My first build, an EX7 string, action wayyyyy too high! Please advise.

Hello,

I'm desperately hoping somebody can give me some advice on this build my son and I are doing. We got all of the electronics done yesterday and he put the 1st string on today and our action is WAYYY to high, and we have the saddle as low as we can possibly go. We seriously have 6mm of string height over the frets where the body and the neck come together.

So, in this picture we can see that the saddles are set to their lowest position, but the gap between the strings and the frets is crazy.
https://i.imgur.com/3ZK917f.jpg

I tried pulling out the screw height adjusters on the saddle to drop it as low as possible and we still have 4mm of action above the frets. You can see in this picture the adjusters are gone and I just have screwdrivers holding the saddle in place.
https://i.imgur.com/v1rjXqH.jpg.


When I put my neck in and glued it, we did have a small gap as shown in this picture, and I'm sure if we can steam the neck apart and reset it, we can drop the headstock a few mm, but I'm not sure if we are gonna come up with 5mm
https://i.imgur.com/m2iy7ej.jpg

My 14 year old is gutted....and feels that we have nothing more than a pile of firewood at this point. But we have 2 months into this build and I don't want to give up yet.....but I don't know why it seems our neck is just way too low.

I'm kinda wondering if I had the same problem being discussed in this thread that the surface on the neck was not level. When I clamped down, I got the glue squirting out up inside of the body cavity, so I am pretty sure it was touching there, but there was gap at the back here that was just not going away.

https://www.buildyourownguitar.com.a...hlight=%28glue

From what I can see (I’m no expert) the neck level looks ok from looking at other explorers online .
Is it the stock bridge? Maybe a different bridge would help? It’s strange it’s so high. How high is the nut and is the truss rod set properly?

Yep, that would seem to be a similar issue. The steaming out an resetting may be your only option (love the white finish btw, that looks great!)

If you get it apart successfully, the two things I would check would be the flatness of the neck heel and the flatness of the floor of the neck pocket. One or the other is a common suspect in these instances.

You will find that a minor adjustment to the neck break angle will have a surprising effect on the action, it might be enough just to flatten the neck heel, or, you may need to add a wedge shim after flattening the heel to get the right sort of angle.

I hope this works out, with what you’ve done already it would be a shame not to see a good result from your labour. Sing out if you need some more help and post up photos of what you find once the neck is off. Best of luck with it!

I agree with Frankie that the only real solution is going to be a neck reset. Hopefully you can successfully steam it apart.
If you used Titebond Wood Glue, it should be doable, but if you use a PVA it may still be workable but harder to break the bond.

That gap you have there (whilst is should not be there) may turn out to be a blessing in this case.
Once you get the neck removed, I suggest you read through these two recent build diaries that have required shimming to fix the exact issue you're experiencing with yours.

This first LINK is a excellent post by Simon Barden that details making a shim.

These other two links are for the builders' diaries beginning from their post #1. You can work through each to find the relevant discussions about neck break angle etc.

mrpearson - First Build - PSH-1

vivek_rc - PSH-1 Build

Not sure that style of shim is appropriate here as the bottom of the neck heel isn't straight. This is the real cause of the problem and is a Pit Bull issue. Please email them and complain (they rarely seem to read these forums so the only way they knopw about issues is by email).

The heel may be curved, or the extended tenon end could be at a different angle to the main heel bottom. Both are going to cause issues. It looks like the tenon end was clamped rather than the neck itself, which has made the angle worse. Had the neck end been clamped so there was no visible gap at the heel, then the neck angle may have been OK (though you wouldn't have had the tenon providing more glue area.

You really need to steam it apart (some people have done this by holding the joint over a pan of boiling water) and then see what's happening on the bottom of the neck before deciding on any further action.

The only significantly lower bridge (by about 4mm) I know of in a Tune-O-Matic style is the Goldo Lowrider, but that only comes in a 6-string format.

Thanks all for the feedback. Simon, I'll see about getting an email off to Pitbull on this issue. I had multiple clamps, but when I got the front of block finally down by the pickup, it was already starting to setup and logic told me that I couldn't have it clamped flat inside the cavity and also clamped flat where it exits the body as the wood didn't have a curve or bend in it. It was one of the other. So I just stuck with that front clamp.

I'm hoping that my gap, is a helper to me steaming the neck apart. I was thinking of getting the Stewmac neck joint steamer needle which i can hopefully put into the gap to get the steam where i need it and minimize any finish damage from wood swelling where he paint is. I'm able to get a putty knife into the gap and it goes in a good 30mm or so before it hits any glue on the joint. So, maybe able to use a syringe to get some water down in there and potentially a hair drier can blow warm air into that gap and help loosen the glue.

I can also take out the pickup, and probably drill a small hole at an angle towards the side of the heel to help get the steam to the side of the pockets where the wood is very very thin on the body of the guitar to work that joint loose.

Speaking of a lower bridge, is there a chance that I could take the saddle itself, and give it to a friend at a metal shop and have that ground down on the bottom to remove 3-4mm of bottom material, so they become more or a low rider?

