“The Tech Said the Action Was Set Wrong” — He’d Played It This Way for 40 Years D

September 14th, 2019. Denmark Street, London. Aldridge and Sons guitar repair, the workshop at the back of the shop, 11:40 in the morning. The repair workshop at Aldridge and Sons had been at the back of the same Denmark Street building since 1976 and had the specific quality of workshops where serious work has been done for a long time.

The workbench against the south wall with its organized tools, the humidity-controlled storage rack for guitars in progress, the small collection of reference books that Alister Aldridge had accumulated over 43 years of doing this work. And that served as both technical reference and the kind of company that a workshop person keeps when the work is the company.

The workshop smelled of wood and linseed oil and the specific chemical smell of fretboard conditioner that was particular to this brand and that Alister had used since 1981 and had never considered changing because it worked and working things do not require change. The front of the shop sold strings and accessories and had a display case of vintage instruments for sale.

The workshop was where the things that needed attention were attended to. Connor Walsh had been the lead tech at Aldridge and Sons for 2 years. He was 28 years old and had studied guitar lutherie for 3 years before that and had come out of his training with a specific confidence of someone who has spent 3 years being taught the correct way to do things and has not yet encountered enough of the cases where the correct way is wrong for the specific instrument and the specific player that make the correct way into something more complicated. He was talented. He could hear what a guitar was doing wrong in the same way that a good mechanic can hear what an engine is doing wrong by at to the whole instrument and understanding what each part was contributing to the problem. He was not yet good at hearing what a guitar was doing correctly that looked wrong on paper. That was a different kind of listening, and it took longer to develop. The guitar on the workbench was a

vintage Les Paul sunburst finish, the kind of instrument that produces a specific quality of attention in anyone who knows what they are looking at. It had been brought in that morning by its owner for a routine service. A full setup check, fret leveling where needed, nut inspection, tuning machine lubrication, and a general assessment of its playing condition.

The owner had left it at the desk at 10:00 and had been shown to the waiting area. A small seating area in the front of the shop with two chairs, a rack of guitar magazines, and a view through the interior window into the workshop. Connor had been examining the guitar for 25 minutes.

He had the specific focused expression of someone who is finding more than they expected to find, which was not a comfortable expression in the context of a routine service. Alister Aldridge was 62 years old and had been in this workshop since 1976, and had taken over the business from his father in 1989, and had, over those 43 years, developed the specific quality of someone who knows the work and the instruments, and also knows when to be quiet.

He was at the secondary workbench doing a fret dress on a different guitar, and was keeping his attention on it in a way that was deliberate rather than accidental. This channel exists for the workshop where the correct diagnosis is about to meet the wrong instrument. Subscribe and turn on notifications before we go any further.

Connor turned from the workbench. He walked to the interior window that looked into the front of the shop. The man in the waiting area was 76 years old. He had long silver-white hair and a dark coat and was reading one of the guitar magazines with the specific quality of someone who is reading without urgency and is comfortable with waiting.

Connor had not recognized him when he arrived. He had taken the name and the phone number at the desk and had noted it on the job card and had gone into the workshop and had examined the guitar. He had recognized the guitar. Not immediately. The guitar had no unusual external markings. Nothing that distinguished it from other vintage Les Pauls of the same period at first handling.

It was what happened when he began the setup assessment that the recognition arrived and it arrived not all at once but in stages. Each stage producing a more specific version of the same thought. This instrument has been set up in a way that is technically incorrect by every standard metric and that produces a playing experience that is specifically, particularly, precisely suited to one set of hands and one approach to the instrument.

He opened the door to the front of the shop. “Mr. Page,” he said. He said it quietly because he was 28 and had just spent 25 minutes with a guitar that had adjusted his idea of what technically incorrect meant and he was not certain of the register this conversation should be in. The man looked up from the magazine.

“Could I talk you through what I’m finding?” Connor said. “It would help to have you in the workshop.” Subscribe and turn on notifications. What Connor is about to say and what happens after he says it is the reason this channel exists. The man stood up and followed Connor into the workshop. Alister Aldridge continued his fret dress.

He was looking at the guitar in the vise with the specific focus of someone who has decided that what is happening at the other workbench is not his business until it becomes his business. Connor laid the guitar on the workbench beside his tools and his measurement equipment and his notes. He had done a full assessment. He had the numbers.

