Acoustic guitar action

[James]

Hi. I'm curious to know what neck relief acoustic guitar tappers here have

I have been trying out altered tunings and leaving my guitar tuned like that for reasonably long periods. When I want to revert back to standard tuning and tighten the strings, I have found that possibly there is more relief in the neck than there was when I first got the guitar. However, I don't have evidence of this and this may also be that I've got used to slacker strings

For 'general' playing I'm finding barre chords difficult. I wouldn't be able to get much of a sound out of a slapped harmonic at the 12th fret in standard tuning. To the nearest milimetre, the action at the 12th fret is 4mm on the bass side and 3mm on the treble side

What do the more experienced instrument setter uppers suggest? Should I make any adjustments to have it lowered or should I just strengthen up my left hand

[Edit: Yes, I can get a slapped harmonic if I whack it hard enough, but it has little musical use when it's in that tuning :))

[Daniel Schell]

Acoustic tapping has of course always be a major concern of the tappers.
1 the energy of tapping a string on the neck produces more pitchless "tap" sound > than a true pitch sound produced by the 'plucking' sound. That is and was always the main problem to amplifiying a sound from the tapboard.
2 tapping became only available to tappers with the advent of electric guitars/amlipfiers. That is around the end of the 1940's begin of the 50's. You can of cousre tap on a classical unamplified guitar by tapping hard for percussional type of compositions.

Best

Daniel