00:00Every guitar has a happy spot where it rings naturally.
00:06And 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.
00:18There's some general starting points.
00:21I find when the truss rod, on older guitars you tend not have to adjust them as much as
00:28newer guitars.
00:29It's just the woods has been sitting for a long time.
00:31So they're kind of cranky and stuck in their ways, which is kind of like their owner.
00:38And so I find the sweet spot on Fenders and I find the sweet spot on Gibsons.
00:45And it's generally where 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 and 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.
01:16And when you hit a chord and it's blooming, the whole guitar will resonate.
01:22That's when you know the setup.
01:24And 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 know, I think he's always used the same gauge.
01:40But they had this thing where they were wrapping the strings around the stop tailpiece.
01:48And then you start thinking about it critically, you go, they're decreasing the break angle
01:55over the bridge.
01:56Now you could do that by going through the bridge and just raising the tailpiece.
02:01But 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?
02:08You over wrap just like kind of like a junior.
02:14And once I did that, I was like, wow, these 11s, because I use Ernie Ball Burley Slinkies.
02:22That's the, they send us all the strings in individual packs.
02:26But if you pack them up in a set of six to what you're buying in the store, it's the
02:32Burley
02:32Slinky set, 11 to 52 with an unwound G.
02:38And I find that if you top wrap on a Les Paul, it makes them kind of feel like 10
02:44and a halves.
02:46And it just, they're just a little slinkier and a little, they have a little, you know,
02:52no pun intended, they just have a little bit more bounce to them.
02:55And my former tech, Mike Hickey came up with an extension of the over, the top wrap, and
03:03he started putting extra, he would cut off the ball ends of the strings, and then just
03:12take the ball ends, put the string through there, then through the stop, you know, the
03:19bridge, and then go over.
03:21And what it was, was that it prevented the string when it top wrapped from the break angle
03:28being right on the wind.
03:29Right.
03:29Yeah.
03:30So it's breaking on string string, not wind.
03:34And that helped string breakage.
03:37So you know, now Ernie Ball sends us bags of these things in bulk, but at the very beginning
03:44he would take the old strings, tediously cut the ball end off, and it worked.
03:49So when people see close-up pictures of my Les Paul's, I was like, why are the ball ends
03:53of the strings sticking out from the tailpiece?
03:56That's because there's another ball end that sits inside there, and it's, we're using more
04:04string to get it over, and it, that was something invented by Mike Hickey, and it works.
04:10And it really, we, I mean like most Les Paul's, unless something completely goes, we haven't
04:16broken a string on Les Paul, knock on wood, there's wood under here, in 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's just,
04:28you know, 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, you may,
04:38you
04:38may not like the feel of it, but try it, you know, and, and it, it does work.
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