Rashputin
Well-Known Member
So I visited Erik Welo at Gulden Guitars yesterday. I'm having him do final setup and PLEK (fret dressing) on my Flying V project. And at his shop I saw this Ibanez Universe. A beautiful guitar. Erik was just finished seting it up for the costumer and had me try it out because he wanted to make sure I knew what super low action means. The PLEK thing makes it possible to have the strings SUPER low, and this owner obviously wanted that.
I had initially asked Erik to set the action on the V "super low" (my words), but after playing that Universe I changed my mind. There were almost no movement of the string at all when pushing it in towards the frets. It was like touching the front of an Iphone or something. And NO buzz! I was amazed, but at the same time I changed my mind about setting up my own guitar that low. I couldn't get my finger properly "under" the string with my left hand for bends and stuff because they were so low. I thought you could never have too low action on a guitar, but I was wrong. With the PLEK machine, you can.
Basically the machine adjusts all the frets according to string gauge and tuning. You can tell it how low you want the action, and it measures neck tension so you can adjust the truss rod to the absolute optimal tension for that gauge and tuning. The results were remarkable to say the least.
I can see how it could be useful with that low action for extremely fast technical death metal stuff where it's all lightning fast runs, sweeps and tapping the whole time, but for anything else (for me) that action is too low as my fingers are used to applying a little more force to get the note to sound right.
I had initially asked Erik to set the action on the V "super low" (my words), but after playing that Universe I changed my mind. There were almost no movement of the string at all when pushing it in towards the frets. It was like touching the front of an Iphone or something. And NO buzz! I was amazed, but at the same time I changed my mind about setting up my own guitar that low. I couldn't get my finger properly "under" the string with my left hand for bends and stuff because they were so low. I thought you could never have too low action on a guitar, but I was wrong. With the PLEK machine, you can.
Basically the machine adjusts all the frets according to string gauge and tuning. You can tell it how low you want the action, and it measures neck tension so you can adjust the truss rod to the absolute optimal tension for that gauge and tuning. The results were remarkable to say the least.
I can see how it could be useful with that low action for extremely fast technical death metal stuff where it's all lightning fast runs, sweeps and tapping the whole time, but for anything else (for me) that action is too low as my fingers are used to applying a little more force to get the note to sound right.