(Sorry for the length. Writing and surgical head injury do not go well together.)
And this is what happens when no local luthiers within an hours' drive and actually wanting to do luthier work exist. I would have preferred to pay for this a year ago. Now I am glad I could not. I went to great lengths to practice before doing anything to my nice guitars.
My Hummingbird has had moments of brilliance since I got it 23 months ago. The initial main set-up specs were decent enough, but I had to have this guitar right on it's lowest action point or deal with some impressive Arthritis pain. My preference for playing with minimal flareup has been a string height right at 5/64ths and 3.5/64ths, and neck relief somewhere around .006" and .004". Anything lower that and fret interference became an issue. If both measurements were on the low end, I had fret buzz - period. Anything above it, pain became a quick issue. I had the spare time, so I kept up with it. I tried .011s on a different guitar and did not care for it. Every man chooses his poison, yah?
So, last year, I bought a Stewmac Fret Rocker and the Dan Erlewine (Stewmac) guitar repair book to see what I could do. I know I could have done similar with things around the house and internet sources, but this seemed so easy. As it turned out, this guitar was in decent overall shape and well within Gibson's range of specs. One notion grabbed attention. The suggestion in the Erlewine book that a Luthier could make a guitar even more playable and less noisy (sans fret buzz) by going to some more exacting standards and measurements. On a high level, basic view, he mentioned string height at 4/64 thick E @ 12th and just a hair over 2/64 on the thin E, and then neck relief down to .004".
As lofty as it seemed, and I was suspicious, the individual items he wrote about made sense. I decided to try these things, but to take my own sweet time in doing so. I practiced on an Epiphone ES-335 and a ESP LTD acoustic guitar (a $350 laminated B&S solid top pile of junk I got from MF for $99 on a SDOTD. about 8 years ago. Good thing, as I ruined 3 nuts.
He goes into decent detail by describing what he looks for both the topic at hand and it's relationship to the big picture. I got a better sense of the big picture and geometry involved. I carefully inspected, measured and learned what I needed to do. I'm fairly uncoordinated with such things, so buying idiot-proof tools where it made sense was in order. That said, I also knew that I needed to figure out a way to do all of this over a longer period of time so that I might get better at each component than if I rushed into one big long weekend task. This took me a year, including the practicing on the more affordable guitars. I know my own demons. Coordination challenged is just the beginning for me. hah! 🙂
My hummingbird was somewhere along this point a year ago. I wanted to make that totally clear. This is in no way, shape or form, a Gibson bashing. More to the point, it is a compliment. I can compare this whole plan of attack to my SJ along with a Taylor 614 and a Martin D41. It is, indeed, possible to set up a Gibson Acoustic to such playable standards without getting a bunch of racket and noise.
So my starting point a year ago:
Neck relief (6th to 8th fret) - .006"
Saddle Height (measure from top of bridge to bottom of string) - 10/64th lowest and 14/64th highest.
String height from body to bottom of string right before the bridge - 12.5mm highest points
Normal (non-excessive based on pro demos online) resonance in the B-E strings
Bridge Pins all wiggled WITH loose string in place.
16" radius fairly consistent throughout, including all of the frets and strings at both ends. Just the high spots discovered with fret rocker.
String height at nut (measured at 1st fret thin through thick, and following a radius) - .021" - .026"
Hi-spots in frets using fret rocker - 8 varying from being really anal to quite obvious. The 3rd and 15th were end to end.
I replaced the saddle first, as part of removing the UST earlier, and got it to match the original overall height. I did like these two changes tonally speaking, but of course, it did little to nothing for the overall playing ease. I was still somewhat high on the overall saddle height using both the body and the bridge based measurements.
String height at the nut was next. I got the files over the holidays. I practiced on a couple other less expensive guitars, too, before attacking the hummingbird. Initially, this took quite some time as I was very timid after ruining a nut on the ESP LTD Acoustic beater guitar. I got them knocked down part of the way to the Erlewine spec. The method of using feeler gauges left my confidence quite low. I ended up getting that high-priced nut-slotting gauge from Stewmac, which was one of my better tool purchases to date. I ended up between .014" and .016" high-E thru low-E. The low-E was supposed to be closer to .020". I got over-confident and quick. I adjusted the others to maintain radius as closely as possible. This was my big error of the whole long-term project, but it worked out well.
