Oh spank me! (One more overlooked factor in Fender playability) Love ninja editing)
How is your tremolo? Is it blocked? If so, forget I said anything.
But if it is in use and not properly setup, you will once again fundamentally affect the sound when you get around to setting the trem.
I had a brain fart - thought to myself, oh wait...I have't set the trem block and it's pulling forward like waves breaking on the beach. (Nice metaphor/simile?)
Fvck me...dumbass.
Pull the back cover off - are the claw screws all the way in, or are they almost all the way? Somewhere in between?
Mine were almost all the way out - and of the six screws that affix the bridge to the body only one was flush? They shouldn't be ALL the way down, but these were up and down...no rhyme or reason.
Oh...double fvck me. I am laughing by this point. Gotta laugh, right?
Okay...loosen the strings - no tension on the bridge.
Tighten the six...or two screws depending on your system, until the bridge lays almost flat against the body. Back out the claw screws until it lays flush.
(In reverse in my case - I tightened the claw and then set the bridge, then went back to the claw to snug it)
Tune up. The bridge should lift a bit off the body - you now have a floating trem that is balanced and if you can string well (not as easy as we think) you can bang the crap out of the trem and never go out of tune.
Okay - now the strings are, in my case sitting even lower. Maybe the effect top wrapping gives to tension is in play, the strings are now lower, thumpier and they felt looser - which I realize is nonsense. But I dislike the term "slinky" used to describe the effect.
Action?
Well, maybe that is a tad bit of hyperbole.
The action on a Fender is so much more than the simple height of the strings over the fretboard.
At it's simplest, yes it accomplishes that.
But peculiar to Fenders, it defines the sound of your guitar - perhaps humbuckers are a more generic sound, meant to be thick almost to the point of mud. Muddy is an adjective Fender people use rarely. But I digress.
To set your action, you are touching upon four points of the guitars voice.
Most Fender necks are more curved than other makes - a radius of 7.25 or 9.50 being common.
So that makes it crucial to align the action to mimic the fretboard. Another reason is the pole pieces in Fenders, Strats in particular - staggered pole pieces - so now you are matching not only the curvature of the fretboard but the layout of the magnets as well.
And now that you have moved the saddles height to mimic the fretboard, the pickups need to be adjusted. Unless you raised the action, the pickups will need to be dropped - a lot.
The D & G strings have a lot of built in thump - the pole pieces are the cloeset - this is where your action should be peaking. A nice gentle hump to make great Fender thump.
You are also balancing playability as you go. Lower the low E too far and it falls dead at the 14th fret. The buzz can kill.
Are you going to be above the 14th fret? A lot? How much is your choice.
The B and high E are open to as much room as you like to use. I hold the string next to the one I am bending so I like to feel a bit of a place to "lean" with my off finger. So I'll set them almost high. Much higher than the rest of my setup.
The strings you use have a huge bearing on sound; go heavier and you get twice the thump but need much more action to keep from fretting out.
The older I get, the higher my action seems to go. It is more a balance between the sound I get and playability. I don't need low action to play as I thought I did when I was younger. I can play almost any action, set to MY HANDS.
And THAT, is the key.
We all have different hands and bend in different ways, fret differently, et cetera.
So look to get the sound you crave and your fingers smile (no matter what makes them smile) at the same time.
With Flash
Without
Nice stripe where my thumbs hangs out.
I love the change in the color.
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