HTS Assess Fretboard

Fretboards can buzz straight out of the box, basically the guitar gets built and setup in one location, then shipped around the world and occasionally needs work before you can play it.

Telling a Distributor / Manufacturer something is wrong is one thing, you have to show on paper someone 4000 miles away what is wrong. This is my process.

Time to inspect 5 minutes / report 1hr

For my report, I also need to identify the scale length, here it is 25.3 inches

Placing the tool on the string, it is set to zero.

Pushing the string down onto the fret, gives us a fret to string height.

We transfer that measurement to our excel spreadsheet.

Repeat for all positions.

On my computer for reporting, I have scale length graphs with a reference line for the lowest possible action achieveable on a guitar without buzzing.

This guitar is 3 weeks old, its going to be repaired under warranty. We set the truss rod to 4 thou relief.

A simple string height measuring tool from a company called LMII.

Simple excel spreadsheet showing every fretted position.

We add our recordings and we get a plotted line, we compare that line to our lowest possible action line

Here is the Bass E string, little bit of a dip in the board around the 14th, but nice clean even height, nothing a fret level cannot tweak out.