How To Adjust The Action On An Acoustic Guitar

This postal service contains affiliate links, meaning, if yous click through and make a buy, I may earn a commission. This is at no additional toll to y'all. Learn more.

Written by Max Dickinson, Guest Contributor

Imagine just falling into the zone and playing guitar with no effort.

The feeling between the strings and the fretboard are critical to achieving this experience. The meridian of the strings over the frets dictates how easy it is to fret and how hard you can strum with no buzz. This is termed the "action," and information technology goes a long way toward determining how a guitar feels and plays.

Bonding with this element is essential to finding that special place. There are other aspects that affect the feeling, such as the neck profile and width, scale length, number of frets, etc. Nevertheless, this article will tackle merely i attribute of this equation: the action.

Action is a Personal Preference

Everyone's preference for what they want is different. A luthier can build a guitar to take the activity equally low as possible without buzzing on the frets–this is the way the builder sets up his or her guitars. Players of different styles may prefer dissimilar action as well. Someone who plays harder might desire a higher action so that the strings don't buzz, while a player with a delicate touch may want information technology lower for easy fretting.

There are three primary places we care about the action: the 1st, 5th and the 12th frets. For diverse reasons, you may want to raise or lower the action in one of these places.

The parts that control action are the truss rod, nut and bridge saddle.

Where and How to Adjust Activity

There are 5 principal ways that the action can be inverse at these places. 3 of them offering lilliputian to no drawbacks, while the concluding ii are more difficult. If yous have a want to adjust your activeness, there are 5 chief ways to do it.

1. Raising or Lowering Action by Adjusting the Truss Rod

The truss rod is a metal bar inside the guitar neck running the length of the fretboard. Information technology's stock-still at two endpoints underneath the fretboard: 1 at the beginning of the nut, and the other at around the 14th fret. It uses tension to put a forrard-bow or backward-bow into the fretboard.

The truss rod tin by and large exist accessed from either within the sound hole or from the height of the neck where the headstock meets the fretboard. It requires an allen wrench and turning information technology clockwise or counterclockwise will create a forward-bow or backward-bow in the fretboard–roughly in the middle of the cervix, around the expanse of the 5th fret.

If you'd like college action in the middle, plow the allen wrench counter-clockwise. If you'd similar lower action, turn the allen wrench clockwise. Call back, this only changes the frets around the 5th fret more than than at the 1st and 12th. Turning the truss rod too much can introduce fretboard buzz past creating an uneven plane for the strings to sit over.

Here, I'm adjusting the truss rod at the headstock:

Acoustic guitar truss rods are unremarkably accessed through the sound hole, within the body. This acoustic is one of the few with a headstock-adaptable truss rod.

An important thing to remember about fret buzz is that information technology might not be the guitar's fault. Fret buzz can exist acquired by only not fretting hard enough, or other issues related to your playing technique. Many of these are covered in the article: viii Mistakes Guitar Players Make that Crusade String Buzz.

Bold you aren't the crusade, fretboard buzz can happen when the strings are set too low or the heights of the frets are uneven. Fret buzzing issues are common when adjustments are made. Raising the action will always decrease the corporeality of buzz, while lowering may introduce buzz at certain frets. The truss rod has the event of both raising and lowering the action. The method we'll talk about next only raises it.

2. Raising the Action past Shimming the Nut

The nut sits in a channel between the headstock and the fretboard. The strings pass over information technology which provides a fixed indicate for the scale length and fretboard to start at. Raising or lowering the nut affects the activity primarily in the area of the outset 5 frets, merely has niggling consequence on the action further up the neck. If you are wanting to change the action higher up the fretboard at… say… the 12th fret or above, and so y'all'll instead desire to adjust the bridge saddle, which nosotros'll talk about later in this article.

Here, we'll insert a piece of playing card stock to human action as a shim underneath the nut. A handy trick is to utilize a pencil under the strings to agree them out of the manner while yous work.

You lot can also completely remove the strings if they demand to be changed anyway

Get-go, accept a standard playing card and cut a thin strip well-nigh the size of the nut slot. De-tune the guitar and remove the nut*. Place the playing card into the channel then supersede information technology and re-tune. Test out whether this feels right then repeat the pace with another shim.

