Restring & Setup Pack

What changes when you change strings, and how to set the guitar up around it

A guitar neck holds back between 70 and 150 pounds, and every gauge or tuning decision moves that number. This is total pull for every common set at every common scale length, exactly what changes when you go up a gauge or drop a step — including the finding that one gauge step almost exactly cancels one whole step down, while two steps overshoots — relief, action and nut targets by instrument and touch, the truss rod bands that tell you whether to touch it at all and which way, and a symptom table that reads a buzz back to the one adjustment that caused it. 8 pages, printable, ending in a setup record. Advisory: a truss rod can destroy an instrument, and your guitar's own documentation governs.

Look inside

Two full pages from the pack, exactly as printed. Click either to read it at full size before you decide.

What is in it

• Total pull for five common sets across four scale lengths
• Where it goes, string by string, for a reference set
• Exactly what every tuning change does — figures that are exact, not fitted
• What each gauge step adds, and whether the truss rod needs touching
• The one gauge step that cancels a whole step down, and the two that overshoot
• Relief, action and nut clearance targets by instrument and by how hard you play
• How far the saddle moves for an action change, and why it is twice
• Truss rod bands: when to leave it, when to turn, and when to stop
• Eight symptoms read back to the adjustment that caused them
• The setup sequence, with the reason each step sits where it does
• When to stop and take it to a technician
• Fill-in setup record: measured before, target, and after

The pack complements the free calculators — they do the arithmetic, it carries the figures and the setup they cannot know.