Not long after I started playing guitar, I was fortunate to have a friend show me the basics of how to straighten my guitar’s neck and adjust the guitar’s action. Ever since then, I’ve been doing my own setups. However, even with that help I still didn’t have a full grasp of the basics of guitar setup. Enter the Fret MD: Electric Guitar and Bass Setup and Maintenance DVD.
Fret MD, which features luthier Al Malarsky, provides an outline for and illustrates the basics of guitar setup and maintenance. Malarsky lays out a five-step plan for maintaining your guitar. He also gives tips and tricks that he has learned through his years of guitar lutherie.
1) Neck adjustment
2) Nut adjustment
3) Action adjustment
4) Bridge adjustment
5) Pickup adjustment
For each step, Malarksy explains and illustrates the adjustment. He gives just enough detail for each step to teach you what you need to do to adjust the guitar. It would be easy to overwhelm the viewer with too much information, but Fret MD avoids that while still providing an excellent amount of information.
The DVD also features some extra features, such as how to clean a dirty fretboard and how to clean potentiometers. Additionally, Malarsky provides some bass-specific pointers for adjusting bass guitars.
Even though I knew a fair amount about guitar setup, I learned quite a bit from watching Fret MD. If you’re interested in learning how to set up your guitar, the Fret MD DVD is an excellent starting point.
Great item…at least from what I am reading. Your post being one. I have already used it or passed it on to the Forum that I belong to. Did not know if you knew this or not, but they also have a website: http://fretmd.com/. I will get the DVD once I have more money to spend.
The DVD is definitely worth the money. As I mentioned in the post, I feel pretty comfortable setting up my own guitars, and I still learned a lot from the video.
Although the dvd has a lot of info that most would know already, there are a few helpful tips. I agree its worth the money.