Reddit reviews General Tools 300/1 6-Inch Flex Precision Stainless Steel Ruler, Chrome

The combined stress of all 6 (or 7) strings of your guitar is quite a bit of force for the neck to resist. A minor change in the string tension shouldn't greatly affect your neck action. If your neck was a noodle it would go out of tune when you bent a note. Also the change in stress the neck of your guitar feels by changing from 9 to 10's is probably small compared to the amount of stress induced by thermal variations your guitar experiences during the day. If your guitar buzzes like hell with 10's, it probably buzzes like hell with 9's. Just saying.

• Pro-tip 1: how to tell when to intonate your guitar? When the intonation is off.
  
  
• Pro-tip 2: how to tell when to set the action on your guitar? When the action is off.
  
  These things aren't really separate, but all fall under the umbrella of "guitar setup". Setting up a guitar takes time, practice and experience. There are several variables at play here, namely: height of the nut, height of the saddle, bow of the neck (i.e. truss rod). Also involved are height of the pickups, height of the frets, evenness of the frets, radius of the fretboard. If you have a properly setup guitar and you want to then adjust the intonation, it is fairly easy. If you want to adjust the action, it is fairly easy. If you want to do one or the other with a guitar that is poorly setup, then changing one will probably greatly change the other.
  
  Here is an image that I made a number of years ago for the deanguitars.com/forum. I made it because it seemed that everyone was trying to get their action as low as possible with no fret buzzing, but they weren't getting the results they wanted: everyone instinctively wanted to put the bridge as low as it would go, and use the truss rod to put enough of a curve in the neck to stop buzzing. Doing the opposite gives much better results: http://imgur.com/mhMOu Maybe this image will help you, maybe not. (note that I'm not saying that you want a "flat" fretboard, I am just saying that higher saddle height and "less" curve of the neck can give much better action).
  
  
• pro tip 3: the hardest part about truss rod adjusting is remembering which direction to turn to achieve which results. I won't try to confuse you by telling you which way to turn. Do your research, understand the truss rod of your guitar, experiment, and learn how it works and write down in a piece of paper which way to turn your truss rod and put it in the case of your guitar. never remove this piece of paper.
  
  If you are serious about setting up your guitars action, do not delay and buy one of these:
  
  http://www.amazon.com/General-Tools-300-Precision-Stainless/dp/B00004T7SW/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1311814731&sr=8-4
  
  You will need something that measures the action of your guitar to the 1/64 th of an inch. Rather than relying on "feel" as you drunkenly adjust one of the many variables controlling your guitars action, you can quantitatively measure it and know exactly how a quarter turn of your truss rod changes things.
  
  
• pro-tip 4: It's a guitar, not a nuclear reactor. There are no moving parts, no heavy machinery, no risk of losing a finger or burning down your house if you get it wrong. Play with it. Take it all apart, put it back together. If you can't, ask for help and learn. See what works, see what doesn't. Every guitar is different, there are no hard-and-fast rules. Cheers. (btw, I don't want to seem like a know it all choch here, just want to help, but have had a few beers, and don't have internet so am quickly typing this out using tethering from my work blackberry which has precariously small dataplan so am kind of rushed).

I actually don't know, but if you just need basic truss rod/action adjustments, I would recommend learning to do it yourself. It's really not that hard and the tools can be found at any local hardware store. Adjust in this order:

Truss Rod: You will need Feeler Gauges and a Capo on the first fret. press down with one had on the low E on the fret where the neck meets the body and stick a feeler gauge (.010") between the fret and the E string halfway between the first fret and the one you are pressing (usually 8th or 9th). Adjust the truss rod until the gap allows the gauge to slide in without pushing the string, and with no residual gap. The truss rod section of this page is good.

Bridge Height: You need a 6" Steel Ruler to measure the strings to your comfort, around 5/64's of an inch on the low E and 4/64's on the high e measured at the 17th fret. Adjust the bridge height with a screwdriver or allen wrenches as applicable.

Nut Height: You'll need your feeler gauges again and nut files that match the gauge of each string. You may be able to find a cheap alternative in a hardware store. As a rule of thumb, any tool branded as a luthier tool probably has a dirt cheap exact alternative at your local hardware store. Nuts should be filed down so that the string lays in halfway in the groove, halfway over the top. Bottom of the trough should be filed down to be .010" from the top of the first fret (use the feeler gauge).

Intonation: quoting from that fender link i posted above
>Set the pickup selector switch in the middle position, and turn the volume and tone controls to their maximum settings. Check tuning. Check each string at the 12th fret, harmonic to fretted note (make sure you are depressing the string evenly to the fret, not the fingerboard). If sharp, lengthen the string by adjusting the saddle back. If flat, shorten the string by moving the saddle forward. Remember, guitars are tempered instruments! Re-tune, play and make further adjustments as needed.

skipping the nut height isn't the end of the world if you dont want to shell out for the files.

Edit: oh and pretty much any tool has a high quality demo video on stewmac.com so check those out.

I think it's wiser to learn how to properly setup a guitar on your own. It's not as difficult as many people think and only requires a few amount of tools. Here's what I use:

• Feeler Gauge
  
• Allen Wrench Set
  
• String Winder
  
• Screwdrivers
  
• Capo
  
• Precision Ruler
  
  That's basically it. You don't really need anything else unless you are getting into advanced guitar repair stuff like fretwork or wiring and the like (in which case I would advise you do take it to a pro unless you know what you're doing).
  
  Total cost = $39.93 That's cheaper than any professional guitar setup I know of.
  
  From there you just have learn how to do simple things like neck adjustments, intonation, string height, and pickup height. You can find out how to do all of this stuff with a simple search on youtube.
  
  The advantages of doing it yourself are plentiful. You can find out exactly what relief you like in the neck and exactly what type of action you like on your strings. Professional setups just setup the guitars the way they think they should be setup which isn't always the way you would want to do it.
  
  Also, my guitars go out of whack with the seasons as the neck can fluctuate with the temperature and other things. Rather than pay another x amount of dollars to get it setup again, you can just set it back to the way you original set it up.
  
  TL;DR Learn to setup a guitar yourself. It's better.
  
  EDIT: You need a tuner too. For some reason I just think every guitar player has one of these already.

Checking your chain alignment is really really easy.

Get a ruler. Metric is preferable, but if all you have is inches, we can work with that. However, if it's an inch ruler, this is going to be a lot harder. I have one of these. I use it for a lot of stuff, and you can get them almost anywhere, so I would recommend you get one.

Measure from the center of your seat tube to the inside edge of your sprocket. The more precise you measure, the better your chainline will end up, but at a minimum, you need to measure to the nearest 1mm (or 1/32 inch). Write that number down. We'll call this dimension S.

Now measure from the inside of your dropout to the inside of the driver teeth, again to the nearest 1mm (1/32 inch). White that number down. We'll call this dimension D.

Finally, add S and D together. If you used inches, you need to convert fractional inches to decimal inches, then convert the inches to mm. Don't be scared, Google will do it for you.

For a perfect chainline, S+D=55. If it's less, add spacers between the sprocket and the frame to make up the difference.

For example, suppose you measured your sprocket at 42mm, and your driver at 12mm. That's 54mm, so add a 1mm spacer.

If S+D is greater than 55, remove spacers. You might get in trouble with stuff hitting your chainstays though.

By the way, 55mm is 1/2 the width of the hub (BMX hub spacing is 110mm). We are just using the inside of the dropout as a reference plane to measure the distance from the driver to the centerline of the bike. If you have a driveside hubguard, you need to subtract that thickness from the D measurement.

I hope that helps.