Gibson Les Paul Setup – GuitarNiche

How To Setup A Gibson Les Paul Part 9 (String Stretching, Tweaks And Test Drive)

Steve Blundon — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 15:51:48 +0000

The final instalment in our Authentic Guitar Setup Video Series: How To Setup A Gibson Les Paul Part 9: String Stretch, Tweak, Tune & Test Drive

How To Setup A Gibson Les Paul Part 9: String Stretch, Tweak & Cleanup
Video: Les Paul Setup Tutorial Part 9
Stretching the Strings
Dealing with a Sticky Nut Slot
Back to the String Stretch
Final Cleanup
Great Guitars and Great Guitar T-shirts!
Les Paul Setup Video Series Contents

How To Setup A Gibson Les Paul Part 9: String Stretch, Tweak & Cleanup

What’s Covered:

Stretching the strings
Dealing with a sticky nut slot
A quick test drive
Final cleanup

Video: Les Paul Setup Tutorial Part 9

Transcript:

Stretching the Strings

All the strings have been intonated according to the process I just described, but it’s not necessarily in tune, and we still have a little bit of housekeeping to do.

First order is stretching those strings again. You want to get all the stretch out of those strings. I can tell if there’s any issue with the nut again, I can feel it make a little knock down here like something giving. Things might be moving into position or settling down. Once more, I’ll give the strings a good stretch again.

A little trick here, use a tuning fork, strike the 5th fret harmonic at the 5th fret, 5th string. Exactly the same pitch as the A440 tuning fork. How do you like that?

Back to the nut, heard a little “tink” on that 4th string. I’m going to deal with that. I have my amp set up so it’s a little bit gainy. It’s the way I like it. When I stretched the string. I could feel that 4th string is just sticking.

Okay, so that was essentially our last stretch, but this is a bonus for anybody watching.

Dealing with a Sticky Nut Slot

So we found a little kink going on there with the 4th string. It’s not quite doing what it’s supposed to do, so I’m going to smooth that out. I’m not trying to carve it down or anything, I’m just smoothing that out. I think I know what it is.

The winding is probably catching the back wall on this side face – very common. So we have our groove going this way, and the string is canted that way and is catching the back wall there.

If you hear that “tink” that’s what that is. It’s typically on three and three type tuners. You’re hearing the winding’s catching the back wall of the nut slot.

There, done. Cool. Just like that.

Back to the String Stretch

All righty. Stretching it. I’m tuning and tuning and tuning. I want to do it efficiently. Well that sounds just dandy.

I had the relief set at a nominal point before I got the strings up to pressure and all this. This is a wonderful example of what I’m talking about. I got the strings up to pressure to stretch out. The neck actually tipped just a hair.

The relief is in a sweet spot, it’s just in a wonderful position. I’m checking the high frets here. No fretting out. It’s not sky high or anything. Very, very, very comfortable.

Bass side is nice. There’s a nice little bit of air because bass strings need a little bit more height to do their work.

I’m going to give these another stretch. Just arbitrarily around the neck. Man, you can’t stretch the strings enough when you’re fresh. And then the next day, they’ll be perfect.

You can get them to settle down within a short time period if need be, but the next day, they’ll be really in good shape. That’s good. Beautiful.

I’m going to have to play it for a little bit to get everything to settle down to where it’s supposed to be. That bridge pickup, the controls nice and clean. Everything seems to be doing what it’s supposed to do.

Final Cleanup

The final part of this whole setup procedure will be taking some paper towels and a little bit of the polish and just going around it doing the back of the neck and the back of the body, the sides and everything really picking, cleaning house as it were. We don’t need to bore you with all of that.

Anyway, last thing, we put the truss rod cover back on. Tidy up house. Clean up after yourself. It’s all good. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that.

My name is Steve from GuitarNiche. Of course, we’re going to put that back on, all the necessary bits and call it a day. I hope you enjoyed that. It’s been a pleasure.

I hope you get something out of that, some tips and whatnot. Please stay tuned, there are tons of other videos that will explain in depth things like neck relief, how to cut a nut, and more in depth stuff like how to intonate in very, very fine detail and things like that.

Some real finesse stuff that we’re going to address are the most common problems, that we as guitar players face, string breakage, going out of tune, why does D sound great and G sound like crap. I’ll answer those questions. Anyway, thank you very much, and we’ll talk soon. Take care.

