Hi Rodger. Thanks for the info once again
I find that the more the bass strings are raised, the harder it makes the action as in pushing down for awkward chords but so be it. I'll dig out the Allen key once again today and start all over
I had actually made the bass strings slighly under the measurement instead of what you suggest, so I guess thats the problem.
Martin Taylor said in one of his instruction videos that when he has a guitar built he instructs the luthier to make the action higher than normal as he finds apart from the tone, helps him dig into the strings more and gets more response off the instrument, and I'm sure you know the way he plays a guitar, it must be right, it certainly does'nt hold back his playing in any way.
In my earlier years as a player, I always used 9 guage strings to suit the music I was playing at the time, and the action was as low as possible to get the fastest fingerboard possible at the cost of tone, (in those days most of us were using all kinds of effects that gave us tone in many different ways) so with going back to the Shads music and the heavy strings I naturally wanted to make the action easier even more so, but it dont work that way I suppose. I remember when I started with my first electric (14 years old) we did'nt have the option of mega light strings, I could only get the flatwounds where I stayed and they must have been 11s or 12s and never gave it a thought about the action or how hard it was to play, just got on with it. I've been wasted over the years
Just reading that bio of Stevies. I'd never have thought it feasible to use these mega high guage strings that he did for playing that fast and furious music he did over his career, its certainly opened my eyes, if someone gave me a guitar set up like that to play, I'd think there was something wrong with it, or badly in need of a service. You never stop learning in this game do you?
Hugh.