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Thread: Yes, you can improve a professional setup by yourself!

  1. #1
    Member
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    Aug 2011
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    Edmonds, WA
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    Default Yes, you can improve a professional setup by yourself!

    Hi everyone,

    I'm still giving away my ebook on how to set up a mandolin (to get your free copy email me at rob.meldrum@gmail.com and put Mandolin Setup in the subject line).

    Every now and then I get a nice follow-up email from someone letting me know how their setup went. With his permission I am posting an email I got this weekend from Bruce Walsh.

    Rob

    ***

    Hi Rob,

    I bought my Eastman 505 about 6 months ago from a reputable store in Australia. They had checked it over and given it a “pro set up” before sending it to me…..I live out in the country, 4 hours drive from the nearest big city.

    I am a long time Guitar and Ukulele player, and I felt the action was a bit high, and the phosphor bronze strings grabbed my finger tips….too much string pressure sliding into notes on the higher frets.

    So I followed your eBook and gave her a good once over and a restring…..I have done some amateur luthier work, having built a couple of Ukuleles at the Australian Guitar Making School.

    At the nut, the grooves were not all even, not the same depth, so I used your feeler gauge nut file to just clean them up. I left the string height at the first fret at 0.020 inch, so I could see if that would be ok, and avoid fret buzz.

    The string height on all strings at the 12th fret was around 0.070 inch, and I dropped that to 0.053. Again, I would restring and see how it went.

    I used Graphite on the slots at the nut and saddle.

    So I slowly replaced the strings with Dadarrio Nickel Bronze 11 40, and after checking heights on E and G, starting checking intonation.

    With the Fender chromatic tuning app on my iPhone it only took minutes to get E and G nearly perfect

    I finished stringing, checked all my heights, and tuned up.

    Now the Eastman sounded nice and played nice before, but this is like a different mandolin….it is so much nicer, and the sound is clearer/cleaner, less muddy.

    My teacher plays a Gilchrist F series, and he loves how the Eastman has turned out……I might reduce some of those numbers next restring, but for now it is a soft action, no buzzing, beautiful musical instrument.

    Thanks Rob,

    Bruce Walsh

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  3. #2
    Moderator MikeEdgerton's Avatar
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    Mar 2007
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    Howell, NJ
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    Default Re: Yes, you can improve a professional setup by yourself!

    One of my favorite post regarding setup is here.
    "It's comparable to playing a cheese slicer."
    --M. Stillion

    "Bargain instruments are no bargains if you can't play them"
    --J. Garber

  4. #3

    Default Re: Yes, you can improve a professional setup by yourself!

    As someone who benefited from your book, I agree. Unless you have a specific action you want, and can articulate that to a luthier, I think most will error on the side of caution. Martin knowingly and to their credit, sends guitars out with higher action than many if not most would want. Easy after an instrument settles in to it's environment to set the action lower. Eastman does a credible job but when you ship an instrument half way around the world, things change. Having a step by step instruction guide is invaluable. Even if one doesn't intend to do the work, just knowing the nut slots are not deep enough enables comunication, so you don't go into a shop and say, as low as you can go without buzzing.
    Silverangel A
    Arches F style kit
    1913 Gibson A-1

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