Action on a Beginner's Guitar?

For Christmas this year I received a "beginners" acustic guitar from my wife. I've had a blast getting into the basics, but as with every new pupil I had some trouble pushing through toughening up the finger tips on my left hand.

After a few weeks had passed my finger tips started to build up the begginings of callouses and the muscles in my hand had grown stronger but I couldn't figure out why I was still having to put a death-grip on the neck for chords like A and especially F.

After a lot of frustration and a bit of research I started to learn a bit about the action of a guitar (the height of the strings above the frets as determined by the nut and bridge). As it turns out my guitar's strings were anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 of an inch above the fret board! Much too high and very painfull after playing for just a few minutes.

No wonder my guitar practice was feeling more like instructions in the finer points of strangulation than musical appreciation. A bit frustrated that my guitar was so out of whack I went to a local music store to see what a proper guitar would set me back. With no such funds available, I threw a bit of caution to the wind unstrung my guitar, disassembled the bridge, planed it down, and filed down the grooves in the nut.

After a couple trips to the tablesaw and sander I was able to get the action down to about 3/16 of an inch...or a bit less.

True that new players certainly have some muscle and callous building to do, it seems to me that the first lesson should be a quick rundown on a good basic setup of your instrument...and I'm not talking about just tuning. Having the action set to the point where playing isn't excruciating has made all the difference in the world.

Kudos for your research and resolution! It heartens me to read a post by someone willing to take "action" (heheh) on their guitar. So many times I see people planning, or being advised to go to a guitar tech for the simplest things.

Mind you, that particular operation was extreme and someone could run a real risk of damaging their guitar. (And some folks just aren't safe to pick up a screwdriver.) But you serve as an example of someone knowing their limits and willing to take the risk. In your case it paid off. Congrats!!


...I'm just curious what you were using the tablesaw for...? :eek:

Congrats on the repair.. How's practice going now..

In my case the height of my bridge was much too tall for what I wanted, and sanding 3/8ths of an inch from the bottom didn't sound like much fun. So using a trick I learned last year (last year's Christmas present was...you guessed it, a table saw) I set the depth of the table saw to just a little under 3/8ths and bascially used a technique for cutting rabbets to plane down the entire bottom of the bridge. Followed by a good amount of sanding to make sure it was perfectly smooth for the best possible contact with the guitar when it was reassembled.

(I almost wish I would have taken some step by step photos now to show how I had done it.)

I'm definately not what you would call a carpenter or woodworker but the lack of cash being a strong motivator I took the risk, and it has really paid off.

You are much more courages than myself LOL! I would opt to have someone else do any kind of work on my instrument due to my own laziness (and lack of confidence on guitar maitenance,) but sounds like your ambition has really gotten you to the result you were searching for.

That is something that is a bit overlooked honestly, as most people run into this problem without addressing the fact that is might be the guitar that needs some work done to it.

Best of luck and great job on solving the problem yourself!