Reasons why having a great setup on your guitar is important and what the setup should be like:
1. Having a great setup on your guitar, whether it’s an acoustic or an electric, makes the guitar easier to play, number one.
2. With a proper setup, the guitar should stay in tune much better as you play up and down the neck. The fret spacing on the neck incorporates a mathematical formula to spot each fret. That formula is mainly just an approximation. The further you are from the nut (the end of the neck where the head stock is), the closer together the frets are spaced. What is required to keep the guitar in tune up and down the neck is called “setting the intonation”, or “intonation the guitar”. This involves moving the string saddle on each string forward or backward to find a spot where the string, when played open (not fretted anywhere) has the same note as when it’s fretted and played at the twelfth fret, which would be the same note, only an octave higher. This is usually limited to electric guitars and electric basses.
3. The strings should not be so far off the fret board as to cause the string to be sharp (higher in pitch than it should be) as a note is fretted anywhere on the neck. When the strings are too high, this can also cause fatigue in your fretting hand, even after only a few songs. The strings should also be high enough to allow the string to vibrate freely and resonate. Without any special tools, this can be checked with a thin pick and two blank credit cards. The high “E” string should be low enough at the first fret to allow a thin pick to fit just snugly under the string. At the twelfth fret, two blank credit cards, or ID cards, with no stamping, held together, should be able to fit under the high “E” string. Some people may want this spot to be lower, but this is always a good starting point.
4. The pickups need to be at the proper height. The bridge pickup typically needs to be closer to the strings than does the neck pickup. The strings vibrate less at the neck pickup position than they do at the bridge pickup position. The higher the pickups are, or the closer they are to the strings, the more volume the pickups typically have, and the brighter the pickups sound. The lower the pickups are, or the further they are from the strings, the less volume they typically have, and the darker they typically sound. Also, setting the balance in volume between tie pickups is a matter of adjusting the height on each one until the desired balance is achieved. So, pickup height can be a matter of each individual’s preference.
-Bruce Lyons