Next up in the plan was the fret leveling. I did one practice guitar doing an entire fret leveling, and another guitar doing spot leveling. One of the many things I learned was that even the little tiny high spots mattered as string height was reduced. All of the wires with in radius sans the high spots, and only two wires needed end to end attention. I did the somewhat risky thing and did the individual thing. I spent much money again on a tool - the Stewmac Fret Kisser - which allowed me the freedom to file without going to low. it worked. As this was my third guitar to do fret leveling on, the resulting crowning and polishing went very well. More expensive files and some darned nifty sanding cloth and a butt-load of tape.
The last item was also the first item. A new saddle. I could have sanded the other one, but I had bought one as part of a (somewhat)matched set with dyed Colosi pins I got earlier this year. Might as well actually use it. I installed it, but did not go down to or below the height of the old one. I left the guitar otherwise setup overnight to settle in before deciding on how much more to take off. My plan was to leave the neck relief around the .006" mark for room to handle weather variations. I took the saddle down enough to leave my string height at 4.5/64ths and the 2.5/64s. If Erlewine's specs worked for me, this would leave me with with a minimum of .5/64 up or down before getting fret buzz or getting above that Arthritis pain trigger height. The amount I needed to come off the saddle would also reduce the actual saddle height numbers to 12/64(from bridge) and 11.5mm (from body).
The sanding went decent enough, and the strings went back on just in case I needed to take more off or put my old saddle back in. Turns out it was just right. It took some playing and a few hours for the 2-day old strings to settle down from being both new and de-tensioned twice, but it worked and is still working after a few weather changes. The end result is best of both worlds. Plays like a dream with any sort of buzz resonance at extreme lows. The guitar is louder, too, which took me a few sittings to get used to. That Hummingbird motor is more evident. There is this sort of warmth that developed over the course of a 2-1/2 playing session last night that's hard to describe.
My ending measurements. I can go lower, but why? I wouldn't do it with this saddle right now. If I do anything other than the, it would have to be 100% reversible.
Nut - .014" to .016"
String height 12th fret 4.5/64 and 2.5/64
Neck Relief - .006" (in playing position. Closer to .008" on bench with neck rest below 3rd fret)
Saddle height from bridge (8.5/64 - 12/64)
Saddle Height from Body highest point 11.5mm
Remaining issues:
Defect #1: (Minor ) Went too low on the bass strings at the nut according to the Erlewine spec.
Defect #2: (Minor) High-E string is in danger of messing up the radius at the nut. (I was too much of a pansy to knock it down another .001". It's borderline, but I'm not convinced the contact point and break angle are perfect on this one and I can't see clearly even with my magnifying glass.)
Defect #3: (Minor) There is not a single bit of doubt when testing the radius at the bridge. All strings are clearly vibrating on the radius gauge. The radius at the nut is not so obvious. The B string barely hits the gauge at all because of the slightly raised high E string.
Summary - I was 90% of the way to this level out of the box. I took tons of effort to get that final 10%. Would it have been worth it if not for arthritis flaring up? Who's to say. Worth every bit of effort to me right now, though. 🙂
That's mighty low. Is this for an acoustic, or an electric guitar? Does scale length come into play when considering string height?
What are you measuring string height with?
There might be more electric players testing the acoustic waters if they could achieve the results you've obtained on your HB. Maybe. 'Still doesn't go up to 11, though.
Hummingbird 1+ Year Setup = Thrilled
in Gibson Acoustic
Posted
That's mighty low. Is this for an acoustic, or an electric guitar? Does scale length come into play when considering string height?
What are you measuring string height with?
There might be more electric players testing the acoustic waters if they could achieve the results you've obtained on your HB. Maybe. 'Still doesn't go up to 11, though.