Guitar Feels Stiff

Rayk said:

let me add that the strings are not gauge'd at the nut so the inner string height can and most likely does fluctuate , if you look at the high E pic at the twelve fret you see B string raising just a tad above the E the main factors are the radius of the saddle and or nut / string height or both ! most people and yes me in this case lower the action mostly by trimming the bottom of the saddle but it's better to shape and reduce height from the top and then adjust intonation. I don't have a radius tool ( Yet !) so another job by eye but I only shaped the Low E side as it was off the worst. Top shaping is the more technical correct way to do it way I feel , either way working the bottom is fine for most of us hard part (enter another tool) is getting the bottom perfectly flat . also one only hopes and many don't mention it but the saddle slots can have inconsistent cuts so that has to be checked as well .

Click to expand...

Nope....my finger was pushing that A string so it looks off kilter. I was doing so that I could get a clear picture of the low E string with penny unhindered.

jmascis said:

That's exactly what I'm dealing with and feeling. The action seems fine on mine, nut and saddle look good, setup looks great overall...so it's hard to figure.
I have the same problem with easy chords being unusually difficult to get to ring clearly. Stiff as a board in the neck...to me it feels like the neck.

Click to expand...

It's an illusion. It's more likely the neck profile itself.
In any case an actually stiffer neck would be a good thing for overall life expentancy of the instrument. What they really do is build 3-pc necks with a centerstrip when they want to increase torsional rigidity of the neck. That's more of an anti-twist than anti-bowing measure, though.
When I got my D40 I thought it had a different set-up than the D25 because it felt like my first 1980's Fender MIK acoustic ("Set up in the USA" on the box) and I thought "Ah, built in Corona, it's got the "Fender set-up" on it.
So out came the ruler and lo and behold it's virtually identical in all set-up specs to the D25 and they both had the same factory L350 lights on 'em. It was a puzzle to me.
Only a while later did I realize one night that the D40's neck was significantly deeper/"chunkier" than the '25's and then the light went on.
A few years later as my grip changed I realized it's actually easier than the D25 now for scales up above the 5th fret.

jmascis said:

I wonder if adding a little more relief would help it.

Click to expand...

Actually you'd want to take out relief (flatten it).
But even that will only gain you a miniscule amount of comfort.
Thee 2 biggest factors here are action height and string tension.
Going to .11's should help and I'm not sure about that metric spec but in fact don't be at all afraid to go down to 5/64 on the bass E (if that's a bit lower than 2.5mm) and 4 on the treble.
And double check the clearance at the nut. That's usually the primary source of the perception of excess stiffness because the closer to the nut you fret, the shorter the lever of string length becomes when fretting, so more force is required to get clean fret contact.
One last desperate measure:
Tune it down a whole step instead of a half step and it'll be easier to play with the GF?
On another member's suggestion, I did this to my F65ce only a couple of weeks ago, expecting to be a bit disappointed but trying to keep an open mind, and I was completely surprised at the transformation, like that guitar was actually choked off for its whole life and was finally able to really breathe!
What've ya got to lose?

So I put EJ26's on this evening...D'Addario PB Custom Lights. The difference in play-ability is night and day. It is a completely different guitar. Yes...it lost a little bit of its tonal 'woof' going down to 11's from 13's....but it sounds great and plays VASTLY better. The Custom lights brought the action down enough to notice with the naked eye...but still no buzzing whatsoever. I considered putting 12's on it....but I wanted to make a bolder change in an effort to be certain of my decision whether to keep her or toss her. I'd think that 12's would be highly satisfactory as well....and enjoy the 12's on my F-30.

Jmascis....perhaps you....being a long long time largely electric guy....are just finding these steel string acoustics to be tougher to fret. No doubt they are. I spoke to my brother about my issue today and I was surprised to learn that he strings both of his dreads with lights (12's). He has a DV62 and a Custom Martin adi/rosewood dread. He'd bought the Martin from me...and I ALWAYS strung it with 13's and never had difficulties with it. He was equally surprised to hear that I'd used 13's on every dread that I'd owned. We both just assumed.

