Action adjustment needed. Do a neck reset, or??????

[Kevin Sjostrand]

I wanted to share with you all what I did this past week to the Macauaba Cutaway drednaught that I finished and delivered last May. I built this guitar at around 50% humidity and set the action up at what we would call "medium", at 2.5mm clearance at the 12th fret. This guitar will be going to north east India next month where the humidity can be very high, but not as bad as in some areas, but has been in the Bay Area of California for the last 4 months. Stephen has kept the guitar cased at 55 to 60% humidity.
The action had risen 2.0mm, and this occured at the bridge location as the top moved up, and the fretboard was a little more bowed then when I set it up.
This is a bolt on neck, with the fretboard extension glued down.
The bridge thickness was 3/8", pretty thick, and the 1/8" wide saddle sits in its slot cut 1/8" off the bottom of the bridge.
Here is what I did to correct the action.
I recut the nut slots to finese the clearance under the strings at the first fret. They were a little high, the are now at .015"
Then I adjusted the trussrod and flattened out the fretboard with the string tension off. Then I put a straight edge on the fretboard out over the top up to the front of the bridge to see how much off we were. The bridge surface was about 1/8" high. So I used a sanding block with 80 grit paper and took the top of the bridge down so that the straight edge once again just cleared the top of the bridge. Sanded down to 220 grit, then duck oiled it. I then made a new saddle and fit it. Rechecked with a straight edge, and marked the saddle when we had 2.5mm clearance at the 12th fret under the low E, and 2.0mm clearance under the high E strings. Ground and shaped the top of the saddle a little high, and put on the two E strings, tuned them up and again checked the clearances, taking alittle off the bottom of the saddle until the action was where I wanted it. I then had to re-counter sink the bridge pin holes and re-ream them.
The result was a saddle that still has about 1/8" showing above the bridge, with 1/8" in the slot, and a great action once again on the guitar, without messing with the neck to body fit.
This worked because I started out with a pretty thick saddle to begin with so I could reduce the height.
If the action rises again once the guitar is in India, then a neck reset will have to be done, but for now, all is well, and it looks no different then before.

Kevin

[darren]

Nice job - are you saying the action rose 2mm at the 12th or at the bridge? Do you think the top was just settling in under string tension?

[Kevin Sjostrand]

2mm at the 12th fret. So I had to come down twice that at the bridge, and I didn't have that much saddle to come down.
I think it may have been humidity and string pull...
I am hoping it doesn't move more!

Kevin

[darren]

That is an awful lot - I hope it's done moving on you.

[Kevin Sjostrand]

Actually that is just about 1/8" which doesn't seem like alot to me, but I was surprised that it had moved this much.

Kevin