Originally Posted by
Folkmusician.com
Hello Kitty Neck rest! That is great. I am a closet fan... My wife has a fair amount that I secretly admire. haha
It is always difficult to judge by pics, but in this case, it appears that the action is on the high side and there is too much relief. If this is truly the case (and not just an optical illusion), then removing some relief will also bring the action down.
The very basics of setup would go..
Set relief
Set Nut height
Set bridge height
Set intonation
There are many things this basic setup does not address. Such as, checking the height of the first fret before setting the nut height. It is not uncommon for the first fret to be high since frets are often leveled with the nut on and the first fret does not get enough leveling. Set the nut height to a high first fret, and your action ends up higher than it should be on every fret after the first. Moving the bridge for intonation, changes the string height, string height changes intonation... You go back and forth through these two, until it comes together. Many of the adjustments can be standardized with excellent results, but as you get down to the bleeding edge, everything becomes a factor and you may need to do multiple minor tweaks.
With high action, minor fret issues go unnoticed, if your relief is close, that is good enough, etc... as the action comes down, all of those minor issues, become major issues.
Everything is a compromise. Want a low nut height and little to no relief. Get the frets completely level and dressed, everything seems perfect, but what is this terrible buzz? It is the string buzzing behind the fretted note. You are fretting the 7th fret, and the string is lightly buzzing at the 6th. Arg! Your seemingly perfect setup needs more relief, which means lower the bridge, adjusting the intonation, maybe the bridge is bottomed out and needs to be recut.. All fun stuff, and precisely why it is very rare to get lower priced mandolins with top level setups. It is not the quality of the instrument that is the problem. It is the lack of profit from the sale to cover the level of setup needed to get an instrument playing great. A select handful of dealers do this, but it is probably less than 1%.
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