Perspectives on string height

[Ian Davlin The Looth Group]

I’m sorry about my previous reply where in my reading comprehension was trash.

I think this is going to have to be one of those wishy washy answers where I don’t answer the question with the numbers your looking for but some lame Zen type philosophical bullshit.

My wife and I are thinking about retirement now and as my people are wont to do, we are looking at RVs, trailers a campers. There’s a great phrase in the RV community that I have started to apply to guitar situations like guitar action. “There are no solutions, only compromises”

My rule of thumb on action is to , if possible, make the person play guitar for me before I start work. I’ve had fingerstylers who had such a heavy right hand that they need bluegrass action and I’ve had bluegrassers who played so fast the string didn’t have a chance to buzz. What I am getting at is there is no one action for repertoire or technique.

It also good to get people to play their repertoire (if they have one) and not just noodle around for a minute. You can tell a lot from this. If they’re just hanging out in the first position playing cowboy chords so they can sing about their feelings, a little more relief and a little less saddle. If they’re playing chord melody up the neck and want lower action, a little less relief and a little more saddle.

Also, never underestimate how much nut height affects perceived action. I personally set the nut to the truss rod adjustment. Meaning that most of the time, if you were to take relief out of my set up, the nut would be too low. This is rarely an issue where I live because people in NJ are a bunch of dirty Al Di Meola fans and don’t care much for relief anyhow. Benefits of a low nut include that it makes the action look lower when first addressed,it plays much easier in the first position and leads to fewer intonation issues IMO.

Last thing, it’s important to remember, every guitar can be made to buzz with any reasonable action. This gets us back to those compromises. Sometimes customers don’t understand this and time needs to be taken to educate them. Hope this helps.

[Darrell Pope The Village Luthier]

Hi Ian. I actually liked your previous response (and your new one ;)) ! I think that having a tracker document would be helpful. Maybe capturing (i) string height at the nut (or 1st fret), (ii) height at 12th fret, (iii) neck relief (measured at 5th fret) would be a start. And then ranges: acoustic flat picking low, acoustic flat picking high, acoustic finger style low, acoustic finger style high, … Thoughts?

[Ian Davlin The Looth Group]

It sounds cool! Whats a tracker document ?