I decided to mess with my setup to see if i could improve it.

Ive put a capo on the 1st fret, held down the 6th string at the last fret and measured the string height at the 8th fret, to check the neck bow.

Fender recommend 0.25mm of a gap between the fret and 6th string, for a 9.5 radius neck, which is whats on my Am strat deluxe.

mine is currently at 0.5mm. I adjusted the truss to lower this but i get terrible string buzz then on the 5th and 6th strings, so this is the min i can get away with.

This string buzz made me check the string height, at the 17th fret as recommended by fender.

fender recommends 1.6mm +- .4mm.
both the 5th and 6th string are a whisker over 2.5mm above the 17 fret. there is still fret buzz though, when i fret above the 12th fret on these strings.

I really dont want to raise them any further. what can i do, seeing that the neck bow and string height are within fender recommended tolerances?

all recommended measurements obtained here:
http://www.fender.com/support/stratocaster.php

i dont recommend you mess with your guitar even if you think you may know what your doing, trust me i did it and in the end i had to take one of my strats to my guitar tech who just laughed and said " hey joe, now you know why you pay me!", the main problem is guitars are mass produced but each one is still different, i think you should take your guitar to an expert and tell him what you want to achieve, a $100 squire thats setup properly can sound and feel better than a poorly setup USA strat, or any other guitar for that matter.

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12 guitars 2 hands not fair!

Well I personally think everyone should know how to set-up there guitars, Joe makes a good point, you should take it to a good tech and ask if you can watch how he does things. Also I recommend as do others here Dan Earlywine's guitar players repair guide. A lot of good info and a great read. Both have helped me be able to set my guitars up fairly well. Good Luck!

If your going to play the guitar you should learn to set it up and make most repairs it not that hard. Just take your time and learn. Read books watch you tube ask questions here. Good luck and Good playin

Maybe some obvious questions, and at the risk of telling you something you already know, but:

Did you retune the guitar to standard pitch everytime you made an adjustment before taking your next measurement? Makes a difference.

Are you adjusting the string height at the bridge saddles to conform to the radius of your fret board?

How accurate is your measuring technique? Rulers, feeler guages? Are you sighting the height measurements correctly? (paralax error)

Also, the specs assume a certain guage of strings. (lighter strings buzz easier at low action settings)

Also, remember that .25 mm or even .5mm is not a huge distance so don't get too hung up on the numbers. If you need to raise the action at the saddles just a bit to get rid of the buzzes, don't worry so much if it's outside the specs. What's more important is if the action FEELS too high or makes it undesirable to play when you go higher than the specs. If that is the case, then you may have an issue. Otherwise, if it doesn't impede your playing and you have nice clear tones, don't sweat it.

Try a coordinated approach where you increase the relief a teeny teeny bit, retune and check for buzzes, then the height at the saddles a teeny bit, check for buzzes, then back to the truss rod, etc.

Hope this helps.

Old Shooting Star

First thing guys. My opinion on setting up a guitar is that if you own one you should be able to set it up. Ive done it on all my other guitars and never had a problem, and one of those was a floyd rose. Its just the fender thats causing me grief.

On my epiphone i could get a great low, pretty uniform action, and the ibanez, well, they are designed to have miniscule action so that was grand also. perhaps im being very fussy as im comming from an ibanez with super low action.

to answer the questions:

Did you retune the guitar to standard pitch everytime you made an adjustment before taking your next measurement? Makes a difference.

yes, after each change i re-tuned the guitar to std pitch.


Are you adjusting the string height at the bridge saddles to conform to the radius of your fret board?



Yes, but im not being hugely accurate about it. im making sure the 3rd and 4th strings are highest at the bridge, as they are at the highest point of the fretboard, and then making sure that all the other strings are slightly lower than them, all the while checking string heights against specs on this site.


How accurate is your measuring technique? Rulers, feeler guages? Are you sighting the height measurements correctly? (paralax error)

Im using a small steel rule that shows me the nearest .5mm. Im holding the guitar in playing position, and with my eyes level with the side of the fretboard, i hold the ruler against the top of the fret and measure the distance to the bottom of the string.