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Les Paul Setup Video Series Contents

Part 1: Assessment and Tools
Part 2: The Teardown
Part 3: Headstock and Electronics
Part 4: Knock Knock… Housekeeping!…
Part 5: Cleanup and Reassembly
Part 6: Beginning Fine Adjustments
Part 7: More Adjustments and Neck Relief
Part 8: The Nut and Setting Intonation
Part 9: Stretch, Tweak, Tune and Test Drive

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The post How To Setup A Gibson Les Paul Part 9 (String Stretching, Tweaks And Test Drive) first appeared on GuitarNiche.

How To Setup A Gibson Les Paul Part 8 (Intonation And Cutting The Nut))

Steve Blundon — Thu, 02 Nov 2017 14:50:30 +0000

Part 8 of How To Setup A Gibson Les Paul. What’s Covered: Assessing Neck Relief, the Nut, defining a Balanced Setup, and the Intonation Process.

Part 8: How To Setup A Gibson Les Paul. Relief, the Nut & Setting Intonation
Video: Les Paul Setup Tutorial Part 8
Assessing Neck Relief
Assessing the Nut
The Concept of a Balanced Setup
Some Great Choices for Guitar Tuners:
The Intonation Process
Amazing Guitars and Awesome Guitar T-shirts!
Les Paul Setup Video Series Contents

Part 8: How To Setup A Gibson Les Paul. Relief, the Nut & Setting Intonation

What’s Covered:

Assessing Neck Relief
Assessing the Nut
The Concept of a Balanced Setup
The Intonation Process

Video: Les Paul Setup Tutorial Part 8

Transcript:

Assessing Neck Relief

We’re having a look at neck relief. I want to see a gap of light around the middle of the neck here around the seventh fret between where I’m holding the string down. A gap of light roughly the same thickness as the third string itself. Now that could be more or less depending on how you like your action, but it’s one of these things where you test it out.

As a general rule for me that’s a good starting point because this neck is pretty straight. It’s my medium. It’s my midline, it’s a great starting point. Always try to start with the neck a little bit straighter than ultimately where you want it. When you start to induce compression through string pressure, relief will come around naturally.

Assessing the Nut

So now regarding the nut, I recently replaced this nut, so I know it’s in great shape, but if it had an issue I could deal with that, if it’s with a string or two was buzzing, I can show you how to repair that. There’s a couple of videos I have on that.

In most cases the nut is going to need just tiny little tweaks. So you have at your availability, you can get nut files from Stewmac or All Parts. Personally I prefer AllParts. I find that Stewmac is all well and good, but they’re more in the business of hard selling products than I’m comfortable with these days.

Overall I’m pretty happy with the condition of the nut. I’d prefer to keep the whole nut thing as a separate topic on it’s own.

The Concept of a Balanced Setup

Let me say this, within the context of the instrument, this is very very important. We have a triangular set of elements that we want to keep in balance. Think of it (action) like a perfect triangle, one point is the nut, one is the bridge, two fixed points where the string attaches to the instrument, and then there’s relief itself.

If any one of those elements is out of balance, it automatically affects the other two. So in an ideal setup, all three of those elements are in harmony, and the instrument is happy, and it functions great – all good things.

As mentioned, the nut is a fixed point. If it has issues it has to be addressed so that the strings will go through it properly, etc, etc. So that’s kind of a fixed anchor point.

The other two elements being the bridge and the relief, have a little more adjustability. Nonetheless, they should all be in harmony when everything is aligned properly.

I don’t see any real issue with the nut, this one is just dandy, so I’m going to leave that.

Now down to the bridge end, the relief is good at hand, and it’s intonation time. I’m not going to spend a great deal of time on this as well because intonation is an art form.

Different instruments they all use basically the same principle, but the process can be a little bit different instrument to instrument. And there are many different ways of going about it.

I’m going to give you the short version of how this works. First off, we just installed brand new strings. They’re fresh, they’re really elastic, and there’s a lot of unrestrained junk living in every aspect of the string.

So the first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to stretch, give the strings a good stretch.

Okay, that’s the first pass. They all dropped about a semitone to a tone.

Fact – you want to keep your guitar in tune. One of the most important things you can do is stretch your strings.

I’ve had pros come in and say, “My guitar, it’s not holding a tune.” First thing I do is stretch their strings, and they’re dropping, and I’m going, “I’m sorry man, it was just your strings.” And they’re going,”Oh okay, all right.”

Point is, always make sure your strings are stretched out fully.

Back to our guitar on the workbench, that’s one degree of stretching let’s say.

