What goes in your Setup (Acoustic)

Continuing the 'What goes in your setup' series, we have here a Larivee L-03 acoustic guitar. I would consider it a mid to higher end production guitar and as you will see, many of the problems associated with guitars has nothing to do with the price. A higher priced instrument can eventually develop fret problems.

Here's the process in its entirety:



I'm impressed by my Powershot's as well as my own limited abilities :)



Guitar sitting on my workbench feeling helpless.



Many frets have popped up at the ends and this is the first thing to fix



Fret reglued. This is a time consuming process and in total I glued in more about 20 loose ends which took about 30 mins.



A notched straightedge is used to set the neck perfectly level (truss rod needing adjustment of course!)



Frets are polished with steel wool.



Nice and clean.





The nut action didn't need any tweaking so I proceeded to measure the action with a long ruler. At the 12 fret it measured about 2.2mm on both the bass and treble. I had to take down the treble side more. Point to note: to reduce action on the 12 fret fret by 1mm, approximately 2 mm had to be taken down on the saddle. Good ole trigonometry at work here, finally a use for it so many years after leaving school!





Saddle is brought to the appropriate height. Final sanding on a flat surface is crucial to good contact with the bridge, hence producing better tone.



Upon stringing up, I realised there was a 'sitar' like sound on the high E. A quick check revealed a poor break angle to to the bridge pin. Notice how shallow the angle is compared to the rest of the strings.





Without haste, I put my chisel to work and notched a deeper string slot groove at the bridge pin hole. Now, the break angle is much more desirable and the 'sitar' like sound is gone.



After stringing up and a wipe down, I couldn't put this baby down. A great setup could make all the difference, regardless of the price of your guitar.