Also, the specs assume a certain guage of strings. (lighter strings buzz easier at low action settings)

Im using .009's . the same type of strings the guitar came from the factory with when it was supposed to be set up correctly. the factory setup was a joke though so although i improved on that, its still not great.



Try a coordinated approach where you increase the relief a teeny teeny bit, retune and check for buzzes, then the height at the saddles a teeny bit, check for buzzes, then back to the truss rod, etc.

This was my method, but il try it again, in a more planned manner. someone online suggested messing with the neck pitch control, but thats the last thing i need to do i feel. I mean i have set neck guitars and they always are fine to set up, why should a bolt on neck be any different?

Thanks for the advice.

ive been battling with my strat also, i dont go by the recommended settings, they always feel wrong and give me fret buzz.

i guess its just trial and error, i too like a very low action, but i cant expect that from a vintage strat now can i

I dont expect really really low ibanez action, but i do expect action within the tolerances on the fender website. i mean my guitar isnt a vintage strat, its a brand new deluxe strat. pretty modern guitar designed to modern specs.

scmintan - it sounds like you know how to set up a guitar, and so what I'm going to suggest goes just a step beyond Fender spec.

First, I always have better luck measuring Fender-style neck relief at the 12th fret. Call me crazy, but I check both the 7th and the 12th to see what's going on.

Second (and more important), it sounds to me like a shim might be helpful. I've known many, many Fender style guitars that benefited from having the neck tilted back just ever so slightly. try placing a .73 (or so) pick in the neck pocket, on the side of the pocket away from the peghead, and then doing your set-up. Years ago I decided to shave the bottom of the neck pocket of my main guitar to set the neck a bit deeper in the body, and I saved a sliver of the neck pocket wood which I formed into a wood shim exactly as wide as the neck pocket. As a result, I can run insanely low action with only .005 of relief with no string buzz (note that I play with a fairly light touch).

Don't believe the old-wive's tale about loss of "tone" from an inferior connection between neck and body. Tone comes from a properly vibrating string, which is what you'll get when the guitar is set-up the way you want.

I really dont want to go down the road of shimming. I mean, i what do people with set neck guitars do in such a situation? they dont have the option of shimming.

Is fender Quality control so far gone that customers have to shim their guitar after purchase to ensure it functions correctly?

I can set up a guitar, but i am not daring enough to try shimming it. and to get the local luthier to do it will cost me in the region of 200+ euros ( he's very good, as he makes and sets up guitars for U2, so he charges appropriately) .

This is making me consider getting rid of the guitar. im not happy that i pay so much fur a deluxe strat, and have to go to all this trouble to get it to work correctly.


One more question, will the microtilt system work as well as a shim?
Thanks for the help folks.

Worrying about what Les Paul owners would do seems like a poor reason not to improve the way your guitar plays, but... whatever.

There's nothing daring about shimming a neck: it's standard operating, and if you don't like it or it doesn't work, you can just take the shim out.

The Microtilt system IS a shim.... a permanent, adjustable shim.

one more question, is it unreasonable to expect uniform action across the fret board? most guitars have action that gets slightly higher toward the end of the fretboard. my ibanez set neck is one of the few exceptions to this rule ive found but on a fender, is there any reason i cant achieve this?

the micro tilt is supposed to be the same as a shim.

Not that I can see. My Strat-style guitar has uniform action the length of the board... but then, the frets are nice and level and I have the neck shimmed back a hair, both of which make it possible, I think.

A precisely uniform action from 1st to 21st is a hard goal to acheive and will require intricate nut and neck adjustments to acheive without buzz. Also due to the way frets on guitars are spaced it could cause intonation troubles, but thats just a suspicion. I've tried it and got a 1/8 to 3/16 action on the high E from 1st to 15th on a exceptionaly worn neck with tiny frets worn down to the point of needing a change.
I think fretwork could be where your problem may lie. With the neck set flat and a straightedge on the upper end of the neck are you seeing the upper end 'fret drop off' where your last 5/6 frets are lower than the others?

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No no and no