No clever solution, buts brute force and filing the base of the bridge at the ends by a couple of mm so the bridge is just sitting on the top of the body and using my nut files to file slots in the saddles.
I've been thinking about it and it would be very hard to have modified the neck to have a greater angle with the neck heel being such a big beast and with the various cut-aways/insets at the front and the top. The whole way the top and the neck interact is wrong.
You can see that the neck is simply not angled enough for the height the bridge is at - and that's with the bridge having been made to sit lower. That's a Tone Pros bridge, but the kit bridge is no lower. The kit is basically not made well.
I had the same height pickup surround at the bridge as at the neck, and it was angled the other way as well, so I fitted a thinner ring and angled it as shown so that the tops of the rings are roughly parallel and almost the same height. The pickguard will sit on top of those on the treble side (in true 175-style), so they need to be fairly level for that to work. Maybe 1mm difference now but small enough for it to work.
I've just fitted another nut as I cut the slots in the last one before I finished adjusting the truss rod, and a couple of strings ended up buzzing slightly on the first fret. So the new one has been glued in place and is drying before the slots are cut tomorrow. This nut is also centred properly, the other was very slightly offset. The action will come down from that in the photo as a result, but it will never be as good on the higher frets as on my other guitars. I may also need to do another fret level on the lower frets as there's at least one that's slightly high on the treble side.
You can also see a bit of sand-through in the finish that will need some touching up, along with some other areas of sand-through. But it is what it is, and despite being finished last, it was the first of my kits, so I think I'm allowed some latitude.
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Originally Posted by Simon Barden
