I recently bought a set of Ernie Ball Hyper Slinkys to top up a guitar strap order and avoid shipping charges. Then I noticed that they were similar to the Fender 3250L Super Bullets I had been using so decided to give them a try.

The feel and playability seem just fine, but even the small drop in gauge (from .009 to .008) left the neck with insufficient relief^[1]I.e., there was noticeable neck buzz.—either that, or there was a bit of an issue before that; I hadn’t played it in a while, to be honest.

Time apply some corrective measures!

Checking relief

I’ve never really felt a need to horse around with the action on my guitars, so I decided to go check the official specs on Fender’s site.

According to Fender , the recommended relief depends on the neck radius. Ok, fine, I have radius gauges ….

The most likely radius for a Stratocaster was 9.5″,^[2]10″ has apparently become more common in the last decade, but this guitar is considerably older than that. so I tried that first, and that was right.

This means that the relief, following the web page, should be .010″ on the high E string at the 8th fret when the first and last frets are depressed; a capo on the first fret simplifies checking this considerably, since one hand can hold down the last fret while the other checks the relief using feeler gauges.

Well—no relief at all with these strings! As discussed in a video by Fender University , this means that the rod was too tight^[3]The less scary option, as overtightening the rod can be problematic! and needed to be loosened.

Adjusting relief

By trial and error—and contrary to some information I found on-line—I found the proper Allen key size for my guitar to be 3/16″. I turned it counter-clockwise one eighth of a turn, and the string was still tight up against the fret at the 8th fret, so I did another eighth of a turn or so.

At this point, I could more or less get the .010 feeler gauge beneath the string, and a few test strums suggested that this was sufficient. And if it should turn out not to be the case, it will be simple enough to adjust a bit more later. Better to do these things in little steps!

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