What's the difference between electric and acoustic setups?
Same underlying goals — comfortable action, accurate intonation, a neck that isn't fighting the strings — but the actual mechanics and priorities shift enough between the two that treating them identically is a mistake.
Structural differences that drive the setup
Acoustic guitars rely on string energy to drive an unamplified soundboard, which means action height has a bigger direct impact on tone and volume, not just playability — go too low and you lose acoustic output along with introducing buzz. Electric guitars get their volume from pickups and amplification, so action can generally be set lower for comfort and speed without sacrificing volume, since the pickup doesn't care how loud the string is acoustically.
Bridge and saddle adjustability
Most electrics have individually adjustable saddles (height and intonation, per string, often just with a screwdriver), making fine adjustment fast and precise. Most acoustics have a single fixed saddle piece, meaning action adjustments often require actually shaping or shimming the saddle itself — a more involved process than turning a screw.
Neck relief targets
Acoustic necks, dealing with generally heavier string tension and different bracing behavior underneath, often want slightly different relief targets than electrics, and the "correct" amount varies more by individual guitar and player preference than a single universal number.
Pickup and electronics considerations (electric only, obviously)
Pickup height relative to the strings affects output and tone balance between pickups, and it's a setup consideration that simply doesn't exist on a non-amplified acoustic.
Why this matters to you
If someone's giving you generic "setup" advice without asking whether you're talking about an acoustic or an electric, take it with a grain of salt — the specifics genuinely diverge past the basic shared goals, and a setup dialed in with acoustic assumptions on an electric (or vice versa) will leave real performance on the table.