Official Luthiers Forum!

OK...you've completed the fret dressing, crowning and set-up on your guitar ( a 14 fret guitar for the sake of argument) .

Now, with the guitar strung up to pitch, when you place a capo behind the first fret, and hold the string down at the last fret (I mean on the bridge side of the fret, not the nut side ) do you want to see any space between the underside of the string and the crown of the 14th fret ?

Or, do you want the string to actually make contact with the 14th fret when you do this ?

(obviously you don't want the string to make contact with the intermediate frets between the 1st and 14th ...)

Or, are you bothered one way or the other ?

I hold the string at the first and 14th fret and check the relief in the middle of those two points.
With the neck shaft straight then, I can assess the degree of ramping up or falloff of the tongue, and accurately determine the exact bridge height.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

I also routinely check neck relief at the body joint. The truss rod generally has little to do with the fret plane of the tongue. I prefer the tongue to fall off a few thou rather than rise at all with the relief set as it needs to be.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

in essence the imaginary line from fret A to fret Z .the line off the the top of the 2 frets should not touch another fret when strung to pitch.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

Whilst a capo is handy, if you crank it down hard behind the fret, it can give a false reading on the low E

Theoretically, if you have a perfectly flat fret plane from 1 to 20 ( no extension fall off), if you lightly push the string down on the first and twentieth fret, the string will touch the tops of every fret. Adding relief and fall off changes things. I don't check the fret plane as you suggest. I level the board and add .008" fall off on the extension, which actually starts two or three frets closer to the nut from the body join ala Frank Ford on frets.com. Then level the frets using the same geometry.

Chuck

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There should be a slight bow in the neck when strung to pitch. So in theory no 2 frets are in plane to the strings , therefore no frets should be on the line of 2 other frets.
In most cases I like to see .004 to .006 relief. We are talking steel strings guitars. If you have a dead flat neck you reduce the fret to string clearance. There is a point where relief will work with you , than against you.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

While determining the relief in a setup, I am only concerned with the area of the neck that is effected by adjusting the truss rod. Thus, I hold the string down at the first fret and at the fret which falls above the transition from the shaft of the neck to the heel of the neck. If you hold down the string at a fret closer to neck/body joint or beyond, you may begin to allow misleading factors into your determination of relief.

While I do agree the part of the neck that will move with the truss rod is mostly in the barrel of the neck , you still have to consider the frets below that point. Here you may have to work the frets to avoid buzzing. It is all about the fret clearance with the strings. The body join area can be problematic if you don't have the proper geometry .
I figure relief from the 12th fret to the 1st measure at the 7th fret. .004 to .006 is my basic target. If I am setting up for a hard picker I may go to .009 but that is about it for me. In compression fretting I shoot for the same numbers .

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

Or ...you could lay a 13" straight edge on the first and 14th frets and use feeler gauges at the 7th fret to measure the relief ...accurate to .0005".

You really need a surface plate to calibrate the Stewmac gauge ...not everybody has one ...