Order Now only $9.99

Billy Penn's Guitar Set Up Guide

An Indispensable Manual for the Guitar Enthusiast

Have you ever wanted to set up and maintain the playability of your guitar by yourself? Did you ever wonder what a tech does when you take your guitar in for a “set-up“?

Well now the answers to your questions and all the steps are laid out in my Guitar Set Up Guide. My guide contains all the information you need based on my 20+ years of experience as a guitar tech.

It also answers many questions that you may have asked yourself about intonation, adjusting pickups, cleaning your frets and so forth. To help you better understand the set up process I have included many detailed photos as well as instructional videos showing you how the set up is done.

My Guitar Set Up Guide is broken up into four sections or chapters.

• Chapter 1 starts with the basics of removing the strings, overall check, cleaning and finally re-stringing your guitar.
• Chapter 2 addresses truss rod adjustment, setting the string radius and action height.
• In Chapter 3 you adjust the intonation so your guitar will play in tune.
• Lastly Chapter 4 explains how to adjust electric guitar pickups.

All four chapters build on each other and go in a systematic order so there is no guess work on where to start or what comes next.

I wrote this Guitar Set Up Guide for guitar players who want to set up and maintain their own guitars and for the player who just want to know this information so they can relate to their techs. All the content is geared for the very beginner to the advanced player. I receive dozens of emails per week asking a wide variety of guitar related questions and now the answers are incorporated in one comprehensive guide.

Questions such as:

• How far away should the pickups be from the strings?
• Which way do I turn the truss rod adjustment to straighten my guitar's neck?
• What is the easiest way to clean the frets on my guitar?
• I've tried to intonate my guitar but it still doesn't play in tune. Why is this?
• To increase sustain I should adjust my pickups as close as possible to the strings, right?
• What do I do if the bridge on my guitar doesn't have a way to adjust the intonation?
• Is there an easy way to remove all the strings on my archtop guitar with a floating bridge and quickly get it intonated?
• I find it difficult to adjust the truss rod on my guitar because the adjustment is at the heel. Is there an easy way to do this?

And many more...

What people are saying about the e-book

from DA Mcleod's Wordpress Blog:

When I first wrote about the book I had mentioned that buying the book was as much a way of saying thank you to Billy for being so generous with his knowledge. I had hoped that I might learn a trick or two, but wouldn't have felt at all short-changed if I didn't. So, did this old dog learn any new tricks? Oh yes! I'm not going to spill the beans but tucked away in there were a couple of absolute gems. (hint: one was about the stickiness of tape and the other was about the jack socket)

Value for money? I'm not sure how much a professional setup is going to cost you these days. The last one I paid for (at a very highly respected tech) cost me £65. Will your first attempts be as good as a pro setup? Of course not. But I'm pretty sure that with Billy's guide, and a willingness to give it a go, it'll be damn close and every time you do it, it'll get that bit closer. Even if you don't do your own setup, just following chapter one's service schedule when you change your strings will mean that your guitar is kept in tip-top shape and will be all that it can be. Now in my book that represents value for money. Heck, I've wasted ten times that much on the latest snake-oil or silver bullet to improve my Telecaster. Do yourself and your guitar a favour.

from Steven at the Home Recording Weekly Blog:

Billy Penn makes no bones about giving us the exact and precise information that we all need, and wish to know. Such knowledge is vital to the way that our guitars “play”, feel, sound, tune up, and perhaps most important of all, how long our guitars will last. It is like having a guitar tech with us, for as long as we keep our E-book Guitar setup guide that is.

All of the fine measurements are in this E-book, along with a lot of images, video links, and knowledge that most “techs” do not like to give away. Thanks Billy Penn, for helping all of us guitar players! At $4.99 this is a steal, and a must have!

from JP at the Stratoblogster Blog

I'm actually annoyed this cool book is so cheap-- Billy needs to work on his self esteem! Hopefully lots of you will buy this book, and help him feel better about himself. And if he's smart, he'll raise the price!