ES-5V Build

The ES-5V kits recently came back into stock, so I finally picked one up. Everything looks great so far, the main concern now, though, is the neck pocket. The pocket is extremely tight, it was a chore to get it into place even after letting it settle for a couple weeks.

With the neck pushed all the way down it looks too flat to fit the bridge in. After a test with some wire, the strings would sit about 6mm off the fretboard with the bridge in place, and all the way down. My guess is a shim is going to be required to get this neck to sit right, is that correct?

So far the plan is to stick with no routing other than a volume knob. I'm going to use this bridge I found on Amazon, and lay one of these piezo pickups under the saddle. The body is really nice looking, so I'd like to keep it as minimalist as possible

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Looks like shims will be needed.

I'm not sure the piezo element will work well with that bridge. The lead will exit the bridge where the thumbscrew sits. I don't know how deep the saddle rout is, but conventional wisdom says you'll need at least 50% of the plastic saddle (or bone if you replace it) in the rout, so with a piezo element in there, you may need to rout that a bit deeper as well.

I'm not sure how that works with the raised slot ends but most of the saddle vibration is along the length of the guitar, not up and down, due to string tension changes as the string vibrates, so it needs to be firmly held in the front to back position.

Have you thought about getting a piezo TOM bridge to fit on the base? That way the hard work is done for you. Won't be as cheap, but it's certainly achievable.

Simon, thank you for the very helpful answer. I was able to get the lead to not interfere with the thumbscrews, but it also required bending the lead in a way that makes me think it will fail sooner rather than later. I had considered the TOM piezo, I was just hoping to go for a more vintage look for the guitar, the TOM takes away from that a bit IMO.

Ultimately I think I'll have to go the TOM piezo route. With how much of a shim it would require to make this bridge work the neck will probably look very silly by the time it's all done. I'll keep playing with it and see how it ends up!

I'd make a flying lead for the pickup connection, with a 3.5mm jack socket on the end, so you don't have to solder the lead directly with the harness just out of the body, and can just plug it in. It will certainly make it easier in the future if you ever need to replace the bridge/piezo element.

Well, I'm embarrassed to admit that I made a big mistake on this build. Despite having measured (and a little assuming that my math was correct) and after adding a shim, the neck is glued in and still too low to provide good action. The strings would basically have to be attached to an acoustic style bridge to have any good clearance, since the bridge would be flush with the body.

All that disappointment being said, just curious if there are any ideas on how to correct the problem? I have tried steaming the neck out, but with no luck. The pocket is very tight, and I'm not sure it's actually getting to the glue joint. I was considering trying a heat gun, but most advice I've seen while researching says that's not a great solution.

Any advice is greatly appreciated, thank you all!

How high at the bridge? You might be able to modify bridges like I have. Another think to consider is how high will the tail piece be raised off the top. I’ve discreetly attached a little rubber under my tailpiece to stop it rattling against the top.

It's going to be hard to get a neck with that big a heel block and lots of glue contact with the sides and bottom out.

The luthier way to do it would probably be to take a couple of frets off towards the front and rear section of the heel join area, drill holes down at the bottom of the removes fret slots very near the sides of the neck, and then inject steam through a hypodermic needle tip into the holes, putting in moisture but more importantly, heat. Once you've prised the neck off, you can replace the frets.

You may be able to do it with heat alone, using a couple of hot air guns blowing at the guitar for quite some time. You need to allow time for the whole guitar to warm up. It probably won't do wonders for the finish.

If you have any visible cracks at join areas, you may be able to slide in some heated thin spatulas (I bought some painters spatulas in case I had to do this as they are very thin, but probably don't have enough heat capacity to work well unless heated up very hot). keep inserting and working at the glue a little at a time.


Otherwise you need to work with what you've got. Can you post a photo of the height under a straight edge run along the neck?

You may be able to use just the top of your Amazon bridge, so it's sitting directly on the top. Once you've located it correctly, you could pin it and drill a hole for the piezo cable.

If you've got a bit more height than just enough, you might be able to drill holes for the bridge posts directly into the top, and fit the top part of the bridge on that (a bit like a Gibson ABR-1 TOM on a LP). I'd suggest gluing the posts in once you've worked out the correct height for them, as the bridge block wood will be very soft.