Step #1

Change Your Guitar Strings

This is the first crucial step to mak-
ing your guitar play great. So
much can change on a guitar just
by changing strings. Old strings
can go dead and produce poor
intonation. It is important to start
any guitar setup with a new set of
strings. These stings don’t have to
be the same.

You can change string gauges or sizes before you setup your guitar.
New string gauges will just pull on the neck and bridge differently, so
it will take more work to set it up. But isn’t that what we are doing?
We are setting up your guitar the right way. Pick any string gauge you
want!

The next step is to tune your guitar. Always, always, always tune your
guitar to pitch before adjusting anything. Notice that I did not say,
“tune your guitar to standard pitch.” You should setup your guitar up
to play properly in the tuning that you normally play in. This could be
standard tuning, drop d tuning, or even DADGAD tuning. Who knows.

See Full Guide on Changing Your Strings:

https://www.guitarrepairbench.com/electric-guitar-repairs/restring-electric-guitar/

Guitar Repair Bench

Step #2
Straighten Your Guitar Neck
It is important to straighten your
guitar neck before you do any ac-
tion adjustments or intonation
adjustments, because your neck’s
straightness directly affects every
other adjustment.

If your guitar neck isn’t straight,

most likely you won’t be able to
find tune any other part of this
setup. Plus, you don’t want to go
through all the trouble of lowering the action and setting the intona-
tion just to have it get messed up when you find out your guitar neck
isn’t straight.

You will need to tighten or loosen your guitar’s truss rod to adjust the
straightness of the neck. Here is an entire article I wrote about adjust-
ing your truss rod.

See Full Guide on Adjusting Your Truss Rod:

https://www.guitarrepairbench.com/electric-guitar-repairs/truss-rod-adjustment/

Guitar Repair Bench

Step #3
Set Your Guitar’s String Radius
Before the action and intonation
can be set, the strings need to be
set to the same radius as the fret-
board. Almost all electric guitar
bridges have string radius adjust-
ment screws on them.

This adjustment will vary depend-

ing on what guitar you have and
which bridge your electric guitar
has. Some bridges, such as the
Floyd Rose bridge, are more time
consuming to set the radius of the
strings.

My string radius adjustment page goes through the steps how to set
the string radius on every electric guitar bridge. Check it out!

See Full Guide on Setting Your String Radius:

https://www.guitarrepairbench.com/electric-guitar-repairs/set-string-radius/

Guitar Repair Bench

Step #4
Adjust Your Guitar’s Action
Guitar action or string action is the height of the strings above the
fretboard. Depending on your playing style, you may want to set the
action higher or lower in relation to the fretboard.

A guitar with higher action

will be more difficult to play
than a guitar with lower ac-
tion, but higher action will
give the strings more room
to vibrate.

Whereas, a guitar with lower

action will be easier to play than a guitar with higher action, but the
strings won’t have as much room to vibrate. This can be the difference
between a guitar with long sustain and one with horrible sustain. Ex-
cessive low action can also cause string buzzing.

Setting the action on an electric guitar may require adjusting both

the bridge and the nut. For a complete action adjustment guide on
how to lower the action on any electric guitar, check out my action
adjustment page.

See Full Guide on Lowering Your Guitar Action:

https://www.guitarrepairbench.com/electric-guitar-repairs/adjust-action-electric-guitar/

Guitar Repair Bench

Step #5
Set Your Guitar’s Intonation
Intonation is the relative tuning of your guitar as your play up the
fretboard. To put it simply, intona-
tion can make your guitar sound
really good or reallly horrible.

Without having your guitar prop-

erly intonated, chords and solos
played higher on the fretboard
will sound out of tune while open
chords sound in tune.

Basically, it will be impossible to tune your guitar. Intonation is usu-

ally set at the 12th fret or one octave from the open strings. I have an
entire article about how to adjust the guitar intonation on every type
of electric guitar. Check it out.

See Full Guide on Setting Your Guitar Intonation:

https://www.guitarrepairbench.com/electric-guitar-repairs/adjust-intonation-electric-guitar/

Guitar Repair Bench