The appropriate gauge should slide in easily between string and fret but without any further gap between them.
Measure neck relief without feeler gauge.
A capo and a feeler gauge.
Only two tools are needed to check neck relief a capo and a feeler gauge.
Affix the capo to the first fret and depress the high e string at the last fret g string on a bass guitar or where the neck joins the body often the 17th fret on stratocaster and telecaster guitars.
Sometimes you look at the neck and it appears to have the right amount of relief but it still just doesn t feel right.
Adjust a truss rod without guesswork.
Our neck relief gauge helps you quickly and precisely adjust guitar fretboard straightness for comfortable playability without fret buzz.
Get a feeler gauge and a straightedge that is roughly the same length as the guitar neck both items can be found at a hardware store.
In order to measure the height of your guitar s strings you should have either a ruler a feeler gauge or a specialized string action gauge.
It accurately measures the amount of variation from a dead flat position to take the guesswork out of adding or subtracting neck relief as you adjust the truss rod.
It requires two things.
One of these is measuring the neck relief it s a good thing to do if you re noticing some new fret buzzing going on.
If you have considerably less or more gap than desired adjust your truss rod.
To measure the relief the first step is placing a capo at the 1st fret to eliminate the nut from consideration.
For electric guitars in our opinion a good default string height at the 12th fret is typically about 6 64th of an inch 2 38mm on the bass side and 4 64th of an inch 1 59mm on the treble side.
If you re a do it yourself type of person you might feel comfortable doing some routine checkups on your guitar of choice.
If you don t have a feeler gauge set they are cheap and can be found at your local auto parts store.
Here s an alternative to the sight method that eliminates this discrepancy.