*Note: How to remove the nut

If your guitar'southward nut doesn't come out hands, or at all, information technology's probably beingness held in place by lacquer, glue, or both. This is normal, but information technology means you demand to do a little actress work to safely remove the nut. Don't endeavor to just brute-force it out. The video below shows you how to remove a stubborn nut, simply if you're not 100% comfy doing this, take the guitar to your local repair shop instead.

Playing cards are about 0.one inches thick–the perfect amount to enhance the nut. Here, I've left excess hanging out for sit-in, but you'd actually trim the carte to the proper width kickoff.

3. Lowering the Activeness by Sanding the nut

This is the opposite of method two. Instead of raising the nut, we're going to lower it. This isn't recommended for the less adventurous considering it's possible to sand off likewise much material and create problems.

The procedure is to sand the lesser side of the nut on a slice of sandpaper, lowering the overall height of the nut. This is a tedious process as the strings must be removed and reattached multiple times to test out the nut height.

Beware, sanding the nut as well far will brand it besides low and cause fretboard buzz.

Sand the apartment underside of the nut to lower the action of all 6 strings equally and preserve the shape of the top and the cord slots. I similar to use ProSand 120-dust sandpaper for this.

The corporeality to sand away is a judgment call, based on how high the activeness is and how much lower you lot want it to exist. If the nut is altered likewise much it might be necessary to caput to a repair shop for a new nut. Or, y'all might take to turn right back effectually and use method #2 to shim it back up.

4. Raising the Action by Shimming the Bridge Saddle

Similar to what we did in method #2, we'll now use the same method of shimming to raise the bridge saddle. The saddle is a solid piece of os or plastic that sits securely within the guitar'due south bridge, which is mounted to the abdomen of the guitar and holds the endpoint of the strings. By changing the saddle's height, the action will be changed more at the 12the fret than the 1st. This is the best method to use to raise the action further up the fretboard–from about the 12th fret and above.

The parts needed are a strip of playing card and your guitar'southward span saddle.

First, cut off a slice of playing menu that is approximately the same width and length as the slot your bridge saddle fits into. Y'all'll need to brand it slightly smaller than the slot so that information technology'll lie apartment against the lesser of the slot.

Cut a piece of playing card so that it lies flat beneath the bridge saddle.

Once you lot experience you've got a good fit, where the card shim lies flat in the channel, replace your bridge saddle on elevation of it and restring your guitar. Exercise Non Gum. An audio-visual guitar's bridge saddle should never exist glued in place.

5. Lowering Action by Sanding the Bridge Saddle

Like method #three, this one involves sanding the saddle to the desired peak. It has similar advantages and disadvantages to sanding the nut. However, there's an additional factor here that we have to pay attending to: the saddle must be a certain top to prevent the strings from buzzing.

Sand the flat underside of the bridge saddle to lower the action of all vi strings every bit and preserve the shape of the top. I like to use ProSand 120-grit sandpaper for this.

The nice thing most these methods is they tin be used together. For example, if you sand abroad too much of the nut or saddle and make it too low, and then a shim can be added, and vice-versa. Yet, there'south a limit to the number of shims y'all can apply before the saddle will first to rock dorsum and forth. It isn't a expert idea to utilise more than than one or two shims equally the nut or saddle becomes less stable and might movement around while playing.

Conclusion

These 5 methods of adjusting the truss rod, nut, and bridge saddle give you some ability to modify your guitar's activeness on your own. Changing the activeness fifty-fifty a pocket-size corporeality will make a big difference in how the guitar plays. A bourgeois approach is to brand a change and then alive with it for a few days.

Sanding the nut and saddle can be risky procedures that should be performed with caution. Become slowly while doing them and check your progress oftentimes. Action is one of the virtually important aspects of your guitar'due south playability, and then consider trying one of these methods if you feel that yours needs some comeback.

Want More Info on Acoustic Guitar Setups?

If you'd similar a step-by-step guide on how to set up up your acoustic guitar, check out the guide: Sketchy Setups #vii: Acoustic Guitars.

Written past Max Dickinson

Guest Contributor

Max Dickinson is both the outreach coordinator and a luthier for the boutique lutherie: Portland Guitar. Portland Guitar specializes in high quality yet affordable acoustic and acoustic-electrical guitars whose features include modern designs such equally wave patterned marquetry, perfect intonation bridges and an action adjustable cervix. If you lot're interested in a luthier'due south voice on guitar topics cheque out the website.

Source: https://www.guitaranswerguy.com/5-ways-to-adjust-acoustic-guitar-action/

Share this post