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(133 votes) Published: Aug 01, 2006 6:00 p.m. In 7 Favorites Lists Viewed 992 times
Make Your Guitar Play Easier For Under 20$
Simple methods of making your guitar play a little smoother.
Introduction
Basically in this egg we’ll go over thinning the neck, raising the neck, polishing the frets, and adjusting th action. Easy stuff, it’s hard to screw this stuff up.
You Will Need 320 Grain Sandpaper
0000 Steel Wool
Pure Lemon Oil(only 100% pure lemon oil)
Guitar Polish
Terry Cloth
A Hand Towl
A hex key set(get both S.A.E. and Metric, weather you need one or the other depends on the guitar.)
A Phillips Head Screwdriver
A Small slip of semi-thick paper(such as a movie ticket, or a clothing tag)
A fresh pack of strings
Before We Begin... You need to remove your strings, throw them away. GO ahead and use some of that guitar polish on the finish if you want.
Raising the neck
By raising the neck you are in essence lowering the action since the string height doesn’t change too much.
Well obviously the first step is to remove the neck, so go ahead and unscrew the binding screws. Be sure that you have the guitar on a flat surface when you do this.
After you have removed the screws, carefully lift up the guitar and flip it back over, slowly slide the neck out. Set the neck aside for now.
Now take your little peice of paper and place it in the dip where the neck fits, being sure not to cover up any screw holes.
Now replace the neck and reinsert the screws. Make sure they are in good and tight.
You won’t notice the change until you restring the guitar, then you should notice them immediately.
Thinning and refinishing the neck
A thinner neck makes for easier playability.
Still, think a little about this before you do this, any fancy finish you have on your neck will be completely eliminated in this process. If you have a matte finish you can just sand the part of the neck under the fretboard, if you have a gloss finish you will have to take the finish off the whole neck.
Take your sandpaper and start sanding off the neck, evenly distribute, don’t miss any spots. Don’t be afraid to use a lot of force, just don’t work on one spot at a time.
Stop at intrevals and feel the neck in normal playing position, once it is thin, and feels comfortable for you, you can stop sanding.
Your neck should look bare and off-colored now. Don’t worry, it’s as it should be. Take a good sized peice of steel wool and rub the neck hard for a while, until the steel wool is warm.
Take some time and feel your newly smoothened neck. Feels good eh?
We’re nearly there now.
Cleaning and Polishing the Fretboard
Tear off a small peice of steel wool and rub it on and in between the frets. The fretboard wood will lok scratched but the scratches will fade in time.
Take the hand towel and ball it up, pour some lemon oil into the ball and rub all over the fretboard, buffer it in good. The neck should look like new now. Wipe it down a little with the terry cloth.
Fine Tuning
Put on a new set of strings, tune and stretch like usual(if you can).
You probably can’t tune it though. You will need to adjust the saddles. The saddles are shown in the picture below. there’s 6 of them.
When you are using you hex keys to adjust the saddles, what you do to one screw, you must do to the other, so if you make a quarter-turn on one saddle screw, that’s a corner turn on the other.
The idea is to raise them so that they are just high enough that there is no buzzing on any frets.
You may also want to lower the height on your pickups by loosening your pickup screws.
After you’re done you should have a guitar with lower action, a slick neck and awesome playability!
If you have any problems send me meesage and I will try to help you.
Aug 01, 2006 7:38 pm - There’s a lot to cover on that though, it’s a whole other egg for that. I don’t think I could just breifly go over something like that, too much margin for error.
Aug 01, 2006 7:50 pm - good egg %* but I would never ever ever rub the paint off of my les paul unless I planed on having it professionally repainted. But I have a crappy yamaha that I have already done this to, if you have an exspensive guitar you can get this done for $40. I just had this done to my les paul and my taylor and they are amazing to play now. On an acoustic it is extrmely important to have the truss rod adjusted.
Aug 01, 2006 8:35 pm - this is fucking hard to do....ive done it correctly but it took a long time and alot of adjusting....you just have to know what your doing....5*s nice pics and well instruted
Aug 01, 2006 8:54 pm - Yeah, you can REALLY fuck up a guitar if you jack with the neck...
You didnt mention anything about intonation, that was the worst problem on my guitar, and setting it up was a BITCH! Its still not amazing, but quite nice none the less.
Meanwhile, ill waiting for my strings to come in. :) Damn these floyd rose’s...
Yeah, you can REALLY fuck up a guitar if you jack with the neck...
You didnt mention anything about intonation, that was the worst problem on my guitar, and setting it up was a BITCH! Its still not amazing, but quite nice none the less.
Meanwhile, ill waiting for my strings to come in. :) Damn these floyd rose’s...
I might do a few more guitar-related eggs later. Intonation doesn’t really apply in this one.
I hate floyds myself, I never use the whammy, and they are a bitch to tune, that’s why my guitar has a fixed bridge.
Quote:
But i have a real glossy finish on my neck that i don’t wanna fuck up. It’s so pretty!
Aug 01, 2006 11:02 pm - I know whatyou mean. I would much rather have a PRS(what im saving for) but it plays alright, i play alot of acoustic though, i have an electric acoustic,normal, and classical.
Aug 01, 2006 11:56 pm - i also made a guitar egg. I would like the author of this to look at it and rate it. And comment it. 5* for this awsome egg.
Aug 02, 2006 12:19 am - the way the gibsons feel to me is just the awesomeness...probably because my acoustic is a crappy yamaha and my electric is a squire.....actually i partially own a martin acoustic..its awesome
Aug 02, 2006 1:13 am - i set my strat on fire just den... looks fucking cool as... gotta take a pic of it soon.... i burnt the body nd neck, i took off the pickups nd shit thoo.... lol....
Aug 02, 2006 1:11 pm - great egg dude! 5*
i would like to do this, but im a little affraid of screwing up :P though i only have a crappy Adonis guitar, its the only one i have, and i dont want to lose it, it still cost me 179 bucks
Aug 22, 2006 3:31 pm - its good, but if your neck has a truss rod you may have some problems here and in some cases snap it. anyway its good to see guitarists sharing skills 5* for you
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