The Setup

Not every guitar sounds the way it was intended to. To achieve studio quality sound and playability, your guitar needs to be professionally setup. Manufacturers recommend guitars have a professional setup at least once a year. Depending on how much you play, it may even need a setup every 6 months. If you haven’t had one before, you don’t know what you’re missing!

Even new guitars need setups (we’ve all grabbed one off the shop wall and thought “this could be better”). Guitars are shipped from the manufacturer to the music store you purchased it from. During that travel, it goes through climate & humidity changes, and rough handling during shipping. See, guitars are made of wood (I know, your mind is blown right now), and wood is hygroscopic, which basically means it takes on and lets off moisture. The wood is constantly expanding and contracting as temperature and humidity levels fluctuate along it’s journey. These things effect the guitar and often the factory specs are no longer set by the time it’s in your hands.

Now, these same guitar stores we buy from say they are equipped for setups, but if their merchandise is anything to go by, they just don’t know what they’re doing (or care). Once the guitar finally does make it to your home, it gets to kick back and adjust to your home’s humidity and temperature and settle in. You may even think it plays pretty good, but imagine it playing even better! A properly performed setup just gets everything out of the way and enhances your connection to the guitar. We recommend a setup after it has had a few weeks to acclimatize to its new home.

Our setup includes:

A full head to toe inspection, restring with gauge of your choice*, cleaning of entire guitar, tightening and lubricating all hardware, cleaning and testing electronics, replacing the battery if needed (Battery not included), correcting loose wiring, cleaning and conditioning the fingerboard, fret polishing, adjusting the trussrod to correct neck relief, adjusting saddle radius and height, adjusting action at the bridge, filing nut slots for precision string height and easy string movement (eliminating binding), adjusting intonation, adjusting tremolo bridge, add/remove trem-springs as needed (parts not included), adjusting pickup height, and finally a play test.

*A new set of strings is required when we do a setup, even if you just put a brand new set on. We need a specific length of string to perform our proper setup. If you have cut & wound your new set of strings, this may not allow us proper length. You may bring your own set of new strings or purchase from us. 

Each and every guitar is treated like it’s our own. We know how much it means to our customers because we are guitar players too. Our setups are done to precise measurements that have been honed over decades by master luthiers down to the thousandth of an inch, 

If we find anything that needs to be addressed while we perform our inspection we will call you and let you know. Of course, it would always be best to go ahead with the repair at that time to get the best playability. Also, did you know that a setup is required with most repairs and is not included in the repair cost? Getting the repair done while it’s in for a setup saves you from paying for another one soon after. But…say you just can’t swing it (we understand, have you seen the gas prices?!?!), if you bring it back within 30 days for the repair we will re-setup the instrument at no charge.