Jackson MJ Series Misha Mansoor So Cal 2PT set up

This is one of those videos where a customer sends me a top quality guitar that I sit down and play and think "Wow. This is great". So what does the customer want me to do?? Well, take it from 90% perfect to as close to 100% as possible. It's their sense that it's not quite the stellar guitar it should be; and my test-playing gives me some hints as to what could be improved, if only by small margins. It's those small margins that can really make the difference. In the case of this guitar the action was set incredibly low - 0.8mm high E last fret and 1mm low E last fret. Combined with a pretty flat neck relief profile this action would be a challenge on any guitar; thankfully this has a roasted maple neck with carbon fibre stiffening rods. But Rhodri tells me that he feels there are some high frets right at the top - and I listen to that. The first levelling pass in the 'high E track' is largely diagnostic - and what it reveals confirms immediately Rhodri's experience / assessment of what's wrong. For those technically interested - this superb 'diagnostic' quality is unique to this method of fret levelling. We can immediately confirm the suspicions of our fingers and senses. On this guitar, the diagnostic first pass in the high E track shows that there's a shallow 'valley' between about frets 12 and 18; after that there are 'normal' height frets and the last fret on the neck is noticeably high. When you have a 'valley' such as we had here, every note fretted in that 'dip' means that the normal height frets that follow behave as though they are high (it's the low frets that define what's possible in levelling terms). Not only are frets 19, 20 and 21 relatively high (compared to the valley preceeding them) but fret 22 is way high. All of those frets but especially 22 are in the way of notes played from 12 up to 18 or so. Of course the good thing is that the Banana method not only reveals the individual, bumpy topography over each neck under string loading but it is the means by which we address that problem too. I cover how and why in most of my videos but I also offer advanced tools and training on this method via my 'Golden Banana Packs' where I sell prepped and ready-to-use versions of the tool that I use here including bi-monthly invitations to a live Zoom 'Bannana method' Q&A session to develop your skills... Email me at [email protected] if you're interested.