Guitar setup advice.

Was hoping that someone here could answer the question.

I have a Tanglewood Earth 100 guitar (I think they've rebranded them Cort's now) which I have owned for the last 7 or 8 years. It has a great tone, being a dreadnought can also provide great bass in the lower reaches. Soundwise, I think it has what I'm looking for.

The issues I have with it are down to the fretboard, neck and action. An acoustic dreadnought rarely has a low action, however I have found that lower E drops out of tune quite a bit, and that I am losing a lot of resonance further up the fretboard (not even that far up though) I have concerns about whether its the guitar or whether its just incorrectly setup as in the neck truss needs sorting.

Although I've played on/off for about 15 years, I've never really gone into how to properly set up a guitar and dont even know how easily acoustics can be adjusted. I know that with the electric, action can be adjusted but its not so simple with the acoustic bridge.

Anyone provide me with advice as to whether anything can be done? Would a luthier be able to sort it?

to be honest you would be best of taken it into a guitar shop if you have one local. Acoustics i found have always beena little trickier to get right. If you try adjsuting yourself you may end up with a buzz on the lower E which will annoy the hell out of ya!

Depending on how the frest are dressed and how straight the neck is is how you will get your instrument sounding. I have mine serviced every 6 months at around £70 for each guitar but i gig my quite regulary.

Take a look at your machine heads if your dropping out of tune rather than the action as replacing them with locables may help

tanglewoods have always been a good sounding guitar. The guy i used to play with played one of these and the tone range was superB. Not sure how much further adivce i can give...hope this helped a little

[madcockney]

Rob it may be worth you subscribing to UK.Music.guitar newsgroup where there are lots of helpful guitar musos that can help you with this and other guitar related items. You will need a newsreader if you don't already have one but many pop3 clients, such as Mozilla Thunderbird have them built in.

Like this forum where ride outs are arranged they have the equivalent subscriber arranged meetings in local areas if you wish to partake

Blueto, yeah sounds sage advice really, plus I know someone very well who works in one but I never considered getting them to do it.

Madcockney - arent newsgroups 10 years out of date? I didnt even know they still existed! Thanks for the heads up though, If I can't source it locally, I might take a look.

Another thing you can look at re: intonation high up and action is the bridge and nut. If they're not spot on for the curvature of the fretboard they may need to be adjusted (normally the bridge height changed by either shimming or filing).

For improved sound, you can also change them out for Tusq items - relatively inexpensive and transmits sound through the body a bit better.

My acoustic- Fender Montara- also has an action at the top of the fretboard that you could fly jets under. This will affect intonation (and therefore the pitch of the fretted note) as the string must move further to reach the fretboard.

There are two solutions to this-

Get a bridge with a lower action (as most acoustic bridges are a piece of plastic, bone, graphite or other material, you either need to file it, replace it or remove a shim if fitted).

Also, if you have very heavy strings (ie 2 guages heavier than those the guitar shipped with), the neck may be bending too much- thus increasing the action at the top. This will require careful trussrod adjustment.

Both these things may be better looked at by a professional guitar tech if you're not experienced with servicing your instrument (oo-er)

[phi-dan]

Set-up guides (and tons of other info) can be found here at StewMac.

If you're going to try it yourself, make sure you get in some spare bridges / nuts as it's easy to take too much off. Or better yet, work on the replacement parts so if it all goes wrong you can swap back in the originals