How To String a Guitar

Step 3 Care for your guitar!

At this point, if you're like me and haven't restrung your guitar in over a year, you'll definitely notice that dust has accumulated. clean that up! according the the taylorguitars pdf, you can clean the fretboard with 0.0000 gauge steel wool and rub pretty hard without damaging it! Just be EXTRA sure that you don't touch the body and cover the sound hole before you do it.

If i owned a Taylor, i doubt i'd even consider rubbing steel wool on it...


and also, if you have a guitar wiht a high action, basically, the strings are way high off the fretboard, like my other guitar in the second picture. this makes it a bit more difficult to play the guitar especially in the higher frets.
to fix this, just simply sand it down in tiny increments. make sure you don't do too much, or the guitar strings might make a rattling sound! if you messed up or sanded down to much, simply cut small strips of paper and put them under the the saddle until it's at a height you like! easy peasy!

Comments

[Chainslaw]

Adjust the truss rod in the neck before you even think of sanding the saddle. It can be undone much quicker. (Also apparently you're supposed to do it in that order if you're setting up a guitar.)

[dewexdewex]

What you do to improve or change the playability will depend on the current state of the guitar. If the neck - viewed along its length from the saddle to the nut - is slightly curved up, this is probably OK and the truss rod shouldn't be tightened to lower the action, as the neck could end up hogged. The tension in the rod only counteracts string tension to achieve an ideal neck shape/profile. In this case where the neck shape is ideal/OK and the action still too high when the strings are fully tensioned, lowering the saddle would be the way to go, I reckon. In the case where the neck's noticeably bent upwards to the nut, then tightening the rod would be the first thing to do followed by any adjustment to the saddle to get the action according to preference.