Scale measurement

[Jeannot65]

Hi !

I'm close (hopefully) to finishing my first build (EX-1) however, if most of it went rather smoothly, I'm quite unsure on how to set the scale before gluing the neck. Here's the problem :
- When I measure between the inside of the Nut to the 12th fret (middle of the crown), I get 313.5 mm
- When I measure between the 12th fret and the front of the saddle of the E string (high one - the shortest distance) , I end up with 314.5 mm --> I would tend to think that 0.5 mm is no biggie but to get that result, I did screw the saddle as far forward as possible.

I compared this with one of my guitars, an Epiphone dot studio and the distance between the nut and the 12th fret (same as on the EX-1 neck by the way) is exactly the same as between the 12th fret and the saddle of the high E string (see picture, it explains better the whole situation I think). The difference is that the saddle is about mid-range... about 2 mm or so from shortest position (most forward).
Both Epiphone and the EX-1 sharing the same gibson DNA and following some research, I guess that they both should have a scale length of 24.75" or 628.65 mm --> different from my epiphone but if I'd bring the saddle forward, looks like it might be spot on

So if I want the middle of the scale to be in the middle of the 12th fret on my EX-1, my bridge is too far. So I would need to "shorten" the neck by 1 mm or 2. I could achieve that by gentle sanding and all would be good, however, at the same time I cannot bring the neck any closer to the body because it is right up against the neck pick up (see picture as well).

Quite the pickle... My hope is that all is OK and I worry for nothing but if anyone could confirm or not and explain to me how to get out of it, that would be great so I can get on to gluing the neck !

Many thanks in advance !

Cheers,

Jeannot

[Andy40]

You are going to need to close the gap or you'll never intonate it properly. I've not built an EX stlye kit but, if it were me, I would change/modify the routing for the neck pup so the neck can slide closer to the bridge rather than doing any neck heel modification.

Wazkelly has built one of these maybe send him a PM

[wazkelly]

You are going to need to close the gap or you'll never intonate it properly. I've not built an EX stlye kit but, if it were me, I would change/modify the routing for the neck pup so the neck can slide closer to the bridge rather than doing any neck heel modification.

Wazkelly has built one of these maybe send him a PM

Need to get the scale length correct and then worry about neck PUP location. A badly intonated guitar will probably just end up as a nice decoration rather than the axe it was meant to be.

Have read a few build threads since doing mine a few years ago and tend to think there might be some QC issues at the factory in relation to placement of the neck PUP rout causing things to get very cramped.