Different guitars have diffrent issue potential. Most Telecaster's don't have a whole lot to go wrong, Strats sometimes can have issues pertaining to the vibrato or the nut slots and vibrato more often than not. Offsets sometimes have wonky things going on with the setup because an uneducated player worked on it and now it does not function as intended - but I also would have to keep in mind, if it's not mine, how it's going to be used.

Usually the first thing I do is see how well it plays. Dirty strings, high action, and the appearance of not being cared for (dry fretboard, strat vibrato pulled upward, etc) usually indicates that I'm going to have a lot of work to do, while a guitar with within spec action that plays well and seems well cared for might need as little as just a restring.

MOre often than not, the average setup of most guitars today is about that - average. The action is not too terribly high but not that low and fast either. The vibrato on Strats are more often than not, not used, with the bar removed. But most of the time, the guitar is not hitting it's true potential. The intonation I've found is slightly outta' whack.

Once I have the strings free of the peghead, I then remove them depending on their attachment. Stud tailpieces, such as those found on Gibsons, my Hondo Paul Dean II, B.C. Rich Guitars, etc, I just remove all six strings and then remove them as a whole with the tailpiece. I do this so that I can clean the tailpiece and under it. It's amazing the gunk that'll build up under a bridge/tailpiece over a time, and it just makes cleanup of the strings easier. If I cut them, then it's usually at that point.

For though body guitars, or guitars with the strings going through the tailpiece where ite tailpiece is unremovable - ie, pretty much everything else - I remove them one at a time. Same deal with Floyd Rose. Actually, let's talk about specific Floyd Rose/Tremolo stuff.

On Floyd Rose guitars, the strings are CLAMPED in at the saddle. There are no ball ends. The clamped in strings are unclamped via the six clamp screws sticking out the back of the bridge. You also need to remove the strings from the locking nut, where they are clamped once again. I just remove all three nut clamps before unwinding the strings, then give it a good 3-5 turns, pull the string up at the capstan, then unclamp from the Floyd Rose, and remove them. On Floating Floyds, I usually jam a 9-volt battery in a sock under the back before removing the strings to hold the vibrato in place while I remove the strings.

For a Kahler, sometimes (if possible) I do things in reverse. Since the vibrato can bend forward enough to let the strings go at the back, instead I remove the locking nut/string guide locks, loosen all the strings 3-5 turns (maybe more on the higher strings), and then I tilt the vibrato forward with the bar most of the way, and use needle nose pliars to carefully lift the ball ends out of the vibrato tailpiece, rest the bar back, then I just unwind at the headstock and remove each string one at a time.

This is also when I clean the fretboard if needed be. I usually do this using shop towels, but if there's enough gunk I might resort to razor blades and CAREFULLY scraping away the gunk between the frets. Gunk is easily seen by rubbing the fretboard with a bare paper towel as the loose fibers will expose the gunk in a way that looks similar to fretboard wear on a maple fretboard. Maple fretboards I find works best using Scott shop towels and some elbow grease to clean and I almost never have to resort to razor blades, especially if high gloss. After all the gunk is removed from a Rosewood or Ebony fretboard, I'll spray it with Gerlitz Guitar Honey, saturate, let it soak in a little (about 1min), then mop up the excess with a shop towel. I'll know if I did it right, the fretboard will be a dark chocolate brown color. I tend to find dried up Rosewood/Pao Ferro fretboards often look sort of lighter and orangey, and then I use this stuff, and it looks fantastic. It also makes bending and playing that much more easy due to the smoother fretboard surface. Maple boards I may polish if it's meant to be high gloss.

Metal assemblies are cleaned up using WD-40 and shop towels (if they're rusty), and Q-tips. I also use brake cleaner or even just plain ole Windex sometimes. If they are particularly bad, I'll use high grit sandpaper and/or a Dremel with a brass wheel, and may get polished up if they are looking particularly rough.

