String Height Gauge

So January and February were slow for me and I got a bit bored. So I started fiddling around with the idea of designing my own String Height Gauge. I saw the gauge that Stew Mac sells and I saw the one that LMI carries, and thought I can do that.

I started with a piece of leftover aluminum bar stock that I had knurled for some reason or another back in the 90's. Drilled and countersunk the inlet for the Dial Caliper. Drilled and tapped for a set screw. Then came the string relief and fret cutaways. The dial tip sits flush with the bottom of the slug.

The way it works is; I'll straddle a string and push down on the caliper tip until the string hits the fret(essentially I'm fretting the string). I zero the gauge and release the tip. Now I have my string height to 1000th of an inch.

You might be saying to yourself "Why the heck do you need to read an action to 1000th of an inch". Well when some one asks for a medium, or low action based on the existing action I now have a reference to work from. It also helps during setups to avoid fret buzz. I'll lower the strings to the buzz point and take a reading and know I can't go below that point.