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Thanks again Ken. I've never been a guitar technician. I buy them, play them, restring them, and keep them clean. That's all I know about them. You'd think I'd have made an effort to understand all this technical stuff owning twenty or so guitars. The music store I bought the guitar at ten years ago is about two miles from me and has a repair shop. I think maybe I'll just take the guitar over there and have them look at it, and demonstrate how to do all this checking you talk about. As for humidity, about seven years ago I spent big bucks to have a whole house humidifier installed to increase the humidity during dry, New England winters. Doesn't get it as high as I'd like but it's better than it was. Previous Message
Rick, neck relief is the slight necessary bowing of the neck/fingerboard that's necessary to accommodate the arc of the strings as they vibrate. Neck relief is usually set between .005 inches and .012 inches. You can check this by pressing the 6th string down at the 1st fret and at the 13th fret and looking at the space between the bottom of the string and the top of the 7th fret. You should see a gap between the fret and the string's bottom. This, if necessary, can be measured with feeler gauges. If that string grounds out, there's a good possibility that other strings may also be doing so. You can also check any of the strings using this method. Some necks over time and humidity variations can develop a slight back-bow to the neck/fingerboard which can result in strings buzzing when fretted. The guitar's truss rod can be adjusted to take care of too much neck relief or too little. Please refer to the pamphlets that came with your Taylor as they'll explain everything you need to know about humidity issues affecting your guitar's performance.
Let me know what you find when you check the neck relief. There are also action height issues that can affect a guitar's tone. Usually, action height is set by the height of the guitar's bridge saddle. Generally, proper action height can vary between .080 inches and .095 inches depending on playing style. Action height is measured by using feeler gauges and measuring the distance between the bottom of the unfretted 6th string and the top of the 12th fret. Both neck relief and action height affect the ease of playability of a guitar and its tone.
Ken Previous Message
Thanks Ken. The string is seated well into the nut. In fact, even a little clearance between the top of the string and the top of the nut. So it's down as far as it will go. Not sure what you mean by neck relief though. Previous Message
Rick, have you checked your neck relief and action height? First, though, push down hard on the G-string on both sides of the nut to make sure the string is seated all the way down into its nut slot. Previous Message
I took out one of my Taylor GS Minis the other day to try and get back to playing. Two bad hands and a bad right shoulder, but I'm determined to play a few tunes. I noticed that the G string sounds dead. That's the only way I can describe it. So I changed to a new fresh set of strings and it still sounds dead. Strum a chord and when you hit that string, you can hear it. Almost just a "clump". The other strings sound just fine. Any idea what I could be dealing with? Thanks for any suggestions.
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on 9/26/2022, 4:18 pm, in reply to "