Now we’re ready to intonate. The process is we’re getting that initial elasticity out of the strings, so that they are…put it this way, if you try to intonate with the strings being fresh and elastic, your pitches are going to drop.

You’re not going to get true reads because the strings are too wrangly and unrestrained. They’re just too happy, it’s the way it is.

Anyway, I’ gonna plug this in. Actually before I do that I’m going to clean up the jack.

This is simply a piece of 220 wet dry sand paper, that’s my preference. Coarse enough to be effective, but fine enough to not really do any damage. And roll that up, I’m going to put that in the jack, and twirl that around a little bit.

I can already see some, I don’t know if you can see that dust, but that’s actually it’s not the gold plate coming off, that’s a little bit of rust coming off, or not rust but corrosion.

It’s a basic process I suppose, so I just flip that around 180 using the other end, clean that up. Okay, get rid of that. So now I know that the jack is in good shape.

Now I’m going to make sure the outer nut of the jack is tight. Give it a little torque with an open end wrench, okay? There’s a trick to keeping that from spinning around which again I’ll share that at a later date.

I was looking for the correct size on that. This is a little sloppy because it’s metric, and not imperial like it should be.

Anyway, we’re going to plug that in, all is clean. Okay, I’m going to use my treble pickup.

For more on the entire process, check our complete guide on How to Setup a Guitar.

Some Great Choices for Guitar Tuners:

KLIQ UberTuner, Professional Clip-On Tuner for...

Snark SN-5 Tuner for Guitar, Bass and Violin...

Korg TM50BK Instrument Tuner and Metronome, Black

The Intonation Process

Being able to get a clean signal to the tuner, the tuning device whether it’s a clip on or whatever, is very important. I’m going to give you the idea of how I go about this,

I’m not going to be absolutely specific about going through each, and every string, and what not, because once you get the initial process you’ll have the idea.

Okay, I’m not using open strings, and 12 fret, or harmonics or anything like 12 fret harmonics specifically. The reason is in every other situation, whatever instrument it is,

if you don’t know for sure is that nut is absolutely cut the way it’s supposed to, you can get misreads along the entire string length. You have to know beforehand that the nut has been cut properly, and you don’t know that until you address it.

So in order to eliminate the possibility of an improperly cut nut, this is how we go about it.

I’m going to start with the fifth string, fifth fret which is a D. I’m going to set my tuner, it’s just an old analogue tuner that needles just beautiful, it’s a fluid motion, it’s not sketchy or anything like that.

And I’m going to use a 12 fret harmonic from the fifth fret (which would be the 17th fret visually), so then I’m getting that D way up the neck.

I should get it in tune first. So I’m registering a specific point on the tuner, it doesn’t matter if it’s perfectly on center right, you don’t have to be that fussy about it. Just get it so that it’s in the ballpark, but register with your eyes.

Take note of exactly where the needle sits or where the registration point is for what you’re seeing. And then I’m going to hit the twelfth fret harmonic (from that point) just to filter it a little bit, just to double check.

That’s beautiful, now up here, that point I just saw a second ago is actually registered now. It’s a little bit on the high side, which means that the scale length is too short. So I have to lengthen it.

I’m going to throw in a little bit more length into the string. Pop the string, helps to seat it, okay? To get it to sit pretty. Now I’m looking at my point, it’s still off center, but it doesn’t matter, it’s within tolerance.

For a typical 6 string electric guitar (3 plain strings and 3 wound strings), your intonation pattern at the saddles should look like the image below:

I just want to see the exact same thing at the octave note when I do this. I’m using a moderate pressure to do this too.

Okay. That’s great. If I press I can actually get that to deflect like, “Whoa.” We’ve got to use like a reasonable amount of pressure. That pitch right there is exactly the same sound, and pitch as that fretted string.

So as far as the tuner goes, it’s exactly the same thing as reading, and it’s on the fret board.

So much of what we play on the guitar is on the fret board. Use the frets on the fretboard to intonate with. You want to do it properly as it gets around any discrepancies with the nut or silly things like that. Anyway, that is the short course on the intonation process as it works.

I can double check this by using a B.

I’m taking note of where my needle sits, and then I come up here (an octave away). And it’s bang on the same spot, that tells me the string is in tune, It’s awesome.

I’m going to use that same process, and go through all my strings, and use fretted notes down here, and then a 12 frets up an octave. For each string multiple notes,

I can use just my analogue tuner, it’s not chromatic or anything just the regular string means for the guitar, and it’ll do a fantastic job.

