The First Thing You Should Do When You Get a New Guitar
If you unboxed a new guitar this Christmas season, or if your dad gave you his old ax, you probably need to tune it professionally. Tuning your guitar right can mean the difference between a noisy, hard-to-play nightmare that kills your fingers and ears, and a beautiful musical instrument.
“The more tuned a guitar is, the easier it is to play, which speeds up your learning curve,” explains Matt Chapman, a Los Angeles-based craftsman and former guitar shop owner with over 20 years of experience building and repairing guitars.
What is a guitar setup?
Tuning your guitar is like having your car routinely serviced or going to the doctor for a checkup — a professional check-up that fine-tunes your guitar to make it easier to play and to sound better. Almost any guitar shop will either tune your guitar or direct you to someone who can.
Why do I need guitar tuning?
The guitar is gentle. Basically, it is high-stress wood due to the stretched steel strings, so a lot can go wrong even if you walk from the factory to your living room. Changes in temperature and humidity can slightly affect the wood, and the constant tension on the strings itself bends the wood, altering the distance between the strings and the neck and slightly altering the tuning of the guitar. The tuning puts things in order, so your guitar plays as well as it can. “If you’re a beginner, there is nothing more repulsive than an awkward tool,” says Chapman.
You might think that the guitar has just come from the factory tuned, but this is not always the case. Chapman says that when he owned a guitar shop, most factory guitars came with no tuning, and many shops sold you a guitar with no tuning at all. Free tuning may be included with your guitar purchase, so be sure to ask.
If you ordered a guitar online, it is unlikely to be well tuned. If you are familiar with guitars, you will know immediately. If not, suppose it needs customization and take it to the store.
What does the kit actually do to the guitar?
The main tuning parameters of a guitar are action (distance of strings from the neck) and intonation, fine tuning of the guitar. If the pitch is too high, it becomes more difficult to hit the strings and the pitch becomes sharper. If it is too low, you will hear the string humming at the frets. Problems with your guitar’s intonation mean that some notes may not be played in harmony, especially if you play above the fretboard.
If you’re just starting out, you probably won’t notice if your intonation is out of tune, or if your movements are too high or low, but you will notice that your notes sound sour and that your fingers are sore. Tuning from your local master or guitar center specialist can fix these problems, diagnose more complex problems with your guitar, they will replace your strings and maybe even polish it quickly.
How much does guitar tuning cost?
Guitar tuning prices vary depending on where you live and the type of guitar you own, but a basic tuning should cost between $ 50 and $ 70. This obviously does not include any more complex repairs that might be discovered during installation.
How often do I need to tune my guitar?
Many online sources suggest going to the guitar store once a year or twice a year after the initial setup, but Chapman said that might not be necessary. It depends on the guitar.
“I have guitars from the 1960s that are absolutely stable. I take them and they are always ready to play, just because of their age, ”says Chapman. “The wood is completely stable.”
However, the new guitars are unlikely to be stable. The wood used to make most new guitars is not pre-aged or seasoned like the wood of older guitars, and the conditions in your home will be different from the store where they stood waiting for you to buy. it is, so it will take a long period, maybe decades, before your guitar essentially settles down.
Regardless of how old or stable your guitar is, in some cases you will definitely want to have it in for adjustment. If you change the thickness of your strings, the pressure on the wood can be very different and will need to be adjusted. And, of course, if you notice something wrong with your guitar, such as a rattling string or a fake note that no tuning of the tuning pegs will fix, bring it up for review.
Can I customize my own guitar?
You can set up your own guitar, but the question is whether you should. As a beginner, you probably shouldn’t. While adjusting the truss rod or correcting intonation isn’t all that difficult, it takes experience to do it well, and as a beginner, you probably won’t even be able to immediately figure out what’s wrong. Plus: Making the wrong mistake can lead to costly repairs. But if you’ve played around a bit, there are tons of video tutorials on YouTube to help you get started on your own guitar maintenance.