What would you consider high action on a Les Paul?

Megadebt

Megadebt

Experienced
Low E 1.90 mm/high E 165.00 mm ?

I want to try out how it plays and how I play with high action. .010 relief. I'm going to also try 10.5 gauge strings on it.
 
The relief is twice what it should be and causes there to be less next fret clearance not more. Adjust it to half and then redo your action back to your preferred hight. Doing this creates almost the effect of another half mm of action in terms of next fret clearance (which is the measurement that matters for tone and buzz.)
 
Andy Eagle said:
The relief is twice what it should be and causes there to be less next fret clearance not more. Adjust it to half and then redo your action back to your preferred hight. Doing this creates almost the effect of another half mm of action in terms of next fret clearance (which is the measurement that matters for tone and buzz.)
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Thanks Andy! I put the relief at .006 at the 6th fret.
 
Why do you want high action? Is there something that's troublesome to your playing with lower action?

Reason I ask is I used to set my action kind of high, but only because when I'd bend strings, the adjacent string would sort of "slip under" my finger as I was pushing into it, and then it would drop down onto the fretboard, and sound.
But then I realized having my action that high impeded my progress on faster licks, basically requiring me to lift my fingers a bit more than needed, at the same time when conserving motion was important.

So after I received my newest guitar that was set up quite low, and realizing I just needed to practice in a slightly different way when doing bends, I actually found that having the action as low as possible, just to the point of the beginnings of string buzz (but not so much that it's audible when amplified) was actually much easier to play.
 
Wow. First reason he gave was for pushing the adjacent string out of the way when doing bends. But his action is even higher than mine used to be, in that adjacent string is even being raised a bit when he does it. I've also had trouble with that string ringing out when releasing the bend, especially if you're pushing it upwards a bit.

One other reason I would give in favor of higher action, is you don't have to be as precise when lifting a finger off an adjacent string, when changing to a different string during a riff, to stop that string from ringing (at all.) With high gain tones, it becomes even more important to mute that other string immediately, and I do find that more difficult with lower action. Sometimes I find myself lifting my finger off the string.
Practicing a lighter touch helps, imo, for that issue, and, the 2 reasons he gave that would basically be a result of string buzz.

Overall, with the benefit, imo, of the lower action allowing for less work of your fretting hand, I've found lower action to be an overall benefit, even if it means working a bit more on having that lighter touch. Seems like when it comes to guitar setup issues wrt your technique, there can be tradeoffs. I guess you just have to dial in your guitar's action to where it works the best for how you play.
 
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Rex said:
Not when you're measuring relief. For that, you want to measure at the center of the truss rod. That's the 7th fret for most guitars.
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Got my terms confused on that one. I also didn't know the center of most TR's was 7th so that's good to learn!
 
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Low action only works properly with high frets to give you the grip on the strings needed to properly articulate every nuance.
I few of my old school customers who play blues on vintage fenders have a very high action too give them grip on the strings with tiny vintage frets . This works so long as what you are playing isn't fast or too demanding. High action and big strings certainly doesn't sound better than a perfect fret job and 9's with a player that is used to the dynamic needed. I find if you try to change string size it will be at least a week of hard playing to adjust and start to exploit the difference you were looking to get.
 
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