string in the open position as it does in the octave position (12th fret). If your guitar has 2 octave positions (24th fret), be sure to check the tuning at all three positions for proper intonation.
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Tremolos Adjusting the tremolo is fairly simple. Remove the back cover to expose the back of the tremolo as shown below. With a screwdriver, adjust the tension screw on each side of the spring assembly to increase or decrease tension. For most players, the tension should be somewhere in the middle so that slight pulling on your tremolo bar in either directions caused pitch changes. Tremolo Side View Saddle Rocker Screw
Adjustment Screws
Tension Springs
I prefer to have my tremolo tight down to the body so that the tension from tuning the guitar does not pull the tremolo away from the body. I don’t use it much and only want “down” pitch changes, therefore I want enough tension on the tremolo so that it rest flat on my guitar body. Each persons preference is different so adjust to your own liking if you want your tremolo to “float” as it is designed to do. You will have to retune your guitar each time you make any adjustments to the tension or your tremolo.
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Finishing Up Now that you have completed your maintenance, it’s time to check for final adjustments. Give your axe a good once over to catch anything you might have missed in your first adjustment or anything that might be effected by adjustments you have made to other parts of your guitar. Check your intonation again, especially if you have make and saddle or tremolo adjustments to be sure they have not effected intonation.
Check your neck again for proper relief, level, and fall away. Proper neck curvature is crucial to having a great playing axe.
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Finishing Up Check to see that you still have a slight “hump” in your bridge height adjustments and that you don’t have string buzz at any position on the fret board. Use a tuner to check and set intonation after any bridge adjustments.
Use a capo to check your alternate fret tuning to be sure your guitar is tuned at all fret positions.
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Finishing Up Give your axe a final wipe down and buff. Use a little more polish if needed to remove fingerprints and residue left over from handling your guitar during maintenance.
Stretch your strings again and give your guitar one final tuning before you play. Strings can stretch for a while and are effected by change in temperature and humidity. If you travel with your axe, you may find you have to tune it more frequently due to changing environments. Never leave your guitar in extreme hot or cold places.
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In Closing Now you have a shiny great playing axe. Maintenance should be performed at least once per month in order to ensure your guitar plays the best it can. I hope you enjoyed this eBook and found it to be informative and accurate. You are welcomed to contact me with your feedback, suggestions, and input.
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