Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi all

I'm setting up my 2003 nrp national. Thought it needed a neck set but after exchanging emails with the helpful guys at national I removed some shims under the fb extension and am now working on lowering the action at the biscuit.

The nut is set slightly high and the overall action fairly high too. Do you guys set action on a guitar like this good and low for fretting and improve slide technique to get clean or what's your method?

Flat top action I like fairly low 1.8mm e 2.2 low E. I get wrist problems pretty quickly with a high action.

I'm thinking to probably set the action a LITTLE higher than that and leave the nut slots very slightly high but I'd like to hear your thinking. Yes that's you hesh if you've the time

Thanks all.

Mike a have a lot of clients who play slide and many of them are Allman Bros fans which means Derek Trucks fans too. One of my clients I keep his set-up specs on my wall and I think they will help you.

So there is a sequence to a good set-up with things having dependencies on each other so here is what I would recommend for someone who wants low action for fretting (which is problematic for slide...) and not too low for slide playing.

1). Adjust truss rod for minimal relief and this can vary on every neck depending on how well the neck was made. Ideally we want more relief on the bass side, always and less on the treble side. Better builders built this in by controlling their fret planes during the initial fretting stage. Which can't be done by the way when people fret the board off the guitar..... Some boutique factories build specifically for less relief on the treble side with Suhr and Collings being some examples.

I like to see only a few thou (of an inch you will have to do the conversion the price you pay for my help ) on the treble side and slightly more relief on the bass side. If like 50% of the necks out in the wild there is more relief on the treble side get the treble side relief as minimal as you can without taking the bass side completely flat so there is still very little relief on the bass side.

This is not complicated but it is complicated to explain. For me I sight the neck on both sides and adjust accordingly and repeat until I like what I see. Take less than 30 seconds to do. This is of course with the guitar tuned to the tuning you will use which is important too.

2) Cut the nut slots and there are lots of posts here on the OLF from me how I cut the slots and how low I take them. For fretting I take the high e to <0.001" and each string gets slightly higher after that.

So for slide we need the slots and the action slightly higher but not so high that it's a pain to fret OR.... it causes intonation problems like high nut slots do. So I would take the high e to 0.0015 - 0.002 or so again these are inches and the rest of the strings slightly higher too.

3) Retune to pitch always before making adjustments. Action is measured at the 12th fret and for a fretted Stratocaster I would normally go 4/64th" high e and 4.5/64th" low e. For an acoustic I would go 4 and 5.5 (64th").

So for a national acoustic let's use the acoustic numbers above and go a hair higher. High e 4.5/64th" and low e 6/64th".

Be aware that setting up for slide and fretting is all about compromises and none of these numbers or any numbers for that matter will be ideal for either slide or fretting. It will be slightly harder to fret but the nut slots are not so high that you would have any intonation issues. For slide this is on the low slide and a dedicated slide guitar would be set higher for cleaner notes.

Hope this helps Mike.

As per Hesh - nut slot height is critical, especially for intonation. If it isn't low enough - the instrument will NOT play in tune.

As for bridge height - I had a client and long time friend (he passed in 2024) who played slide all the time on his Taylors and Guilds with the action absolutely stupid low. In fact, he required the lowest action of any player I've serviced in 45 years. Yet - he was able to play slide. Don't ask me how he did it - he was a spook. But he proved it was possible to play slide without having the action set high.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I play slide on almost everything I own but since you asked specifically about resonators, I do slightly tweak them. I do play a combination of slide and fretted notes so the setup is a compromise with the nut action slightly higher (20 thousands or so), relief fairly flat (5 thousands), and 12th fret action high enough to keep the slide from rattling but still low enough to fret (80 or 90 thou). As the nice folks at NRP probably told you, action is adjusted by shiming the neck stick much like setting up a banjo.

Unfortunately resonators do not intonate well, the saddle is usually located at the scale length so fretted notes will play sharp. With the slide it doesn't matter, andf NRP does sell a compensated biscuit which helps with the fretted notes. Again, its a compromise.

The other thing I like to do is make the string plane as flat as I can but still follow the curve of the fretboard to help with barreing with the slide. My spider has a dead flat fretboard, its pretty easy to barre, but my tricone and biscuit have some radius. Higher action helps avoid fretting out.

Last question is string gauges which depends a bit on tuning. Standard acoustic mediums work for me for open G or D, I always tune down. I kind of like a plain third which complicates intonation.

I do slide a nut extender on the spider and play it lap style (its a round neck) but then there is no fretting.

Bottom line, I think your are headed in the right direction when you say a LITTLE bit higher, that works for me.