When the guitar has been re-assembled and given a clean-up, it is put back in the case and left to ‘settle’ for 24 hours.
This ‘waiting/settling’ period is all-important as a guitar can sometimes change after the set-up. What I mean by this is the truss rod can sometimes move a little - often termed as ‘creep’. In most cases, if the neck is going to move, it will go forwards under string tension but sometimes it can move backwards and lower the strings, causing buzzing.
To ensure that the customer doesn't suffer these issues immediately after collection, this ‘waiting/settling’ period allows me to observe any movement and correct it with a tweak and this can also be mentioned to the customer.
Finally after the guitar has been double-checked and is stable, I can write up the invoice, which has all the details of how the guitar was when received and what adjustments have been made after completion of the set-up.
This ‘worksheet-Invoice’ - often referred to as ‘Pete’s MOT Certificate’ (Ministry of Transport Test for motor vehicles in the UK) - is also used when the customer brings the guitar back for its ‘Health Check’ which is performed whenever the customer wants during the following 12 months period.
Thank you for your time in reading through this website
Peter Allen - Guitar Technical Services
Thank you for taking the time doing the Tour.
If you wish to go back to Guitar Technical Services
Now that you have gone through the set-up stages with me, it looks fairly straightforward but I have had people try to do this for themselves and actually make the guitar worse! I have even had engineers try to replicate advice and diagrams from websites only to fail to reach their objective and then bring the guitar to me.
Having viewed thousands of guitars before set-up, only about 5 over a 25 year period (approximately 10,000 guitars) were so good that I told the customer they didn't need a set-up doing. I have to say that, in all of these cases, the customer asked me to go through the procedure anyway. I think this says something in itself.
If you have come to this page without seeing the fret levelling and re profiling done within the Professional part of the set-up you will not appreciate the extra work that has gone into making the following procedures work. To view the start of the process go to the top of the page marked "Professional Set-up Explained". or the button RIGHT.
As it has been said in the 'Home Page' introduction, the Standard/Ordinary Set-up tries to achieve results without dealing with fret undulation. However, the following captions show the final processes through to completion of the 'Professional set-up'. The difference here is that the final outcome can be predicted - this to say a good action and not a compromised.
If you want me to do this kind of intensive work on your guitar,
I have provided the link below.
to email me and arrange an appointment.