Anyway I’m going to carry on with that, I’m going to finish that up, and we’ll get back with the home stretch. Back in a sec.

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Look great and show your support of one of the most famous classic rock bands with this fantastic quality Keep Calm and Play More Zeppelin T-shirt!

Makes an awesome gift for any Led Zeppelin Lover!

Order Yours Today!

not rated $25.97 USD Select options

Les Paul Setup Video Series Contents

Recommended Guitar Accessories:

Basic Guitar Tool Kit

Better Guitar Tool Kit

Best Guitar Tools Kit

The post How To Setup A Gibson Les Paul Part 8 (Intonation And Cutting The Nut)) first appeared on GuitarNiche.

How To Setup A Gibson Les Paul Part 7 (More Adjustments And Neck Relief)

Steve Blundon — Sat, 28 Oct 2017 14:49:10 +0000

In this segment, How To Setup A Gibson Les Paul Part 7, we start to make the all-important fine adjustments starting with pickup height and neck relief.

Part 7: How To Setup A Gibson Les Paul. Adjustments and Neck Relief.
Video: Les Paul Setup Tutorial Part 7
Pickup Height Adjustment
Setting Pickup Height
Some Great Choices for Guitar Pickups
Bringing Strings to Pitch and Assessing Compression
Great Guitars and Great Guitar T-shirts!
Les Paul Setup Video Series Contents

Part 7: How To Setup A Gibson Les Paul. Adjustments and Neck Relief.

What’s Covered:

Maintaining String Height
Pickup Height Adjustments and Techniques
Assessing Neck Relief

In the previous segment, How To Setup A Gibson Les Paul Part 6, we began the rebuilding process with making preliminary adjustments that put the guitar’s geometry in the ballpark. In this next section, we start to make the all-important fine adjustments starting with pickup height.

Video: Les Paul Setup Tutorial Part 7

Transcript:

Pickup Height Adjustment

So the string height seems to be pretty good. Again, I haven’t brought up the pitch yet so all the nasty business will start to happen once we get there.

But while I’m here, I’m going to make a pickup height adjustment. You can do this now or you can do this later.

We’re in the finishing phase so the instrument’s not going move around a lot from this point. The pressures induced on it is going to be minimal. If you’re paying attention, make sure in to bring the tension up so the strings are not like slack okay?

Setting Pickup Height

We’re tweaking all of the elements of the instrument systematically, one after the other coming up to the final result getting to the top of that perfect pyramid.

Remember that measurement of two dimes (.098″ or 2mm) from the pickup to the bottom of the string. Same here. Notice I have my fingers pressing the strings down on the neck near the body. I’m not way up here. I’m just here where the body and the neck meet, kind of just a nice choke place, let’s say.

Again, using that dimension of two dimes of width is common. It’s something that can stick in your head very, very easily. I’m looking for that gap between the string and the pickup here, at the neck pickup, on the bridge pickup, and on the treble side for both pickups as well.

With any kind of pickup that has a shiny surface, if you can get a reflection off that, that’s awesome because if you get that in the light just right you can use the reflection between the first string and the sixth string to really fine tune that.

Because you are going to be able to use that reflection to get exactly the same height on both sides. It’s a really cool little trick works like a charm. You can even tell immediately if it’s goofy or something like that.

Some Great Choices for Guitar Pickups:

Seymour Duncan SH-4 JB Model Bridge Humbucker...

Seymour Duncan TB-4 JB Trembucker Pickup for...

Seymour Duncan Jazz Model Neck Humbucker – Zebra

Bringing Strings to Pitch and Assessing Compression

Now I’m going to bring it up to pitch.

Using my A440 tuning fork I lock the frequency in my head. Now, we’re up into the proper pitch range. The original pitch only dropped a couple cents after I brought it up.

When you bring the guitar up to pitch, the instrument starts to do this because you are inducing pressure from one end to the other, and it starts to come under tension. It compresses.

Compression on instruments has been known and dealt with for probably as many years as the instrument has been around which is hundreds, if not about 1300 years or more.

We are looking at where the neck relief is again. When it comes to relief, that is the amount of air or concave bow in the neck. There’s a sweet spot again. There’s always a sweet spot for every adjustment.

What I look for, quickly, is to take any one of these straight edges, the strings themselves, and at about second, third fret area. Again, where the body meets the neck. I want to begin assessing where the relief currently sits, then go about adjusting it. I’ll be right back.

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