Acoustic guitar neck relief mm. The amount of relief youll want to see varies some by taste but you will always want to have some relief in there. Most of the time you can find the screw at the headstock of your guitar. In fact its not all that hard to set the relief of your guitar neck.
Although there really isnt anything unduly difficult about most minor truss rod adjustments for our purposes here we suggest having it done by a qualified technician or repair person. For example if you play hard strummed chords mostly in the first position you may find a little extra neck relief keeps unwanted buzz away. For acoustic guitars our recommendation bumps up to 764th of an inch 278mm on the bass side and 564th of an inch 198mm on the treble side.
725 95 12 15 17 relief014 035 mm 012 03 mm 010 025 mm should you measure no relief at all or relief amounts in excess of those listed here you probably need to have the truss rod adjusted. Get a feeler gauge and a straightedge that is roughly the same length as the guitar neckboth items can be found at a hardware store. Heres an alternative to the sight method that eliminates this discrepancy.
These are just rules of thumb of course. I use a 011 feeler for this though some people use a thinner one. Neck relief refers to a small amount of concave bow intentionally created in the neck of a guitar or bass by adjusting the truss rodadding relief increasing the amount of bow to the neck increases the space between the strings and the frets allowing them to vibrate freely without buzzing.
Some other models have it on the heel of the neck. The happy medium usually is around 0004 to 0008 which is barely visible with the naked eye. Sometimes you look at the neck and it appears to have the right amount of relief but it still just doesnt feel right.
There is a considerable amount of leeway in choosing the right action height depending on your instrument and playing style. Holding the guitar in playing position on your lap with the body perfectly perpendicular to the floor use a finger on your right hand for right handers to fret the low e string up the neck at the fret where the neck joins the body. Put a capo on your guitars neck at the first fret.
I use a precision metal straightedge and feeler gauges to set the relief though you can use stew macs setup with a dial indicator to impress the flatlanders.