Standard Distance for String "Height?

Started by William2, October 30, 2024, 03:33:38 PM

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I have two Larrivee Dreadnoughts. One is so much easier than the other to play. I have noticed the easier one visually has much lower action than the other. is there a standard distance the strings should be from the fret board at the 12th fret? I often see Eastman guitars for sale at the Acoustic Shoppe and they always show a pic of a device that is measuring the action on the instrument. I'm thinking of have my Luthier look at both next week and make an adjustment. Some days this doesn't bother me but other days it does. The one with the lower action is new and the other is 3 years old and has never been adjusted. 

Yes and no. Guitars can feel different with the same action. And, there's factors like truss adjustment, string gauge, scale length, etc that have to be figured in to the feel, buzz, etc. I used to always go as low as I could but in recent years I do the opposite as I prefer the tone I get with medium action. So, I am usually raising the action with most guitars I get. You can find specs online for what most people consider normal or low, but I think you'd do yourself a disservice going with other people's preferences. Figure out what feels good to you.

I have very low action with very little neck relief and use 14-56 strings.I have a lite touch and mostley play with my fingers in all styles of music.
So you can go as low as you want as long as there is no buzz,I don't measure anything,for any body.YMMV.
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I've never been a fan of low, low action.  Even if you don't necessarily get a buzz, makes it hard to get under the string to bend (on electric) and on acoustic, if you get into a heavy handed strumming session, you'll get some low E rattle...or if you like to pick strongly on single notes it can come off sounding a little...plinky (yeah I know, tone adjectives...).

Fingerstyle acoustic you can get away with lower action and since I do a little strumming, picking and finger style on my guitar I've found a medium action to be kind of the goldilocks of set up without a compromise on anything.






I'll give this some time to evaluate. The D-40R has a slightly higher action than my other two Larrivee's. And it doesn't bother most times. And I have to say that visually the D-40R seems to have the same height as my Martin 000-15SM and that never feels tiring.

In case you haven't had a chance to look through Frets.com, it's got a lot of useful info.

http://www.frets.com/FretsPages/pagelist.html
Herman.

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