 Hello, everyone, and welcome to Blackstar Potential. My name is Lee Fuge, and I'm here today with MusicTeacher.com. And in this video, I'm going to give you guys five simple guitar setup tips you can do at home yourself to make your guitar play and sound better. So the guitar you can see me holding today is the Blackstar Carry On travel guitar, but these tips and tricks apply to any guitar. So it doesn't matter what guitar you've got, you can apply these five simple tips to any model, any make to make it play better straight away. So before we dive into the five tips, let's talk about why you would want to give your guitar a setup. So let's say you've just bought a brand new guitar and out of the box, it's not playing the way you hoped it would. Perhaps the strings are too difficult to press down, or perhaps some of the notes are sounding dead, or maybe one of the pickups is much quieter than the other when it's plugged in. All of these little problems are things that would lead us to need a setup on the guitar, but a setup doesn't have to be a very complicated process. A lot of these things we can do at home ourselves with some very simple tools and a little bit of time and patience. Before we dig into the list, I just want to say if you are uncomfortable with any of these tips or you don't want to risk some of this yourself, please consult your local guitar tech or Luthier and they will be more than happy to give your guitar a setup for you. Tip number one is adjust the string action. Now, this is probably one of the most common complaints with guitar players buying new instruments. When you buy a guitar from the factory, it comes with what's called a factory setup. So this is just the way the manufacturer determines the guitars need to come off the production line. That doesn't always equate to a guitar that plays great off the shelf. So the string action is the height of the string from the frets. So the higher the string action, the further we have to push the strings down to get the notes to sound. Now, some guitar players like their action to be very low. Other guitar players are happy to have it slightly higher. So this is a very subjective field, but you can adjust this very, very easily. So we did just post a video on the Blackstar YouTube channel covering this in great detail. On this particular guitar, we need to look at the bridge for this. So this bridge piece here, the strings are coming over this over the saddles and up the neck. The height of this determines the height of the strings. So on the bridge, we have two Allen key heads, one either side. Using a small Allen key, we can tighten or loosen these, which will in turn raise or lower the bridge. That will then raise or lower the height of the strings across the whole neck. So if you feel that the strings are too hard to push down, what you're going to want to do here is lower the action. If you're going for a super low action, there may be some other things you need to adjust, which we'll get onto in a moment. If your guitar at the box is not quite sounding right, or the notes are dead because the strings are too close to the fretboard, you need to bring the bridge up and raise the action slightly. Tip number two is tighten everything up. So when you buy a new guitar, sometimes it's traveled quite a long way in a shipping container. Things can come loose in transit. So the main things I always check whenever I'm buying a new guitar is I always make sure the tuners are tight. So on top of the tuning peg, we have these little screws. You can tighten those if the tuners feel a bit loose. Now, obviously don't over tighten those because you're going to do damage. Tighten it to the point where the screwdriver will naturally stop turning, but don't force it. When you're restring, make sure the bolts on the front are tight as well. So the tuner is held safely in place. You may also want to pop off the control knobs and tighten the pot underneath in case this is wobbling back and forth. And the other one is the output jack as well. Make sure that is tight so your cable is not wiggling around. If you're going to be standing up while playing, you might want to check how tight the strap buttons are as well. And if you're playing a bolt on neck guitar, not like this because this is a set neck. You'll have four screws on the back holding the neck to the body. Just make sure those are tight as well. By making sure everything is tight, you're just increasing the vibration transfer. So the guitar will actually resonate a little better when things are slightly loose. They're not functioning at their full capabilities. So obviously make sure everything is nice and tight, but don't over tighten anything. Just tighten it to the point where it won't go naturally anymore. Never force it past that point. The third tip is adjust the intonation. So sometimes when you buy a new guitar, everything can read great on the tuner. Your open chords can sound fine, but when you bring the chords up the neck, they may sound slightly flat or sharp. That's because the intonation is out. So the intonation on this guitar is controlled at the bridge here by moving these saddles back and forth. This will shorten or lengthen the string, which will fine tune the tuning of the string over its entire length. There's also a fully detailed video about this topic on the Blackstar YouTube channel as well, so check that out. But you should always make sure the intonation of your guitar is in because it will make it sound in tune over the entire neck. Tip number four is adjusting the pickup height. So on most guitars, the pickup height can be adjusted. So on this particular guitar, there's a small screw either side. Tightening or loosening this will change the height of the pickup here, bringing it closer to the strings or further away. As a general rule, if it's further away from the strings, it is going to sound a little bit quieter and it's not going to sound as bright. Now, there's no set height for this. This is all down to what you hear and how it sounds to you. The main reason you'd want to do this is if you have a pickup that sounds slightly underpowered, you might want to bring it a little bit closer to the strings, especially if you have a guitar with two pickups because if one pickup sounds significantly quieter than the other, you can balance them in that way as well to get the volumes more even. And the fifth and final setup tip and this one is a little bit more advanced. So if you're not confident in this one, please seek assistance. That is going to be adjusting the truss rod. So all guitars have a truss rod in the neck. It is essentially a steel rod that holds the neck in place against the string tension. So when we have the strings in tune, the ball end of the string is down here at the body of the guitar. When the strings are in full tension, the strings are pulling the headstock towards the bridge. What that means is the neck is under a great deal of tension coming this way. What the truss rod is doing is it's counteracting that by pulling the neck backwards. So what we get is the neck being nice and straight. Now the truss rod adjustment can fine tune the action slightly as well. So this is what I was saying earlier. If you have a guitar that you're trying to get the action right down on, you may need to do a truss rod adjustment to counteract that as well. You should also adjust the truss rod if you're going up a couple of string gauges. So if you're going from like a 10 gauge to an 11 or 12, you should probably give the truss rod a tweak as well. How you set the truss rod is a personal preference. I personally like a little bit of neck relief, which means the neck curves upwards just slightly. Some people like the neck to be dead straight. You can also have what's called back bow, which is when the truss rod is putting more tension on the neck than the strings. So that means the neck will pull backwards more. That is usually not desirable because obviously then the neck is going to be pushing into the strings. You're more likely to get dead notes, but sometimes guitars will come from the factory with a back bow already in, in which case you need to loosen that truss rod to bring some relief back into it. So there is a bunch of different ways to adjust this. It's usually done with an Allen key. On this particular guitar, we have the truss rod adjustment wheel at the heel of the neck here, but sometimes it'll be on the headstock. So different guitars will have it in different locations, but usually it's going to be an Allen key adjustment either here or down here. Always move in small amounts when adjusting the truss rod. This is the one thing that if you're not confident, don't do it yourself. Take it to a professional because adjusting the truss rod wrong or over adjusting it can have very, very serious problems and very, very big consequences for your favorite guitar. So there are five easy setup tips you guys can do at home to make your guitar play better and sound better straight out of the box. Let me know if you've used any of these tips on your own instruments, especially when you buy them brand new and the setup isn't quite right when you get it. And if you've got any favorite setup tips you'd like to share, throw those down below in the comments. Don't forget to check out Blackstar Amplification on YouTube for more videos like this. And if you're looking for a music teacher in your local area, please check out musicteacher.com. There's a great network of teachers all around the country waiting to help you guys out. Thanks for watching and I'll see you soon.