00:00Every guitar has a happy spot where it rings naturally, and it's a case-per-case basis.
00:08You can't just paint in broad strokes with a Telecaster, you crank it this amount of
00:16relief, there's some general starting points.
00:21I find when the truss rod, on older guitars you tend not to have to adjust them as much
00:28as newer guitars, it's just the woods has been sitting for a long time, so they're kind
00:33of cranky and stuck in their ways, which is kind of like their owner.
00:39So I find the sweet spot on Fenders, and I find the sweet spot on Gibsons, and it's generally
00:47where I like action medium-high, not too high but not too low.
00:51Too low is, I feel the instrument starts to choke a little bit, just for me.
00:57You know, I know people that use super low action, they get great sound out of it.
01:01So again, this is just one man's opinion.
01:04If you raise the action a little bit, but if you have too much tension on the truss rod,
01:13it's going to choke as well.
01:14So you have to find the sweet spot, and when you hit a chord and it's blooming, the whole
01:21guitar will resonate.
01:22That's when you know the setup.
01:23And the top wrap on the Les Paul was something I noticed in pictures of Jimmy Page and Billy
01:32Gibbons when they had, you know, in the 70s when Billy was using heavier strings and Jimmy,
01:37I don't, I think he's always used the same gauge, but they had this thing where they were wrapping
01:43the strings around the stopped tailpiece and then you start thinking about it critically.
01:50You go, they're decreasing the break angle over the bridge.
01:56Now you could do that by going through the bridge and just raising the tailpiece.
02:00But most of us Les Paul wielders tend to like the tailpiece screwed all the way down.
02:06So how do you achieve both at the same time?
02:08I mean, you, you, you over wrap just like kind of like a junior.
02:12And, and once I did that, I was like, wow, these 11s, because I use Ernie Ball Burley Slinkies.
02:21It, that's, that's the, that's the, they send us all the strings in individual packs, but
02:26if you pack them up in a set of six to what you're buying in the store, it's the Burley
02:32Slinky set, 11 to 52 with a unwound G and I find that if you top wrap on a Les
02:41Paul, it,
02:42it makes them kind of feel like 10 and a halves and it just, they're just a little slinkier
02:49and a little, have, they have a little, you know, no pun intended, they just have a little
02:53bit more bounce to them.
02:54And my, my former tech, Mike Hickey came up with an extension of the, over the, the,
03:02the top wrap and he started putting extra, he would cut off the, the, the, the ball ends
03:10of the strings and then just take the ball ends, put the string through there, then through
03:15the, the, the, the stop, you know, the, the, the, the bridge and then go over.
03:20And what it was, was it, it, it prevented the string when it top wrapped from, from the,
03:26the, the, the break angle being right on the wind.
03:29Right, yeah.
03:30So it's breaking on string string, not wind and that, that helped string breakage.
03:37So, you know, now Ernie Ball sends it, sends us bags of these things in bulk, but at the very
03:44beginning he would take the old strings, tediously cut the ball end off and it worked.
03:48So, when people see close up pictures of my Les Pauls, it's like, why are the ball ends
03:53of the string sticking out from the, from the, from the tailpiece?
03:56It's because there's another ball end that sits inside there and it, and it, and it's,
04:02and it's, we're using more string to get it over and it, it, that was something invented
04:08by Mike Hickey and it works and it really, we, we, I mean like most Les Pauls unless something
04:15completely goes, we haven't broken a string on Les Paul, knock on wood.
04:19There's wood under here, and over three years.
04:22Wow.
04:23And, and that's not being light, so it's, it's, it's beating on them, but it, it's just, you
04:28know, if you keep fresh strings on everything and, and, and, and, you know, use these techniques,
04:34you know, and you may find when you top wrap a Les Paul that it's not for you.
04:37You may, you may not like the feel of it, but try it, you know, and, and it, it does
04:42work.
04:43It's not bad.
04:43It's not bad.
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