Getting the pickup height right is the cheapest tone upgrade a guitar owner can make — and it's usually the most overlooked. Too close to the strings and the pickups wander into magnetic-pull territory: harsh highs, choking bass strings, weak sustain. Too far away and the tone turns thin and weak, the output drops, and the pickup loses the warmth it's capable of. This free pickup height calculator…
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Set your PRS's pickups to the ideal gap. The tool below gives you the verified bass/treble target for PRS humbuckers or the Silver Sky's single coils, then turns your current measurement into a concrete raise/lower adjustment. Quick answer: PRS humbuckers sit at roughly 2.8mm (7/64") bass / 2.0mm (5/64") treble for both neck and bridge — and PRS says do not adjust the pole screws. The Silver Sky's…
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Quick Answer: The best strings for most PRS guitars are Ernie Ball Regular Slinky (.010–.046) or D'Addario NYXL (.010–.046). PRS ships its electrics with .010–.046 sets, and the trem geometry is tuned around that tension. The 25" scale length sits between Fender (25.5") and Gibson (24.75"), so 10s feel balanced — a touch firmer than the same set on a Fender, looser than on a Les Paul. The Silver…
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Set your Fender's pickups to the ideal gap — the tool below gives you the verified bass/treble target for your Strat, Tele, Jazzmaster, Jaguar or Precision Bass, then turns your current measurement into a concrete raise/lower adjustment. Quick answer: Fender single-coil pickups typically sit around 2.0mm (5/64") bass / 1.6mm (4/64") treble at the bridge, with the neck pickup slightly higher. Wide…
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Best Home Practice Amp: Quiet Bedroom Tone Without Sacrificing Sound Let's be honest: the best home practice amp isn't the loudest one on the shelf. It's the one that sounds genuinely great at the volumes you can actually use — 2 a.m., neighbours on the other side of the wall, a partner trying to sleep. If your amp only starts to sing when the neighbours start to knock, you're not practicing, you…
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Look up your guitar's factory setup specs — action, neck relief, and pickup height — for your exact model, in one place. No more hunting through manuals for the ideal numbers. Guitar Setup Calculator: Action, Relief & Pickup Height by Model A great setup starts with knowing the right numbers. Our guitar setup calculator brings together your model's action height, neck relief, and pickup heights in…
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Ibanez Setup Guide: Action, Tremolo & Relief Specs Last updated: August 14, 2026. Specs and steps verified for current RG, S, JEM, and AZ models, including Edge and Gotoh T1502 floating trems. Photo by Slava L on Unsplash Ibanez guitars are built for speed: thin Wizard necks, flat fretboards, and floating tremolos that are among the best in the business when set up right. But that same hardware…
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The free authenticity quick-check above helps you spot a fake Fender, Gibson, Squier, or Epiphone before money changes hands. Pick the brand, answer each red-flag question honestly — "not sure" never counts against the guitar — and you'll get a clear risk band in about two minutes. No email required, no signup. Just a straight answer on whether the deal in front of you deserves a closer look. How…
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The free Squier authenticity quick-check above runs the red-flag checklist experienced Squier buyers use — including the Squier/Fender-family details that counterfeits get wrong: logo fonts, headstock shape, hardware, and serial format. Answer each question honestly ("not sure" never counts against the guitar) and you'll get a clear risk band in about two minutes. No email required, no signup…
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The free Gibson authenticity quick-check above runs the red-flag checklist experienced Gibson buyers use — including the Gibson-specific details that "Chibson" copies get wrong: headstock angle, scarf joints, inlays, serial stamps, and hardware. Answer each question honestly ("not sure" never counts against the guitar) and you'll get a clear risk band in about two minutes. No email required, no…
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The free Fender authenticity quick-check above runs the exact red-flag checklist experienced Fender buyers use — including the Fender-specific details that copies get wrong: decal fonts, string trees, neck plates, and tuners. Answer each question honestly ("not sure" never counts against the guitar) and you'll get a clear risk band in about two minutes. No email required, no signup. Just a…
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The free Epiphone authenticity quick-check above runs the red-flag checklist experienced Epiphone buyers use — including the Gibson-family details that counterfeits get wrong, while correctly not flagging details that are legitimately different on Epiphones (like scarf-jointed necks, which genuine Epiphones often have). Answer each question honestly ("not sure" never counts against the guitar) and…
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How to Spot a Fake Gibson (Chibson) "Chibson" is the collector's nickname for counterfeit Gibsons — Chinese-made copies passed off as real Les Pauls, SGs, and Explorers. Some are laughably bad, with a headstock that's clearly wrong from across the room. Others are good enough to fool a dealer for a few minutes. The good news: every Chibson fails the same set of checks, and most are catchable from…
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How to Tell If a Fender Is Fake Fake Fenders are everywhere in the used market — especially on eBay, Facebook Marketplace, and Reverb. The good news: most copies are caught by the same nine checks in this guide, and you can run most of them from the listing photos alone. A counterfeit Fender usually fails on details: the logo is slightly wrong, the serial number doesn't decode to the claimed year…
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How to Buy a Used Guitar Online Without Getting Scammed Buying a used guitar online is the best way to get a great instrument for less — and the easiest way to lose $500 to a fake, a partscaster, or a "too good to be true" listing that turns out to be exactly that. Every week, buyers get burned on Facebook Marketplace, eBay, and Craigslist by counterfeit Fenders, Chibsons, and outright scams. The…
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Free Guitar Tools Every free tool on Owning A Fender, in one place. Whether you're dating a guitar by serial number, pricing one for sale, or dialing in a setup, start here. Guitar Worth Calculator Wondering what your guitar could sell for? Our free guitar worth calculator gives you an instant used-market value range based on brand, era, and condition — no email, no signup. It's the fastest…
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The free guitar worth calculator above gives you an instant estimate of what your guitar could fetch on the used market. Pick your brand, rough era, and condition — the calculator does the rest in seconds. No email required, no signup. Just a quick, honest ballpark. How It Works Tell us the brand and model — Fender, Gibson, Squier, PRS, Epiphone, and more. A free-text model field lets you add…
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PRS Setup: What Makes It Different A proper PRS setup follows the same physics as any electric guitar: relief, action, intonation. But PRS guitars have quirks that generic setup advice gets wrong. The tremolo is designed to float parallel to the body, not decked and not kicked up like a vintage Strat. The truss rod wrench changes between Core and SE models. And the humbucker heights are uniform…
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There's a moment in some guitars' lives where they stop being instruments and become stories. For most, that moment never comes. For one Ibanez JPM100 P3, it came twice: first on stages around the world under John Petrucci's hands between 1997 and 1999, and again on the 11th of November 1999, in a corridor beside the stage of the IJsselhallen in Zwolle, the Netherlands, when Petrucci opened the…
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