Need advice for guitar setup

[Joevyn]

Hey guys, bought my tele about 2 months back and it came stock with 9s. want to step up to 10s. do i really need a setup if i do so? and if i do, where do you guys recommend for setups? I have never sent any of my guitars for setups, usually change strings myself at home, but not sure how to setup for a heavier gauge. Any advice is appreciated, thanks for reading!

 

[CyanideJunkie]

When you setup a guitar, it basically involves setting intonation, string height, neck relief and truss rod adjustment. A .09 to .10 transition wouldn't REALLY necessitate a full setup as the adjustments would be minuscule(this is assuming that the guitar was already perfectly setup when you bought it). But still, I know that I would have it setup again as I'm quite particular about things like that. Places like SV Guitars, TYMC and Guitar Connection offer setup services.

 

[Vax]

Stepping up to 10's can cause mild changes to three areas: (1) Neck relief. It's a heng/suay thing when it comes to necks changing their relief, even with new strings with the same gauge. I would make a mental note of how the neck feels, or make an actual measurement with a ruler, before restringing. The tension with 10's is higher, so it will likely bend the neck a little. A quarter-to-half turn of the truss rod will correct this.

(2) Intonation, ie the difference between the tuning of the open string versus its 12th fret harmonic, which should ideally be zero. After setting the neck, it pays to check if the new setting has affected your intonation. A tuner and the supplied Allen key will help correct this.

(3) Pickup response. Bigger gauge strings tend to be beefier, so decide if the change in tone is desirable for you. If not, you have two options to explore: lowering the pickup (at whichever side has too much "boom"), or raising the string height (but at the expense of your action. Recheck intonation if you do change the string height).

Hope this makes sense and helps some.