Wondering how high your acostic guitar actions should be? For many steel-string acoustic guitars and players, a twelfth fret action height of 6/64” at the bass E and 4/64” will work well. Such a height works well as a balance between comfort and good tone. However, depending on your picking hand technique and other aspects, you may wish to adjust your height.
If you have a light, consistent attack, then you’re unlikely to encounter fret buzz with a slightly lower action. However, note that lower action may result in poor tone, particularly with bends and hammers. Yet, if you wish to improve the playability of your guitar, and have already smoothed your nut slots andadjusted your neck relief, then lowering your twelfth fret action by a small amount might assist. For many guitars, you can get a bass E string to around 5/64” at the twelfth fret without buzzing with a light, consistent attack. However, going below 4/64” at the treble E will typically result in fret buzz. Also, keep in mind that lowering your saddle could result in insufficientbreak angle.
For a medium, consistent attack, a height of 6/64″ at the bass E and 4/64″ at the treble E should work well as a good balance between tone and comfort.
Basic Acoustic Guitar Setup And Adjustments
If you have a heavy, consistent attack, or a dynamic one, consider a slightly higher twelfth fret action. A height of around 7/64″ at the bass E and 5/64″ at the treble E should work well. This height allows for a more aggressive playing style without string buzz and also produce good tone.
If you play with a slide, then we suggest two things. First, have a consistent action height across all strings. This will make moving the slider easier. Second, consider a minimum action height of 6/64″ at the twelfth fret for all strings. This will provide a good balance between being able to fret notes with your fingers, but not result in regularly hitting the frets when using the slide. If you only use a slide and don’t fret notes, consider an action height of 7/64″.
If you have adjusted your twelfth fret action yet still hear a buzz, the culprit may not be the frets. Visit our article on Why Your Acoustic Guitar Has a Buzz and our article on Odd Buzz? Tighten Your Tuning Machines .I have a relatively new Martin dreadnought guitar, and I generally love how it feels and sounds. I don’t get as many chances to pick it up as I might like. After not playing it for a couple of months this spring, I pulled it out of the case and the action felt like it was a mile high. It’s really hard to play, and my left hand is getting a workout just trying. It wasn’t like this the last time I played it. What happened? Is it my fault for neglecting the guitar? How should I fix it?
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A: You sound like a lot of guitar owners that I talk to in our shop. You get busy, and end up not playing your beloved guitar for a while, only to find that when you pick it back up, things don’t feel as good. Before you turn yourself in to Guitar Protective Services, let’s think about what may have happened and why.
I’d like to take a moment to say that I’m not a tech who thinks that super-low action is a desirable state for most guitars. When your action is too low, it may be easier to press the strings down, but lots of tonal nuance, frequency range, and volume can be lost. When it comes to action, lower is not necessarily better. But I digress; back to the problem at hand. You said that all of a sudden, the action feels really high, and it’s difficult to play. Action, or string height, plays a crucial role in how comfortable it is to play your guitar. High action could be due to a lot of different reasons—some of them are easy fixes.
First, your neck may have bowed forward. Changes in temperature and humidity during the spring could have contributed to the wood of your neck pulling forward with string tension. Some measure of this is to be expected during a guitar’s life, and may have happened whether you were there to see it or not. It’s hard to say whether this applies to your guitar, but sometimes the wood used to make a guitar neck hasn’t seasoned long enough, and still has a bit of moving around to do. If your neck has bowed forward for any of these reasons, we’d adjust it with your truss rod. Hopefully that would take care of most of the problem. This could generally be done during a setup, and maybe your tech would also take some height off the saddle.
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Next, the neck itself may have pulled forward just a bit. In the case of a newer Martin like yours, the neck is held on to the body with two bolts. This issue will be clear if there is a little gap at the bottom of the heel, but sometimes it is more subtle, and not severe enough to leave a visible gap. There is a plate stuck onto the neck block with your serial number on it, and to fix this problem, we would start by removing it. Under it, we can access the bolts. We simply tighten them all the way down and re-attach the cover plate.
It’s also possible that the neck pulled forward a lot. If the block has rotated forward some, and if that has pulled the arch built into the guitar’s back towards being flatter, the neck angle may need to be reset. This is a simpler affair when the neck is held on with bolts than when it is glued on with a dovetail joint. We would unglue the fingerboard extension, unbolt the neck, and re-carve the heel to fit at the correct angle. Once it’s re-attached, it’ll feel and sound better.
One more thing to consider is that your bridge could be pulling up. It’s possible that while your guitar was in its case this spring, the changing temperature and humidity contributed to the glue joint under the bridge failing. If the bridge did become unglued and pulled up off the guitar’s top any amount, your action could get higher.
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Lastly, it could be some combination of these things. Only your luthier or guitar tech will be able to tell. Get thee to the repair shop so that you can get back to enjoying your guitar. As always, you can help minimize wood moving around by doing your best to keep your instruments in a stable environment. In a perfect world, we’d have homes that were 70 degrees and 50 percent humidity, year round. Of course, we can only do our best in that regard, but thankfully it’s usually enough to avoid involving GPS!
’s resident repair expert. Send an email with the subject line “Repair Expert” to Editors.AG@stringletter.com. If AG selects your question for publication, you’ll receive a complimentary copy of AG’s The Acoustic Guitar Owner’s Manual.
Mamie Minch is the co-owner of Brooklyn Lutherie and an active blues player. She is the former head of repair at Retrofret Guitars.Guitar action is important to understand and know how to adjust. If you want your guitar to be as comfortable as possible to play, read through this guide to learn how to properly adjust your guitar’s action.
How To Know If The Action On My Guitar Is Too High
In this guide, you will learn what guitar action is, why it is important, how to measure it, and how to adjust it for acoustic or electric guitars.
Guitar action also plays an important part in your guitar’s intonation. Find out about intonation and how to adjust it in this guide.
Guitar action or guitar action height is the height of the guitar strings over the fretboard. Guitar action plays a big role in how a guitar feels to play.
Jtv 69 Very Low Action Near The Nut, High Action Near The Bridge
If the action is too high, the guitar will feel uncomfortable to play. If the action is too low, you will hear string buzzing.
If your guitar’s action is too high, your fingers need to push the strings down really far before they come into contact with the strings. This can make it awkward to play and slows you down.
Before we look at how to adjust action, let’s look at how to properly measure it and what your action should be set to.
Is My Guitar's Action Too High?
This Ultimate Guide on Truss Rods explains how to check if your truss rod is set properly and how to adjust it for the best results. Read the guide to learn everything you would want to know about truss rods.
Once your guitar’s truss rod is set up properly, you can then measure your action height and make adjustments. But make sure your truss rod is first set properly.
You measure guitar action height with an action gauge or ruler. Rest the end of the ruler against the 12th fret on your guitar and hold it against the string. You need to measure the distance between the
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