He had the specific technical vocabulary for what the numbers meant, which was the vocabulary of lutherie training and 3 years of correct way practice. “The action,” he said. He said it carefully, with the care of someone who has just revised how carefully to say something. “The action on this guitar is significantly higher than standard both at the nut and at the 12th fret.

The neck relief is also on the higher side of the specification range. By the book, this guitar is set up incorrectly. A standard Les Paul setup would bring the action down by approximately a millimeter at the bass side, possibly more.” He paused. He looked at the man with the silver-white hair who was looking at the guitar on the workbench with the expression of someone who knows this instrument in the way that you know something you have lived with for 40 years.

“The thing is,” Connor continued, “and here the technical vocabulary shifted into something that required more care because it was about something he was only beginning to understand. The setup on this guitar is internally consistent. The nut slots, the bridge height, the neck angle, the relief, they’re all calibrated to each other in a way that produces a specific playing response.

It’s not an accident, and it’s not neglect. Someone has set this up with great precision to achieve a very specific outcome. It’s just that the outcome isn’t standard.” He looked at the man. “Did you have this set up somewhere? And if so, could you tell me what the brief was? It would help me understand what we’re preserving versus what we’re correcting.

The man looked at the guitar. He looked at Connor. He said, “I set it up.” Connor looked at him. “About 40 years ago,” the man said. “The action is high because of how I play. The way I use the neck, the approach to the strings, if the action is lower, the instrument doesn’t respond the way I need it to. I need the resistance.

I need the guitar to push back slightly.” He paused. “The standard setup removes that. The standard setup produces a guitar that is easier to play and not the guitar I need.” Connor looked at his notes. He looked at the measurement data. He looked at the guitar. He was 28 years old and had spent 3 years learning that high action was wrong and that the correct setup produced a playable instrument and that playability was the goal.

He was looking at a set of measurements that were technically incorrect and a player who had set them that way with great precision for a reason that he had never, in 3 years of training, been given to consider. “Could I,” he said. He stopped. He started again. “Could I ask you to play something on the guitar as it’s set up now? I’d like to hear what you’re describing.

” The man looked at him. He said, “That’s the right question.” He picked up the guitar. Connor had plugged it into the small practice amp on the secondary workbench bench for assessment purposes and it was still connected. The man sat on the stool beside the workbench. He adjusted the strap he was not wearing.

This was a sitting down hold, the guitar across his knee, a different geometry from a standing position. He spent a moment with the guitar in a way that was not tuning and was not adjustment, but was something else. The specific process of someone finding the instrument again after it has been away from them for a morning.

Then he played. Are there moments when you’ve heard something that reorganized a technical framework you thought was settled? Tell me in the comments. I read every one. Connor Walsh had been in rooms where good players played good guitars. He had spent 3 years being trained by people who played well and who used playing to demonstrate what a correctly set up instrument felt and sounded like.

He had heard the difference between a guitar that was set up well and one that was set up badly. He had been trained to hear it and he could. What he was hearing now was different from any of those experiences in a specific and instructive way. The high action which his measurements and his training told him was wrong was producing something that lower action would not produce.

The resistance he described, the pushback was creating a tone quality in the bends that lower action could not replicate because lower action bent more easily and the ease of bending was changing what the bend meant. The specific physical effort of playing against slightly more resistance was producing in the sound of the notes a quality that he had no technical word for and that he would have to find another language to describe.

He stood at the workbench for 4 minutes and listened. He did not look at his notes. He did not think about the measurements. He listened in the way that you listen when the thing you’re hearing is reorganizing something rather than confirming it. The man stopped. He set the guitar on the workbench with the care of someone who has played it for 40 years and whose relationship with it is therefore a specific physical knowledge of what it needs and where.

Connor said nothing for a moment. Then he said, “The action stays.” The man looked at him. “Everything stays as it is,” Connor said. “I understand now what the setup is for. I’ll do the fret leveling where it’s needed, and the nut inspection, and the machine lubrication, and I won’t touch anything that affects the playing geometry.” He paused.

“I’ve been wrong about something for 2 years, and I didn’t know it.” The man looked at him. “What were you wrong about?” Connor looked at the guitar on the workbench. He said, “I thought the correct setup was the setup that made the guitar easier to play. It’s not. It’s the setup that makes the guitar right for the player.” He paused.

