Feed Back On Setup dilemma

[T.C. Tyler]

I have a question about set up's and how can they change after a few days.

I have done plenty of good setup's and fret dresses in the past year. I set up, fret and fret dress all the guitars that I build as well as repairs for customers.

I have this one particular customer, here is what I did and his feed back.

I worked on two of his guitars, one was a Godin tele style and the other was a Korean made srtat.

I did a fret dress and set up on both guitars. The fret dress came out perfect, well crowned and polished. The set up is good. The neck had about .008 relief and I worked out any buzzes. The bridge is set correctly and the saddles are adjusted and intonated correctly. The nut is at the right height. The guitars played great for me and when the customer came to pick up the guitars he played both and said everything is good.

Three and a half weeks later I got a call from him. He said that both guitars now fret out badly, and they play terribly. I do know that he tinkered with one guitar and changed the set up. He brought that back a few days later. I had to set the action again for him and explained that this guitars action can't go any lower or it will buzz.

Has anyone ever heard of this problem? How can a guitar fret out after a fret dress? The action was set as low as it could go with out buzzing. It didn't fret out when it left my house.

The man is old and a bit out there. Is it possible that a guitar can change this quickly, or could he have messed around with it again. All my other customers give me good feedback and like my work.

I live in Oregon and I know it gets a little damp and wet. My humidity is around 50%. He said the humidity in his house is fine.

Is it possible for the action to change so much that it frets out?

Any feed back would be much appreciated.

Thank you.

[XKnight]

Sounds like he tweaked the truss rod the wrong way.

[T.C. Tyler]

That's possible. He may have adjusted the truss rod, but said nothing about that.

The guy is old and not quite all there. He does have bad arthritis in his hands. I noticed he would not fret the note all the way, creating a dead note. I could tell that he at one point in time he was a really good player, but with age, he does not have the strength any more to press down on the fret. I don't think that it's anything I have done, but I am puzzled about the complaint.

Naturally, a guitar should not fret out like this after a dress and set up. To the best of my knowledge, guitars just don't do that.

[XKnight]

That's possible. He may have adjusted the truss rod, but said nothing about that.

The guy is old and not quite all there. He does have bad arthritis in his hands. I noticed he would not fret the note all the way, creating a dead note. I could tell that he at one point in time he was a really good player, but with age, he does not have the strength any more to press down on the fret. I don't think that it's anything I have done, but I am puzzled about the complaint.

Naturally, a guitar should not fret out like this after a dress and set up. To the best of my knowledge, guitars just don't do that.

If it was only one guitar, I'd possibly chalk it up to a neck that's not stable and temperature changes/humidity that got the best of it. Two guitars with the same issue at the same time is highly unlikely which leads me to believe it was the owner tweaking with the setup and messing it all up.

[T.C. Tyler]

Thank you for the reply. I think he must have done something to the guitars as well. His complaint just dose not sound right to me.

[walterw]

i'll usually guarantee my setups for 30 days, both for final tweaks to get it where the customer likes it and to account for extra truss rod "drift" after the fact.

usually, since all the "hard" work has been done (filing, leveling, etc.), any follow-up tweaks are very minor, mostly truss rod tweaks.

(we get all four seasons in virginia, so there's lots of seasonal tweakin' going on.)

[Dana Olsen]

Hey T.C.Tyler -

You're up in Oregon, right? Hasn't your weather kind of been all over the map in the past month or two - warmer and less humid sometimes, real wet and rainy at times (Hey, it's Oregon - GRIN), and them real windy at times?

I find that big humidity changes can really affect some guitars - not all, but some, and the changing humidity kind of makes doing a setup on a guitar a bit of a moving target.

You've already re-done the setups, so I guess if I were in your shoes, I'd explain the relationship between humidity and guitar necks to your client, and show him how to adjust his truss rod the right way so that if it's fretting out a little, he can just back off the relief a little - then it should be spot on, generally, in my experience, YMMV, etc.

Anyhow, I bet it's the crazy weather that's doing it. You can guarantee your work, but nobody can guarantee the weather.

Hope this helps, Dana O.

[T.C. Tyler]

My customers can come back any time for a tweek on the truss rod or any other adjustment. I will fix it, no problem. What I don't like is when they adjust things themselves and mess up a set up. I fixed it for him, but he had to have done something again. And yes, the weather had been changing. Spring weather in Oregon is ever changing. Sunny and warm one day and raining the next, overcast, then sunny again. 70's to 60's over night. It does have an affect on necks. He made it sound really bad over the phone, but we were talking about humidity when I was working on the guitars so I think he understands that it can change the neck. I don't know if humidity would make that drastic of a change in the set up so it frets out at the lower end of the fretboard. The set up was good, but I did do some small adjustments on the truss rod, maybe the weather and truss rod drift are to blame.

Also, on the Godin guitar, he told me that it never played well at all. He mostly kept it in the case for years and rarely played it, but it had a lot of fret ware and I could see the maple fretboard was worn in quite well from playing. After the fret dress and set up, I got it playing really nicely.

I am thinking, maybe, the weather and truss rod drift started it, he tried to correct it and made it worse. I could be wrong, as i don't have many years of experience working on customer guitars. I mostly do this work on guitars that I have built. Used guitars are another world. I never know how a neck is going to react to change. Some set up easily with no problems as others seem to be trouble.

[treeofpain]

Also keep in mind that ultra low setups will respond to any minor variance much more than a more forgiving setup.

[T.C. Tyler]

OK, thank you, that's good to know. The set up was not ultra low and I did file some fall away on the fret dress from about the 14th fret and down so it would not fret out. Still the man said it just stopped playing after a few weeks. The man is a little loopy, and I am thinking, maybe its more the player than the guitar. He was having a hard time fretting the notes. If he pressed down harder, it would ring true. I had no problem, but he is old. I think he is starting to get a little frail and just does not have the strength any longer to play, but I could not tell him that. Thank you everyone for all the info, it's been helpful.

[M40A1]

Just a thought, but what if you placed a witness mark on the truss rod nut after the final tweak? This way when an instrument comes back you could verify if it had moved.

[T.C. Tyler]

Yeah !! Great idea. I am going to start doing that from now on. Thanks.

[loudboy]

I have a Godin Radiator and it's super-sensitive to season changes. It's the only guitar I own that I hav to tighten/loosen the trussrod 2x/yr.

It REALLY changes, when it warms up in spring and gets cold, to the point that it frets out badly, or the action goes way high.

[T.C. Tyler]

Thanks Loudboy. That's good info. Did your Godin have a maple neck with a maple fretboard?

[Pscheoverdrive]

Yeah, the 'witness mark' is a great idea... I think I'll take that one for a tip, too.