What is Action on the Guitar?
January 22nd, 2007
The very first guitar I had was this small acoustic that was obviously supposed to have nylon strings on it. At first I did not know about nylon strings, but later realized that because of the style of bridge, it should have had them. Anyway, my best friend and I called the guitar “The Killer”. We called it this for two reasons. Reason 1, it was a nylon string guitar that had steel strings on it so the action was really bad and it would kill your fingers if you played for too long. The second reason was because my best friend’s mom bought it from a guy who she later found out from the local newspaper was convicted of murder. The name was suiting. There was an upside to playing it though, I developed some pretty wicked calices.
I basically just explained exactly what action is with that little story. Action refers to how easy a guitar’s strings are to fret. If a guitar’s strings are hard to fret and it kills your hand to play you would say the guitar has bad action. If the opposite is true and the guitar is easily fretted and is responsive to the touch it would be said the guitar has good action.
Sometimes action is referred to as high or low action. In this case it has to do with how far the strings are from the fingerboard.
If the strings are high, and required to be pushed down far to fret them, the guitar has high action. Guitarists who are used to playing electric guitars or acoustics with low action might classify high action as bad action. Generally though, action is a personal preference. A higher action will give a brighter clearer tone and is generally better for rhythm guitar.
Low action is when the strings are closer to the fingerboard. Generally this would be classified as good action, but again its a personal preference. Lower action’s tone isn’t as bright, but will make the guitar much easier to play for someone who does a lot of lead and technical playing. Sometimes a negative side effect of low action is fretbuzz. This happens when vibrating strings actually touch the frets and cause a buzzing sound.
When you are choosing a guitar or getting your guitar setup you want action that is a common ground between ease of playability and quality of sound. If you have a guitar and you find it hurts your fingers to play because you have to press the strings down too far, consider taking your guitar into a shop to have the action adjusted.
Tags: beginner-guitar, Guitar Basics, guitar-maintenance
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