If I'm doing a full fret-level, I'll use a magic marker to mark each fret after putting masking tape over the fretboard to protect it, then use a straight long sanding beam to see where the "low spots" are - then keep sanding till they are all gone. I use AT LEAST 800grit for this, though I have gone as high as 1200 even in some cases. I'd rather slowly remove material and use up the frets far less, than I would remove too much material or necessitate a refret. Then, once the marks are gone, I recrown each fret using either a Fret File, or I often end up just doing it with a needle file, and then polishing them with higer grit papers and/or a dremel with rubbing compound.

Spot leveling is usually done in the same way, but first I try to see if the fret is poking up, that might indicate the fret is bent, to which then, I might try to hammer it back down, or even clamp it back down in place with a wood block and a C clamp - with glue if necessary. Most of the time though, it's just a high spot on the frets from a crappy fret job (I work on some pretty shitty cheap guitars), so I'll just masking tape, mark it, sand it down, recrown, polish. 9/10, it ends up right, and I don't have to waste time doing ALL of the frets.

Gibson style guitars with wraparound tailpieces, I often just feed all six strings into the tailpiece, and then install on the guitar. For stoptails and Leo Quan Badass bridges, the strings feed through the front and "wrap around" over the back of the tailpiece and over the saddle(s). For TOM/Stoptail setups, like most regular Gibson have, the strings are routed through the back of the stoptail and then the stoptail is installed and all the strings are routed over the saddles.

For Fender style through body and through the tailpiece guitars the strings are fed through one at a time and attached to the machine heads one at a time. More on Machine heads in a moment...

Floyd Rose guitars are where it gets a little more complicated. First off, I do one of two things - remove the ball ends if the string has an excess of core wire on the lower three strings, or if not, I'll install them BACKWARDS. So I'll turn the machine heads so that the hole going through them faces toward the bridge saddles, then feed the string through the hole carefully, under the string guide (if equipped), over the locking nut (all the locks are removed), and then down to the tailpiece where I'll clamp it in. I do this process one string at a time. Then the string is put in the clamp, clamped down - making sure it's dead straight with the bridge saddle, and then is pulled taught through the tuner with about 2 fingers worth of slack at least, and then spun around the capstan.

There are three ways I attach strings to the machine heads....

Kluson Safe-T Posts - Kluson had this awesome system of the "Safe-T Post" they patented back in teh 50's, and honestly, I wish ALL Guitars had this. HOw they work is there is a hole in the middle of the tuner capstan, and a slot. The string goes into that hole, then bends at a right angle, and then wraps around the machine head - leaving no prickly point to poke anyone.

Locking Tuners w/ Built in Cutter - I have a set of Planet Waves machine heads on my Les Paul that actually cut the string. In this case, the capstan bearing goes up in a seashell like spiral to a miniature cutting mechanism that cuts the tip off. The string is held in place, instead, by a thumbscrew on the back of the tuner. You just pull the string taut-ish, lock down the thumbscrew, then crank the tuner and it'll wrap the string and cut the tip of it off flush with the capstan.

Everything else - Everything else just has a simple hole drilled through the capstan sideways. For these, I just run the string through the hole with the desired amount of slack, then I bend the excess up into an "L" shape, then I wind the string around and downward, in a neat coil like I would all the others on the page, pushing the coil together as I go (esp on the higher strings), and then tuning them up to pitch. Once the strings are stretched out, I cut the top off, and bend it over with a pair of needle nose pliars to make the tip dull enough not to hurt you if possible. I don't tie anything, I don't do any fancy loops, I just put it through the hole and use the friction of the wound up string to hold it in place. It works great, it's simple, and makes string changes easy.

The NEATNESS of winding cannot be overstated. Winding your strings neatly toward the headstock has two positive results. First off, coiling the string around in a nasty ball of randomness means that the string can get high-centered on itself and cause the guitar to go sharp at random, ditto with it going flat when the messy wind lets the string loose into a low spot and drops the pitch flat. This becomes even more imperative when you use a vibrato bar - regardless of type, though a locking nut mitigates that a bit. Also, it looks good.