“Those are different things.” “Yes,” the man said. He said it simply, without the weight of someone proving something. He said it as an acknowledgement. “Yes, those are different things, and the difference matters, and now you know it.” Subscribe and turn on notifications. The next part of this story is what separates knowing from understanding.

Alister Aldridge had not looked up from the fret dress during any of this. He had been doing the fret dress with the specific focus of someone who has been given something to do, and has decided to do it thoroughly. He was, however, a man who had been in this workshop for 43 years, and who had ears that worked correctly.

And the playing that had happened at the secondary workbench had passed through those ears, and had been registered and filed in the way that 43 years of listening to guitars being played in workshops registers and files things. Permanently. With the specific quality of something that will be recalled not as a memory, but as a reference point.

The before and after that marks where an understanding changed. He continued to do the fret dress. He was 62 years old, and had learned, over 43 years, that the most important moments in a workshop were the ones that arrived without announcement and were completed before you could name what had happened in them.

And that the correct response to such moments was to keep working and let the other person find their way through it in their own time, which was what he was doing now. Subscribe and turn on notifications. The guitar has been set up this way for 40 years. What Connor does next will determine what kind of tech he becomes. The guitar was returned at 3:00 in the afternoon as promised.

Connor had done the fret leveling finding three frets that needed attention and leveling them to the degree that was needed without affecting the action geometry. He had inspected the nut which was fine. He had lubricated the tuning machines. He had cleaned and conditioned the fretboard. He had not touched the action.

He had not touched the bridge. He had not touched the truss rod. When the man came in at 3:00 and Connor handed the guitar across the counter, Connor said, “I made a note on the job card for whoever services this guitar next. The setup is intentional and precise. The action should not be adjusted.” The man looked at the job card.

He read the note. He looked at Connor. “Good,” he said. He said it the way you say something when a person has done the right thing and you want them to know you have registered it. He reached into his coat. He took out a guitar pick, dark, worn to an asymmetric thinness on one side and set it on the counter beside the job card.

“For the workshop,” he said, “the action on that pick is also set to a specific purpose. Don’t try to even it out.” He picked up the guitar in its case and walked through the front of the shop and out onto Denmark Street and was gone. Connor picked up the pick. He turned it over.

He looked at the asymmetric wear, the specific angle at which 60 years of playing had worn the material down on one side, producing a shape that was technically uneven and precisely what it needed to be. He put it on the shelf above the workbench where he could see it. Alister Aldridge came through from the back.

He looked at the pick on the shelf. He looked at Connor. He said nothing. He went back to the secondary workbench. Connor looked at his notes. He looked at the job card. He looked at the pick on the shelf. He had been wrong about something for 2 years and now he knew what it was, and he would spend the rest of his career as a tech learning the full shape of what the difference between correct and right meant for every instrument and every player that came through the workshop door.

This was going to take a long time. He had started this morning. In the following month, three different guitars came through the workshop with setups that his training told him were incorrect. For each of them, he asked the owner to play it before he made any decisions about what to adjust.

For one of them, he made the adjustments his training suggested. For one of them, he adjusted part of what his training suggested and left the rest. For one of them, he adjusted nothing. The owners of all three left satisfied. This had not always been his outcome before September. He has been at Aldridge and Sons for 3 more years since that morning.

He is 31 now. He is better at the work than he was at 28. The difference between what he is now and what he was then is not the technical knowledge. He had that at 28. The difference is that he now knows the boundary of what technical knowledge is for and what it cannot do, which is it cannot tell you what is right for this specific player.

Only listening can do that. The pick is still on the shelf above the workbench. It is the first thing he looks at in the morning when he comes in and the last thing he looks at in the evening when he goes. The action on that pick is set to a specific purpose. 40 years of one approach to a string pressed at one angle producing one asymmetric shape.

Technically uneven, precisely what it needed to be. Subscribe and turn on notifications. This channel exists for the workshop and for the moment when the correct setup meets the right one and for the pick on the shelf that says, “Those are different things.” What has someone played for you or said to you that reorganized something you thought you knew? Tell me below.

I read every single comment. Jimmy Page once said, “I believe music is the most universal language.” He has been speaking it since before most of his guitar techs were born. On a Saturday morning in September, a 28-year-old tech in a Denmark Street workshop looked at the measurements on his pad and said, “The action is wrong.

” And then he said, “Could you play something?” And then he listened. And then he said, “The action stays. That is the whole story. Everything else is a note on a job card.” See you in the next one.