I have an HSS American Special Strat. It was setup really sweet right out of the box. Got it from Sweetwater. I think they do a great job setting up guitars. Anyway, I prefer my strats to have the trem locked down flat. That's usually not a problem. I just tighten the claw screws and it pulls it flat. It had 9's on it (Strats always come with 9's) and I swapped those out for 10's. I like a little bit more chunk when I hit a chord.

I've done this process many times on many different strats and it usually doesn't screw with it very much. Still great action, great sound, very little buzz (normal amount of buzz). This time, however, I've got a problem. The guitar's action was perfect with 9's and the trem not locked but when I put on 10's and locked the trem down I got horrible string buzz. Darn near dead spots in some places. Eyeballing the neck it appears in order with the typical amount of relief. I had to crank up my bridge saddles on the A, D, G, and B strings considerably (2+ full revolutions of the allen wrench). Although this helped the buzz somewhat (not really enough to get back to the normal amount) it screwed my action. I feel like I've got action I'd expect on a Strat being used with a slide regularly. This sucks. I love the guitar and the tone but I need to get it back to great action, very little buzz but still keeping the trem locked down and using 10's on it.

Please help.

Hi KatyTXBluesMan: the good news is that the guitar played fine before, so it can again. The heavier strings will likely have pulled the neck forward a bit and decking the bridge will have interfered with action and intonation. So these things are what need addressing.

There is no magic to this, you just have to follow the logical sequence in the correct order, getting each bit right before moving on to the next. If you find yourself jumping back and forth in the sequence then you are going wrong. Follow this sequence:

Relief
Action
Intonation

You say you eyeballed the relief but that really isn't good enough.

First, tune the guitar. Many people check relief by fretting a string at the first and last frets and then measuring the gap between the underside of the string and top of the eighth fret. Even easier and more accurate is to use a two foot steel rule laid edge on along the frets and measure the gap at the eighth fret. You are looking for a gap of about 0.010" / 0.25 mm.

If the gap is bigger then detune the strings and tighten the trussrod an eighth or quarter turn. If the gap is smaller or there is no gap, loosen the rod. Clockwise to tighten, anti-clockwise to loosen ("righty-tighty, lefty-loosy"). Retune and check it.

Once you have the relief set right - leave it alone. (Though it would be good to check it again the next day in case the wood has moved a little over the hours.)

For action, with the strings tuned and open measure the gap beneath each string and the top of the 17th fret. For the time being you want a gap of 4/64" / 1.6 mm. Don't get smart with it at this stage: adjust the height of the saddles till you hit that measurement for each string. When it's done, leave it.

Finally, re-do the intonation - because the other adjustments will always throw the intonation out.

You say the Strat was set up nicely out the box? This is how it was done. Have at it.

Good luck - C

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Exactly the kind of advice I was looking for. Thanks. This one threw me for a loop. I haven't had the string guage change and trem lock down have this severe of an impact before.

No problem. The variation might be as simple as the individual piece of wood the neck is made from. No legislating for that: you just have to take it as it comes.

Where people so often go wrong is they jump around the set up process, doing a bit of this, a bit of that; kinda muddling along.

Stick to the sequence and you'll be fine.

There's more sophisticated stuff that can be done with things like action, but the above process will give you a very good standard set up. ...Or if it somehow doesn't, come back to us and we'll think about it further.

Good luck - C

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It's too bad you didn't take the measurements of the setup when it had 9's. That way you could have set your string height and relief to very close to where it was when it played great! I'm betting it's a relief issue. Too much relief, and you will lower the saddles and strings to make it "easier" to play, but this will cause you to have dead spots and terrible buzz on the higher frets Straighten the neck a touch, then set your string height at a low, but reasonable height, and see how she plays and fine tune from there.

very usefull post Ceri !
tnx a lot, i just improved my instrument quite a bit!

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Charvel 4 - Fender strat '97 modified - Peavy Bass - Takamine ac.

I've never seen it said so succinctly. This is exactly the way to go.