Question How low is to low?

[Eric O'Reilly]

Ive been playing alot with my string height on my ax40 and love the playability when its VERY low, but when played acoustically i get tons of buzz on the g b and high e all up the neck, when plugged in high gain you cant tell and it plays great, but with low gain i can hear a little buzz, like a sitar. I have my truss rod set so the neck is almost dead straight, and the bridge pivots set at a normal level, when loosen the truss it will make it a tiny bit better but still frets out on the g b e , its playable and and i shoudnt say fret out because the note is still played but very buzzy, i had it set before a long time ago with the truss rod loose and the pivots higher and i got no buzz, but it had very high action and was not as playable for my style, im going to change my strings today and do another set up, right now i love the way it plays and feels i just hate buzz! But i guess i might be stuck with it if i want my action this low? Another thing i love about the low action is the intonation is perfect, all over the neck. I will re do it later and let you know, but any advice, i know all about set ups and what makes a guitar work but maybe im just being obsessive. Lol!

 

[Eric O'Reilly]

I do tons of tapping riffs and pull off legato style riffs and its set great for that but soon as i hit the strings with any hard force tons of buzz. I use 9- 42 super slinkys.

 

[DrKev]

It's always a compromise, and changes from person to person and even from time to time (we're a fickle lot!). We can get a little obsessive when doing setups, which just makes us unhappy and chasing a non-existent perfection when we should just get on with playing. If the buzz is intrusive when actually playing music (and not doing simply testing or doing a set up) then I'll do something about it.

How to deal with it will depend on where it buzzes most - buzzing on the higher frets, raise the action at the bridge, other wise I increase the neck relief a little. Just make one change at time and test to see what improved before trying anything else. Keep track of each change you do and you can always go back to where you started if need be.

I do a lot of chord work with clean tones right now so I keep my action around the 2mm mark (5/64"), a touch more on the bass strings, and 0.2mm (0.008") neck relief. That will be too high for most shredders. But if my low-E string goes below 2mm it will buzz more than I'm comfortable with (for this month, at least).

 

[Eric O'Reilly]

Also does it matter when I adjust the height of the bridge pivot studs to completely slacken the strings? I just found this out yesterday. So as not to dull the knife edges, even though its not a floating bridge, i will now always loosen the strings before i adjust.

 

[Eric O'Reilly]

Well I loosened the truss rod an gave it some relief, and slightly raised the bridge studs, and its a lot better, but I had to re intonate, strangely enough only the low E saddle needed to be adjusted. But I have felt it has bugged me more than it should and I should just go on and play, but the guitar has to feel right.

 

[t_rod]

How does the action feel after raising the bridge?
I hear ya on getting it right though, somedays it just seems to play differently. Don't know if its the weather, my fingers, or just in my head lol! But I'm starting to feel my action is too high (~2mm) although I can play a lot without buzzing or fretting out. I'm just itching to lower it and see if that speeds me up a bit or if it just makes the buzzing to much. Wasn't long ago that I intentionally raised the action too, just seem to be going in circles

 

[Eric O'Reilly]

2mm is good, I know what you mean about wanting to lower it, thats what I did and ,yes it did speed me up a lot, especially for tapping stuff and speedy alternate picking, but when I strum it unplugged or through anything that was'nt high gain is buzzed like hell and was no good, so the perfect balance is in between , the strings need space to vibrate and resonate, right now it feels great, and is playing insane! But you are right about the weather, temp , humidity, with an unfinished neck like we have on our music mans, or in my case sterling by music man come with light poly finish on the neck, i refinished it to Ebmm specs and it is a beast, the best necks in the biz, I love the neck carve on the axis, so perfect!

 

[Dr. Rock]

Yeah, the perfect balance is in between. However, I find that I'm just as fickle as the environmentals. I'll go a few weeks/months tolerating a little buzz while loving the low action. Then for some reason it starts to bug me that my chords aren't as resonant as I'd like, so I raise the action and love it. Then I'll find that runs or inversions on the high frets don't feel quite right, and I remember why I lowered the action in the first place.

 

[Eric O'Reilly]

So true my friend! I have it set now, a little high for my taste, but I can still shred the hell out of it, im used to VERY low action, but I think it just sounds much better this way.

 

[Tim O'Sullivan]

I used to use 2mm at the 12th fret as my stock action setup. Lately I have been taking it down to 1.5mm to 1.75 mm.

No buzz and they seem to play just that little bit faster!