The first thing is to check the neck relief, you want it no more than a business card toward the 5th or 7th fret when pressing down at the 1st and last fret. Ideally, the neck is straight and there's a perfect height at both ends, which is a good place to start.

What adjusting the truss rod does, is adjusts the "upbow" and "backbow". If your guitar has an "upbow" condition, then the strings will buzz at the lower frets, then play really well toward the middle of the neck, but get harder to play as you get toward the top of the neck. With a backbow condition, the middle of the fretboard might buzz, the lower frets can be hard to play, and the upper frets may buzz and/or have just high action all the way down the neck upward.

I usually want to get it as straight as possible, with a tiny bit of relief at most, and then leave it there. I do most of my truss rod adjustments with the strings ON, and the reason I do this is so I can gauge how straight the neck is and see what other angular adjustments I can make to the strings in real time. However, with some guitars, you have to guestimate because the neck needs removed to touch a heel-end truss rod adjuster (Fenders mostly).

With the relief right, now it's time to check other symptoms of issue. First off, readjusting the action at the bridge, if you find you cannot go very low without buzzing, then it could be either you need your frets checked (especially if it's the old strings and you've not checked the fretboard health in aawhile), but another sign of this is the NUT!

On a lot of traditional nut-equipped guitars, a big problem is the manufacturers, or even the person that replaced said nut, had not a foggy clue what to do. Either they cut the slots too deep, which will cause strings to buzz toward the nut, and cause the action up top of the neck to be very high to compensate - or they more often than not cut them too shallow, making the strings hard to press toward the nut, and rest assured the action - with properly leveled frets and proper neck relief, will not be able to get the action lower than a certain point, otherwise the frets will buzz progressively worse up the neck.

What you want to do is get about a business-card's worth of action between the string and the 1st fret, maybe slightly lower than level for your ideal action at the lowest, and level with your ideal action at the highest. The idea is that the straight string straight down a straight neck at the optimum height from the nut and bridge, will make the guitar very fast and easy to play up and down the neck, won't buzz or choke out if you bend, and won't rob you of much sustain either.

Then we need to consider the fretboard radius as well, both with regards to action, and with regards to each string. ALL Electric guitars (well, almost all maybe), have a fretboard that is "curved" when viewed from the end. This "curvature" is known as the "fretboard Radius", and a way to understand it, is to see the neck as a fraction of a much larger circle of about 7.16" all the way to about 14" in diameter. The strings need to match that curvature, but they also can be lowered a little more on the smaller strings due to a smaller vibration space required, and because they are, in general, smaller. For Gibsons this is done by filing a notch into the Tune-O-Matic bridge saddles, but most are preset to the right radius anyway. For Floyd Rose guitars, individual saddle height is managed by using purpose-built metal shims that fit between the saddles and the bridge base.

Once the fretboard radius is set, then the entire action of the guitar can be set. Sometimes this is done in combination with the fretboard radius (ie Strat, Tele, Duo-Sonic, anything with a Strat or Tele style bridge basically), but other times, 2 screws at each side of the bridge are used to adjust the entire assembly - saddles and all - up and down. I usually lower it until it starts to buzz, and then back it up untill it stops buzzing, and then maybe drop 1/16 of a turn back down. This is similar to what Edward Van-Halen outlines in his manuals for his guitars, and it works well for me. I also do some bends in the regular way I normally do it, the widest bends I'll be doing, and then see if it chokes, if it chokes, I'll bring the bridge/saddle up more, if not, then I'll see if I can get it just a little lower before it chokes out. CHoking out happens because the string crosses over the center of the frets in the middle of the fretboard and then chokes out on higher frets.

On most six saddle adjustable guitars, I'll start by roughing out the intonation...this means that the G string is set at the perfect scale length from the nut (ie 24", 24.75", 25.5" etc), with the strings set forward and back in 1/8-1/16th of an inch incrrements. If there's a wound G, the D string is used for the scale length instead, and the wound G is moved forward my predefined measurement.

