Setups

I’ve been playing guitar for almost 40 years and working as a professional musician for over 25 years. I currently own a separate business with my wife, am a dad, and have been a busy working musician for the last 6 or 7 years shortly after moving to Northern California. It’s a rare weekend that I’m not playing guitar or bass or running a team somewhere.

I began my journey setting up guitars in 1994. After an incredibly positive, life changing experience, I got picked up as a roadie and guitar tech for a national touring act from North Hollywood. Decades of frustration with guitar setups on my own instruments led me to go deeper into guitar modification, set up, repair. Eventually I took a role at a high end guitar builder in the South, as the head of quality control.

Being exposed to guitar building from the beginning to the final stages was an incredible experience. It really got me obsessed with the what it takes to make a good guitar play great. I kept spending so much money on set ups and modifications, only to go home and tweak my guitars for hours afterwards so that they would feel and sound right to me. I learned a lot from that builder.

Years later I started to notice that most luthiers and techs do very “safe” set-ups and never seem to want to get things right down to the line when it comes to playability, comfort feel and sound.

There is no mojo to it. Its math. It’s measuring to the thousands of an inch, anticipating cuts, wood expansion and years of experience. It’s attention to detail, not just working with wood. When you finish all the technical points, you can nail the feel of a guitar and judge the work by the smile of your client’s face. You can see the joy in their playing when you catch a live event and they are using the instrument you worked on.

My hope is that you enjoy your instrument even more after it leaves my hands. I work hard to make it play and sound even better then it did when you brought it in.

-Def Santiago