Tonic2000

I am not a luthier, but I've done enough of my own guitar setups to know that this article is wrong or inaccurate in several places. Let's start with “straighten your neck.†What we're talking about here is the flatness of the fretboard. Laying a straight-edge on the neck does reveal how flat the neck is, but most people don't have a perfect straight edge long enough to use. A much easier way is to capo at the first fret and push the low E string down at the 17th fret and then look to see if the string is hitting all the frets or not. (Ironically, this is the method illustrated by the photo.) And for the majority of guitars and players, the neck should not be set absolutely flat. Instead, there should be a very slight bow away from the strings, which provides room for the strings to vibrate. This is called “relief,†and using the technique above, typical relief (for example, Gibson factory spec) is measured at the seventh fret, so there is a gap of .012 inches between the top of the fret and the bottom of the string. By the way, the article mentions adjusting the amount of “tension (or relief) the neck has against the strings,†which is a confusing way of referring to this adjustment, and doesn't tell you what to do. To remove relief, tighten the truss rod by turning clockwise; to add relief, loosen the truss rod by turning counter-clockwise. Also unmentioned is that the truss rod adjustment needs to be made if you significantly change the gauge of your strings, because thicker strings, for example, pull the neck harder. Regarding radius, this is not “typically†addressed at the bridge, it is always addressed at the bridge, unless the nut is really screwed up, with some slots really deep and others too shallow. It is true that Fender guitars have individually adjustable saddle heights, but that doesn't mean adjusting the radius is easy, as stated here. In fact, it's much more difficult, because each string must be adjusted to create a very slight arc that matches the radius of the fretboard. I won't go into the details here, but it's tricky. Regarding Gibson bridges, the article says there's only an “off-chance†that you would have to adjust the radius of the bridge, and this is true, but not because of the PLEK system. Tune-o-Matic bridges are already arched to the correct radius, and they've been that way since they were introduced in 1953. As long as the saddles have the slight notches needed to hold the strings, then the radius will be correct. The PLEK system is excellent, but it is responsible for cutting the nut depth and filing the frets - it does nothing to affect the radius at the bridge, as the article implies. And although Gibson guitars are now PLEKed, that's only been true across the line since 2014. As for action, the article implies that most action adjustment is made at the nut and then “tweaked†at the bridge, while the opposite is actually true. The vast majority of commercially produced guitars have nuts that are pretty well cut, and all the action adjustment for a player's preference is meant to be done at the bridge. Finally, to say that perfect intonation is impossible on a guitar because the guitar uses equal-temperament tuning is misleading. Equal temperament tuning does mean that the guitar, like virtually all modern instruments, including the piano, has tuning compromises built-in, so it can never be perfectly in tune everywhere. But intonation adjustment simply involves making sure the octave on each string matches the open note, and this can, and should, be done perfectly. And intonation is never adjusted at the nut except with specialized systems such as the Earvana nut or the Buzz Feiten tuning system. For all other guitars, intonation is only done at the bridge. I was quite disappointed and, frankly, alarmed for the sake of guitar beginners at the inaccuracy of this article. It's an embarrassment to Harmony Central, which usually does a good job of providing reliable information.

The truth is most people use music to simply change or enhance their mood. If they can hear the melody and beat, that's enough. Only a minority are born with the sensitivity to be emotionally moved by sonic details, just as most people (including me) weren't born with the palate to appreciate every nuance of, say, the finest chocolate. And that's the same as it ever was. In the 90s I worked for Kenwood, a manufacturer of consumer audio gear. Every year, it seemed, some company was hyping a high-resolution audio format that would absolutely, positively, get folks to sit mesmerized in front of their awesome home audio system. It never happened. There was High Definition Compatible Digital (HDCD), Digital/Analog/Digital (DAD), Super Audio CD (SACD), and DVD-Audio, not to mention the surround-sound formats that could put you “in the middle of a concert.†They all stiffed. So those of us who do actively listen to music cannot, and should not, expect the general public to ever come around to our particular passion. And that's okay. That passion is what makes us different. And thankfully, there are enough of us, and the passion is strong enough, that we still get to enjoy an embarrassment of riches, from home recording systems with astonishingly high resolution right down to geeky stomp boxes built with NOS germanium transistors that deliver the exact tone that will send our neurons into ecstasy. As long as that's the case, I ain't gonna complain too much about how other people listen, or what they're willing to listen to.