Then I will tune the guitar using the tuner - just to make sure everything is dead-on and calibrated. Then I will play the open note, 12th fret harmonic, and the 12th fret by itself. If the 12th fret is sharp, the string needs to be lengthened, so I will loosen the string if it's a strat or tele (because this puts more tension on the string), and then turn the screw in the direction to move the saddle toward the bottom of the guitar, and then retune, and re-test. If the 12th fret note is flat, the string needs to be shortened, so I'll move the saddle toward the neck, retune, and retest. I'll do this on each string until it's perfect. Keep in mind that if doing this on a guitar like a Jaguar, Jazzmaster, or Mustang with a loose-rocking bridge, you want to CENTER the bridge before doing this. I find with it roughed out I don't need to move the saddles more than maybe 1/8" in either direction to get them right.

Typically, the bigger the cam, the faster the fall rate, and also true, the smaller the string, the SLOWER the fall rate. However, different strings and different metals will react differently to the fall rate as well. For example, Jim Dunlops on my Wonderbar guitar drop at almost the same rate like a Trans Trem, but my Ernie Ball Paradigms don't really work that well because the lower strings are very slinky. So if you have one of these systems, either use the proper calibrated strings (Steinberger), or stay away from anything that has some funky special design intended to make the strings lighter and easier to play. Also, distance between gauges can make a difference as well.

The one thing common to ALL guitars is stretching the strings out. This is done by pulling them up about 1" off the fretboard and twisting lightly between two fingers up and down the string. This is how the pros do it - to make sure that the entire string is being stretched, not just one part of it. What changes, depends on what kind of vibrato system (if any) you have.

"Hard Tail" (Non-Tremolo) guitars are pretty much done once the stretching is done. You may want to give it a rest period to allow the strings to pull back to a nice equal state, but most of the time, I find they stay stretched out and do pretty well from that point onward.

Down-Only Trem Systems require the strings to be stretched, and will require some equalibrium to allow them to retract and stretch back out a certain way while in use. While a lot of people cite Edward Van-Halen's method as a good method, which it was in 1978, today, with modern string technolgoies, a properly cut nut, and a good set of tuners with the strings wrapped around them neatly, you just need to stretch em' out, do some bar dives, do some crazy whammy bar stuff - check your tuning, and once the guitar starts holding tune - assuming your nut, bridge, and stgring trees are not interfering, it should stay in tune extremely well.

Floating Trem Systems - For these, you want to stretch the strings out, and then go really nuts on the whammy - pulling up, dive bombing, doing wild warbles, the whole nine yards. You sound like a gunk monster on a bunjee cord if you're doing it right! Then retune, once the strings stay in tune, even with extremely wild treatment - the floating tremolo will stay in tune even if you pull up a 5th and dive bomb it a lot. This is how I set my Jag-Stang up actually - and that's hte most notorious trem system next to the original six screw Strat design.

First off, follow the string stretching in section "X" above. The reason is because there's a PROPER method to stretching strings, especially if you use a floating vibrato (goes up and down in pitch) of any kind. Remember, the most important thing is stretching them to an "equalibrium" type state, not just stretching them out fully like you would on a regular "hard tail" (non-tremolo) guitar.

On non-locking systems, wrapping the strings neatly around the tuning capstans is a great place to start. This prevents high spots which can cause random tuning issues, and it also works as a physical "lock" of sorts for the string without a locking tuner or locking nut by way of friction. This might be the one place in working on a vibrato unit where friction IS your friend, and the more of it, the better.

The nut slots are VERY important on non-locking vibrato systems. It is imperative that the strings can slip and slide through the nut of the guitar smoothly. Having a straight string pull really helps too - that's why 3x3 headstocks are not a popular choice for vibrato equipped instruments. Ditto the string guides (if any) - roller trees, graph-tech trees, or upgrading to staggered machine heads might be a real help to problems pertaining to these items. You might want to clean these off if they are rusty/burred/dirty to make sure strings can float seamlessly across the string guides.

Systems with knife edges need to make sure those knife edges remain sharp, and clean. If they don't, then they will not perform optimally.

See below on the specifics on various vibrato units....