Not sure if this is a better or worse idea than trying to steam off the neck and somehow rectifying that neck angle.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Barry snook

From what I can see (I’m no expert) the neck level looks ok from looking at other explorers online .
Is it the stock bridge? Maybe a different bridge would help? It’s strange it’s so high. How high is the nut and is the truss rod set properly?

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Barry, thanks for taking the time to look and providing some feedback.

This is the stock bridge that we are using.

The items we changed on the kit are as follows
1). We put on Tone Ninja 7 string locking tuners
2). We replaced the pickups with Dimarzio Dreamcatcher and Rainmaker 7 string pickups and put on pickup covers
3). We replaced the volume and the tone knobs.

Here is what the nut looks like. It's the factory nut that came on the guitar. It has not be remounted or replaced.
https://i.imgur.com/4rMezYB.jpg

I have not yet bothered to set or adjust the truss rod. We saw that first string and were like, OMG....this is a huge problem. I know how to adjust the truss rod, but it's not going to be enough to overcome the overall bad neck angle.

Here is shot all of the way down the string from head to saddle and you can see the gap decreases evenly from bridge to headstock indicating to me that the angle itself is off.

https://i.imgur.com/3MbxIV0.jpg?1

Hard to tell from the picture but nut height looks high. What is the measurement from bottom of string to top of fretboard and distance above first fret.
Have you put a straight edge on the frets to see if there is bow or is it fairly straight?
Incremental changes to nut height and neck relief might not completely fix the issue but will provide the base for understanding the actual measurement requirements if you require bridge modification and can go a long way to partially correcting the issue your currently facing. There are a couple of good guides floating around the web on nut and string heights

Quote:

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Originally Posted by vh2580

Hard to tell from the picture but nut height looks high. What is the measurement from bottom of string to top of fretboard and distance above first fret.
Have you put a straight edge on the frets to see if there is bow or is it fairly straight?
Incremental changes to nut height and neck relief might not completely fix the issue but will provide the base for understanding the actual measurement requirements if you require bridge modification and can go a long way to partially correcting the issue your currently facing. There are a couple of good guides floating around the web on nut and string heights

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Here is a picture of the height of the nut
https://i.imgur.com/CMNPGfz.jpg

The neck is pretty stright using a straight edge Had to run a big diagonal and it's not touching the nut.
https://i.imgur.com/5episkI.jpg

The measurement from the bottom of the string to the top of the fretboard is about 3mm
https://i.imgur.com/2qwjKlD.jpg?1

The measurement from the top of the fret to the bottom of the string is about 1.5mm
https://i.imgur.com/fYSTUIs.jpg?1

The nut is high but even with that at it’s right height I don’t think it will fix it, the only way is to remove the neck and fix the angle as mentioned before. Amazing work on the finish! Gutted that this has happened

So, spent about 2 hours today with steam from the instant pot trying to break the glue joint. I have some creaking and some neck and body flex going on, but thus far haven't been able to break the hold.

Going to get the stew mac steam needle so that I can better direct the steam where I need it to go. And now that I have the pickups out and access to the cavity, I think I will drill some small holes on each side of the neck heel on the sides to get steam as close as possible to the glue joint from the inside.

And we have separation and broke nothing. Whew.

What worked, put an iron on the back with a rag between it and the guiltar body. Let it sit there for about 40 minutes which heated up the wood and the glue. From there, was able to slide my putty knife down into the gap all the way to the end. Worked around in the gummy glue for awhile, and pushed, pulled, popped, pushed some more, few expletives, quick prayer, push again and it popped out.



https://i.imgur.com/zt7dR1r.jpg


After doing another test fix, I can confirm that my piece looked like the one in this picture. If I glue and clamp it on the other end (nearest the fretboard and shim the cavity part, I have good string action.
https://i.imgur.com/zucyNvT.png

Great outcome!
I had meant to mention the clothes iron before and promptly forgot.

I had a customer bring in a kit build with a neck he had glued in crooked! He glued it with PVA, but I said I'd have a go... no guarantees...
It was the iron and towel trick that worked for me too. Except it took about 12 hours!

The irony (pardon the pun :p) was that the kit was a BOLT ON neck! He glued it AND screwed it because "that's what I thought you were supposed to do". Yikes!

Your son should be very happy now! Good on ya!

Wooohoo nice one!!

I'd suggest gluing a piece of maple veneer to the bottom of the end of the tenon and then sanding it so the whole bottom is flat. You'll get a stronger joint and there should be no risk of the neck angle going wrong during the gluing process.

Good save man! Well on the way to rectification

Okay, reset the neck today. Took Simon's suggestion and put some wood veneer onto the neck joint where it was coming up short so I could get it clamped on both ends nice and tight. Had glue squirt out on both ends and we have no gap. We had a string on it so we could measure action on each end. About 1.2 mm now instead of 5 or 6. I'm sure I have some truss rod adjustments to make.

I appreciate all the help and support from the board. Per pitbull support suggestion, going to leave it clamped for at least 48 hours so will know more Monday or Tuesday.