Set up from new

lapua65 · September 2019

Is there any guitar manufacturer that you can buy a guitar from a retailer that will start out well set up? It seems odd that you can pay lots of money for a new guitar to hen have to pay another £100 odd to get it set up? Having paid for work an appreciated the difference. Most people seem to want the action low. So why do manufacturers not set them lower. Obviously too low and things get tricky. I am in the market for a 2nd guitar and was pondering on this.
Be gentle, I am very new to this...

sweepy · September 2019

I’ve never found a properly setup guitar out of the box as they tend to arrive in a “vanilla” setup and not tailored to your own particular string gauge, nut height, neck relief etc

jellyroll · September 2019

Conventional wisdom is that they mostly need a set up. Frankly, I'm too lazy so have never bothered. I'm sure my guitars would benefit from a setup but they're "ok" so I don't bother.

ICBM · September 2019

I spent a reasonable part of my professional life when I was working for a couple of retail shops which sold a lot of new acoustics just doing set-ups on new guitars.

The main reason is that if the factory tries to set them 'just right', due to manufacturing tolerances and humidity changes, some will end up too low and rattle, buzz or choke, which is a much more obvious fault than simply the action being a bit high. The closer to 'just right' they set them, the higher the number with problems.

For cheaper manufacturers with poorer tolerances and less final handwork this means that the average action has to be really quite high, but even for higher-end ones it can never really be as low as a professional set-up on the finished guitar when it's arrived in its destination climate and settled down.

Of course, good retailers will generally do this for free either before sale or afterwards, best of all after asking the customer what type of strings they like and what playing style they're going to use. There's no point setting a guitar up for the best action for gentle fingerstyle if it's going to be used by an aggressive chord strummer.

Free set-ups may be something that's disappeared now in the days of online sales and price-matching though...

MichaelWatts · September 2019

As my learned colleagues above have already mentioned, most guitars leave the workshop with an action that will allow for dropping or raising according to local ambient conditions and the client in question's requirements re string gauge, relief and action height. This is even more apparent on acoustic instruments, electrics are generally more forgiving in my experience.

octatonic · September 2019

ICBM said:

For cheaper manufacturers with poorer tolerances and less final handwork this means that the average action has to be really quite high, but even for higher-end ones it can never really be as low as a professional set-up on the finished guitar when it's arrived in its destination climate and settled down.

IMHO a lot of cheap guitars can be improved with a new bone nut and saddle.

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