There’s so much bad information out there on how to do your own setups. So much. It’s the reason why I created this website, as a means to fight back. This four part video series from Elixir featuring John Carruthers is a particularly maddening example. In it, he gets almost everything right. He uses the right tools. He uses them in the right order. Where it all goes wrong, however, is the target values he tells you to shoot for. It’s true that setups can be a very personal, subjective thing. But I’m just going to go ahead and say his numbers are wrong. I mean, if I paid a shop money to do a setup and they handed back my instrument with an E string height at his recommended 8/64ths of an inch, I would hand it right back to them and tell them to fix it.
Still, it’s rare to see a setup guide that gets so much right. Which is why I’m embedding the first video here. It still has value. Just don’t use his numbers!