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I have the Haynes Fender strat book describing and showing how to check intonation, string height, adjust tremelo tensions etc and there are assorted YouTube videos, articles doing much the same but is there an equivalent manual for my Marvin Burns?
I don't know the ideal height of my strings from the fretboard - the Burns has a very high action and I'd like to lower it but some form of basic suggested measurements chart or similar would be useful. Although I can fiddle and faff experimenting with various adjustments, I'm unsure as to whether I'm heading in the right direction or could be making matters worse. I could use the strat measurements as my guide but would that be a bad idea? For example, unlike my strat I've noticed the Burns' neck pickup sits much lower than the others - should it or should they all be roughly the same - and so on . . .

Help or advice would be welcomed.
Cheers,
Martyn

There's no Haynes manual for the Marvin, and I guess that it is too specialised a guitar to merit one - the three so far have been Strat, Les Paul and Tele. all of which are mainstream, big-selling models available at a variety of different price levels.

This might be useful:

http://www.trevormidgley.com/BurnsGuita ... ckAdj.html

http://www.berkshireshadows.org/forums/ ... t2420.html

http://www.berkshireshadows.org/forums/ ... topic=3667

George

Where are you Martin? I'm sure someone local could guide you... easier than via a written message...

David Martin wrote:Where are you Martin? I'm sure someone local could guide you... easier than via a written message...

Hi David,
Plymouth's my home. I have a good local guitar shop (Hartnolls) and could take it there, but I'd prefer to make my own adjustments, rather than rely on someone else - provided I'm not likely to harm anything in the process.If using a luthier's the best plan then that's what I'd have to do. I've altered the action on my strat and am happy with that but just need reassurance, I suppose, that doing similar to the Burns won't cause me problems.

Regards,
Martyn

Unless they know Burns, you would be better advised to do it yourself. All you need to do is to write down exactly what you have done at each stage... then you can undo it!

Here we go... (now is the time to fit some new strings if you're going to...

1) Tune to pitch
2) Finger on first fret and finger on last fret. Clearance under 8th fret perceptible but not greater than .5 millimetre? Leave it alone! Otherwise adjust truss rod after removing neck plate. Note that Burns truss rod not like Fender (geared) so you can give it 5 turns to effect a minor adjustment.
3) Tune
4) With ref to overall string height, is the rear trem plate high? (i.e. IS the bottom of the plate higher than the top of the plastic surround by an appreciable amount? If so make equal quarter turn adjustments to both of the nuts at the back and tune after each turn until bottom of plate level with top of plastic surround.
5) Tune (Does action look OK now?)
6) Check intonation and adjust (lots of info on the web)
7) Tune
8) OK now? If still not low enough check gap between top of fret 17 and bottom of strings... should be somewhere between 1.5mm and 2mm (bass side) If not adjust individual saddles then retune... bear in mind that lower action promotes string rattle (which may or may not be audible through your amp - check it before you sweat!), and a slightly higher action gives cleaner, ringing tones and easier string bending...

Perhaps worth adding that although the Burns truss rod is 16/1 ratio geared, if you need to make major changes to the neck relief you should allow 24 hrs for the wood to adjust to the new tension, before continuing as David suggests .

Mike

Thanks for the detailed instructions. I've now successfully adjusted the string heights so I still maintain a decent sustain but without choking strings at any of the upper registers. It's always had superb sustain and I didn't perhaps appreciate how the higher action was encouraging this (perfectly logical, I just hadn't given it a thought), which is why I've been careful in my adjustments. I didn't need to adjust the truss rod.

Now I'd also encountered difficulties with the trem action after changing from Elixir 10s to Newtone 11s with a wound third, which involved some spring tensioning adjustments. I found I didn't like the wound third's lesser volume - never quite understood why a wound third, with its extra metalwork and which sits over the highest of the poles, would have less volume rather than more but I'm told it has something to do with specific string frequencies, rather than amount of magnetised pull on the string - maybe others would understand more about this than me, not being too clever on electrical topics.

Suffice to say I reverted to 10s and after making adjustments for the trem springs trying to get things back as they were, that's when the trem plate problems occurred. I found when pressing on the arm the plate wasn't re-levelling itself correctly - same with raising the arm, so my tuning was settling back slightly flat or sharp accordingly. I fiddled with the two rear bolts but no amount of tweaking seemed to resolve this, which baffled me for a while until today when having another go at sorting it. With the guitar laid flat I realised when operating the arm I could hear a very, very faint creak or squeak. I checked the tension of the arm, wondering if the fibre washers had dried out but then sat back and thought about things.
When I'd initially changed to heavier strings I'd also altered the arm's level to allow for the different tensions as I felt it was angled down too much towards the handle's tip end, so using the Allen key I'd loosened the hex socket holding the arm's base in situ, adjusted the horizontal level and retightened things. I'd not appreciated quite how snug a fit this unit is, sitting into its wooden surround but when making these adjustments, the arm's swivel base had somehow moved outwards towards the woodwork by a hair's breadth and it was now just barely touching the wood. Not enough to make the arm stiffer but enough to affect the plate properly recentreing itself. Simple matter of undoing the nut, pushing the arm's base surround firmly against the metal plate by finger pressure and retightening. This degree of movement wouldn't be measurable without a micrometer but it was enough to resolve things and now the trem works fine.

My apologies for wandering off to another variation on the topic but if anyone else has experienced these problems I thought this latter episode might shed light on the subject.
Thanks again for everyone's help and I'm delighted to report the guitar now plays and sounds fine once more.

Kind regards,
Martyn

That's a very useful and interesting observation (apols for mis-spelling your name earlier)...

If I remember rightly, the original Marvins, the Legend, the 40th Anniversary Marvins (pre body redesign) all had a trem knife edge which is visible from the side of the plate i.e. you can see the V of the slot thus < and so the displacement you have discovered is possible.

On later versions it would appear that the knife edge is "captive" within the screwed down trem plate and thus it cannot move in this plane...

Could other owners take a look and confirm?

Hi David

My 40th Anniversary (pre-body mod) has the knife edge that does permit that sideways displacement of the plate

Roger

I spoke to Barry at Burns yesterday and he described how some of the earlier guitars, despite being shipped in sturdy boxes, could be dropped or rattled about in transit and the whole trem unit could be jolted to one side sufficient to upset its equalised location. Later modifications took place to prevent or substantially reduce this involuntary sideways movement. Would that be the design alteration you mention?
Cheers,
Martyn

PS No problems re my name's spelling - most folk get it wrong. Funnily enough this and Charlie Hall's site are the only two who always seem to get my last name correct, 'Welch' rather than the more usual 'Welsh' , now I wonder why that might be . . .