 Hello everyone and welcome to Blackstar Potential. My name is Lee Fuge and I'm here today with musicteacher.com. In this video we're gonna talk about a really simple tech tip you guys can do at home to make your brand new guitars play that little bit better. If you've just bought a brand new guitar, like this Blackstar Carrion Travel Guitar for instance, and you're finding that the strings are slightly too high which is making it difficult to push the strings down, you need to adjust the action of the guitar. But what does that mean? So in this video we're gonna learn what the action of the guitar is and look at how to adjust that. So when you buy a brand new guitar and this doesn't really matter what guitar it is, this applies to everything from budget friendly, entry level instruments right through to high end expensive guitars. They all come with what is known as a factory setup. So if you're paying a lot of money for a guitar the chances are you can specify to the manufacturer how you want that setup. But nine times out of 10, guitars are gonna come set up the way the factory determines they should be set up. Now a guitar setup is a very personal thing. This is something we all do to our own guitars to make them play and feel the way we want them to do. So sometimes out of the box, the string height might not be the way you like it. So the action determines how easy or difficult it is to push notes down onto the fretboard. We have what's called a high action which is when the strings are further away. This is usually more difficult to play and a lower action which then means you don't have to use as much pressure to push the notes down. So obviously action is a very subjective thing. Some players like a higher action and some players like a super low action. So if you have a guitar and the action is not quite right, what can you do? So to check the action on the guitar, you can look at the distance between the string and the fretboard. So this is the action, the distance from the string all the way down. So the further the string is from the fretboard, the further I need to push it down. This particular guitar has two different action adjustment points on the bridge. So if we look at the bridge for this guitar, we can see an Allen key port either side of the bridge. So to adjust this, we take our Allen key, just a small Allen key and you put it into the hole like so. From this point, we can adjust the action of the bridge. So we tighten the Allen key bolt to lower the bridge. By lowering the bridge, we're lowering the action and we loosen the Allen key to raise the bridge. Do the same on both sides. So when you're adjusting the action on a guitar, it's very important you do this in small steps. Don't just crank it around three or four times and hope for the best. From one position, do a quarter term of the Allen key, retune the guitar, check the action. See how it feels? If it's not quite right, do it again. On a guitar like this, because we have two different points which control both sides of the bridge, you should do both at the same time. So if you're gonna lower the action, tighten each side by a quarter turn, retune the whole guitar, test it out. See how it feels, if that's still not right, tighten them another quarter turn, check it again. You should always retune and check before each readjustment. The same is true if you're raising the action. Now if you're raising the action, one thing to be aware of is you're actually pushing up against the strings. So you're actually adding more tension to the strings. So one thing it is quite useful to do is if you're gonna raise the action, just drop each of the tuners down by a quarter turn just to free up some tension in the string and then bring the bridge up accordingly. If you're lowering the action, you end up actually finding the pitch of the strings will drop because you're pulling tension away from the string. If you're doing this on different guitars, the action adjustment methods can look different, but the rule is generally the same. If you're looking to adjust the action on a Gibson-style guitar, so like this 333-style guitar, we have a very similar bridge setup, except this time we have a tailpiece instead of the strings coming through the body. So this doesn't actually have any impact on the action. It's still this part of the bridge here. The only difference between this guitar and the Blackstar carry-on guitar is this one is adjusted with a flat head screwdriver. You would apply the same methods when adjusting the action on a guitar like this. Little quarter turns, check it every time, retune, check, and try again until you get the perfect action. If you own a Strat-style guitar or a PRS-style guitar, you'll have a bridge that looks like this. This bridge has six individual saddles. So in this bridge, we're not adjusting the height of the whole bridge. We're actually doing the action on a string-by-string basis. So this type of guitar does take slightly longer to adjust the action on because we actually have two small Allen key heads on each of the saddles for each string. So each string needs to be adjusted accordingly. So on this type of guitar, you would hire or lower the action on one string, retune it and check it, do the next string, and so on until all the strings are balanced the way you want them to be. You may also have a guitar with this style of bridge. This style of bridge is usually seen on a Telecaster-style guitar. And instead of having individual saddles for each string, we now have these three barrel saddles. Each of the saddles controls the height of two strings. So the same method applies. We've got an Allen key head either side, but we have to adjust two strings in tandem. So check both the strings, retuning each step of the way until you get a nice balanced even action across the entire guitar. And if you're someone who plays a guitar with a Floyd Rose locking system like this, the action is adjusted by an Allen key either side here on the Trem pivot points. So exactly the same principle as adjusting the Gibson or Blackstar travel guitar style bridges, except this time we're doing it either side of the bridge with a big Allen key. The same thing would apply with heightening or lowering bridge as an entire unit. So there you go. There's a really easy tech tip that you guys can do at home to your own guitars to make them play that little bit better. If you're enjoying these videos where we talk about different tech tips and different ways you can improve your guitar's playability, let us know down below in the comments. And if you'd like to see us talk about any specific topics in this field, please throw those below as well. Don't forget to check out Blackstar Amplification on YouTube for more free videos just like this. And if you're looking for a music teacher in your local area, please check out musicteacher.com. There's a network of great music teachers all around the UK waiting to help you guys out. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you soon.