Perhaps I'm getting older (of course I am). Perhaps this NH D40 is particularly tough/stiff with mediums. I dunno. All I do know...is the D40 plays like an entirely different instrument just going from Mediums to Custom Lights.

Now I need to buckle down this week to arrive at my conclusion to the 'keep her' or 'toss her' dilemma. An hour ago....I had my answer. Now...I'm not so sure.

jmascis said:

Thanks. Is that measurement taken at the saddles? I did that, and the bass is just a hair higher than the treble side.
The luthier took measurements there and said all looked well, but did take down the bass side just a hair (the action was 2.6mm, and he brought it down to 2.5mm). That made a difference.
The nut looks good. I can fret an F chord just fine, and tapping the string there is just a small gap at the 1st fret. So, I think it's set up really well, TBH.

I'm sticking with "it needs to be broken in" or "this piece of wood is just stiff"! I hope the first. I'm just going to keep playing it and see what happens.

Click to expand...

Sorry, just got back to this. String height is measured at the 12th fret.

Kitarkus said:

So I put EJ26's on this evening...D'Addario PB Custom Lights. The difference in play-ability is night and day. It is a completely different guitar. Yes...it lost a little bit of its tonal 'woof' going down to 11's from 13's....but it sounds great and plays VASTLY better. The Custom lights brought the action down enough to notice with the naked eye...but still no buzzing whatsoever. I considered putting 12's on it....but I wanted to make a bolder change in an effort to be certain of my decision whether to keep her or toss her. I'd think that 12's would be highly satisfactory as well....and enjoy the 12's on my F-30.

Jmascis....perhaps you....being a long long time largely electric guy....are just finding these steel string acoustics to be tougher to fret. No doubt they are. I spoke to my brother about my issue today and I was surprised to learn that he strings both of his dreads with lights (12's). He has a DV62 and a Custom Martin adi/rosewood dread. He'd bought the Martin from me...and I ALWAYS strung it with 13's and never had difficulties with it. He was equally surprised to hear that I'd used 13's on every dread that I'd owned. We both just assumed.

Perhaps I'm getting older (of course I am). Perhaps this NH D40 is particularly tough/stiff with mediums. I dunno. All I do know...is the D40 plays like an entirely different instrument just going from Mediums to Custom Lights.

Now I need to buckle down this week to arrive at my conclusion to the 'keep her' or 'toss her' dilemma. An hour ago....I had my answer. Now...I'm not so sure.

Click to expand...

Awesome. That's very interesting. Has it lost a lot of bass response?

I had a DV-52 briefly, and it had .13s on it, and it felt slinky to me. Very nice to play. I've played many acoustics in shops, too. I've actually noticed this on some of them (it's rare but has happened), so maybe it is setup. I always assumed it was old strings or something simple like that.

Maybe I need to take the action down a bit more. I'm somewhere between 6 and 7/64ths or 2.50mm. Andor says I can get down to 5/64ths, which is about 2mm. That would probably make a huge difference. I'm apprehensive to go that low because it leaves little room for adjustment if/when the neck starts to move toward a reset.

Are you going to keep yours now?

Kitarkus said:

Nope....my finger was pushing that A string so it looks off kilter. I was doing so that I could get a clear picture of the low E string with penny unhindered.

Click to expand...

Sorry I meant in my picture

The fret action hieght at the 12th fret is between 3/32 - 6/64ths for me likes

Nut Height at first fret which my cv-1 is close to is .060

My 12th fret action will always run high to accommodate open tunings .

Another option for strings are a mixed gauge like Ernie ball skinny top heavy bottom .

You use lights or 11’s on the high side and 13’s on the low mix and match for only 19.95 ! But wait there’s more ! We’ll send you two set for 19.95 plus shipping and handling . But now !

I wanna play these hard guitars !!!


Ps and see pics of the nut string height .

Kitarkus said:

So I put EJ26's on this evening...D'Addario PB Custom Lights. The difference in play-ability is night and day. It is a completely different guitar. Yes...it lost a little bit of its tonal 'woof' going down to 11's from 13's....but it sounds great and plays VASTLY better. The Custom lights brought the action down enough to notice with the naked eye...but still no buzzing whatsoever. I considered putting 12's on it....but I wanted to make a bolder change in an effort to be certain of my decision whether to keep her or toss her. I'd think that 12's would be highly satisfactory as well....and enjoy the 12's on my F-30.

Jmascis....perhaps you....being a long long time largely electric guy....are just finding these steel string acoustics to be tougher to fret. No doubt they are. I spoke to my brother about my issue today and I was surprised to learn that he strings both of his dreads with lights (12's). He has a DV62 and a Custom Martin adi/rosewood dread. He'd bought the Martin from me...and I ALWAYS strung it with 13's and never had difficulties with it. He was equally surprised to hear that I'd used 13's on every dread that I'd owned. We both just assumed.

Perhaps I'm getting older (of course I am). Perhaps this NH D40 is particularly tough/stiff with mediums. I dunno. All I do know...is the D40 plays like an entirely different instrument just going from Mediums to Custom Lights.

Now I need to buckle down this week to arrive at my conclusion to the 'keep her' or 'toss her' dilemma. An hour ago....I had my answer. Now...I'm not so sure.

Click to expand...

I went all the way to extra lights on my D64, and as you said, lost a little volume, but got much more in playability. The D64 is a cannon anyway, so the volume loss is negligible. I want it to be as comfortable to play as possible. I use Earthwood 80/20's. The extra brightness offsets the lower gauge in regard to sound, I think. But note that I change the strings every month, too.

walrus

jmascis said:

Maybe I need to take the action down a bit more. I'm somewhere between 6 and 7/64ths or 2.50mm. Andor says I can get down to 5/64ths, which is about 2mm.

Click to expand...

Westerly and Corona spec was actually 5.5-6/64ths on bass E (I mistakenly was thinking that the spec was 6-6.5/64ths in my previous post) and 4.5-5/64ths on treble, and many people consider that to be very high and lower it even more than a 32nd (2/64).
Remember the operating philosophy was to set it up at the top of the "ideal range"so it could be lowered to an owner's preference if desired. It's much easier to take height off a saddle than to add it back again. :glee:
I just happened to find the factory spec ideal for my style when I first tried my D25.
But let me also repeat that while that spec remained up on their website through early New Hartford period, it disappeared and was never updated in about 2011 when the whole website got a massive overhaul.
Because Fender was lax about updating the site very often, it's possible they changed the set-up spec out of Tacoma, but the real issue is: if it feels good with no buzzing, it's OK.

jmascis said:

That would probably make a huge difference. I'm apprehensive to go that low because it leaves little room for adjustment if/when the neck starts to move toward a reset.

Click to expand...

I'd hazard that even with .12's you've got a minimum of 15 years and or 1500 hours before you have to worry about that, using my D25 as the standard.
It's only just barely beginning to show some alignment drop below the crown of the bridge, like maybe a 32nd or less.
Heelblock date 10/31/1996.

File grooves in nut a little deeper- that often helps

I’m gunna though this out there just because .

I’ve trashed acoustics , had one 12string I let ride in back of my truck with no case days on end in Florida . Had one when I first started playing , a fender F something no case , filled with rain , kept it out in the winter for weeks in our fort yeah it was a really cool one too , me build cool stuff .

Had another one I’d bungi strap to my motorcycle back rest that was fla to and I’d take my guitars out to Boynton beach inlet and jam and watch the boats come in go while playing on the sea wall.

Now in NC I’ve gone through some guitars before my Guild craze but I’d be dang’d if I’d ever have had playability issues with any of them . Oh they where some ugly looking things but they always played fine and I never adjusted a thing .

Now I don’t know why or how that all worked out ? Most likely I really never cared but I’m sure if the playing side went bad I’d fix it just never had to .

So why did I just mention this , ummm I have no idea but I most always change the set up on new arrivals as my style demands a certain action after that it’s a done deal unless I goofed . Lol

Over all I can’t say I’ve had one guitar I just can’t get along with playability wise now tonal wise we’ll if it sucks it sucks lol