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A customer brought in a 15 year old Breedlove for a LR Baggs Anthem installation that has a factory installed JLD.The issue is that the action is extremely low.A straight edge on the frets un strung clears the bridge by 3/16 th. The saddle is sticking out of the bridge a good 1/4 " with only an 1/8" in the slot.
12Th fret action is .055.What!!!! The JLD rod is turned with virtually no real tension .Just enough so it won`t wobble around.Has anyone released all the tension on the jld rod .If so will it improve the action that much and what are the effects over time.I`m thinking Breedlove intentionally over set the necks to compensate for using the JLD. Any Help?
James

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James W Bolan
Nashville Tennessee

do it what have you got to loose?

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

I`m thinking that a loose rod may rattle? I can loosen it and find out. If it were my guitar I`d take the rod out completely and let the bridge do what it wants to.The only thing I have to lose is an unhappy customer.

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James W Bolan
Nashville Tennessee

Hey James - good to see you here!

Is it by chance an Atlas series Breedlove? They had a rough start with a lot of QC issues early on with these, both with neck angles and wood moisture control during construction. I saw a whole lot of them get sent back as defective for the opposite reason (built bone dry, and tops would swell up like a balloon in 50% humidity).

I don't know if your winter there has been as tough as ours here in Michigan, but my first question would be "has it always been this way, or did the action drop significantly this winter?" We're seeing an unusually high rate of cases like this simply because the tops have dried out so significantly, rather than the neck being overset in the original build.

That said, Breedloves traditionally do seem to come with a higher neck angle, because that bridge strut system can allow for it by redistributing the load to the tail block and rims. Unfortunately adjusting the rod inside is unlikely to help much with this, and loosening it could put the soundboard at risk with that high of a saddle. I may start with trying to rehumidify it and see where that leaves your neck line relative to the bridge.

Whether this helps or not, the depth of the slot leaves little room for a stable transducer install. Wish you were closer (not sure if you're planning on coming through michigan in the near future), as we could toss it up on the bench and deepen the saddle slot for a bit more stability in a few minutes. With that little depth in the slot and that much saddle above bridge, you may not have room for any saddle transducer. Then with the Bridge Doctor support, I have no idea or experience in how this may affect the response of the Lyric mic inside either. If you can't get the top to come back up with humidity and/or deepen the saddle slot, this may be a guitar better suited to something like an M1a or M80 sound hole pickup.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

This has been a rough winter.But the owner says the action has always been that low.Actually the saddle sticks up about a 1/4 with the transducer installed.The transducer is about a 1/32 thick.So the saddle alone would be buried 5/32 into the bridge.I didn`t explain that well in the first post.On the plus side ,the owner loves the extremely low action so I guess I`m good.It`s great to hear from you also.Thank You for your knowledge.Your presence on the forum is extremely beneficial.say howdy to Hesh for me.

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James W Bolan
Nashville Tennessee

A customer brought me a Breedlove that had recently gone in for a factory neck reset. They had set it with a similarly 1/4" high saddle, and my client was breaking several strings every set he played. Thinking the factory had overdone the neck reset, I made a wedge shaped shim to set between the body and the heel to bring things a little lower. I set it up with a 1/8" high saddle and things were a bit more normal.

In my experience, Breedlove always have had tall saddles and overset necks. But I haven't had a problem with their action. The bridge doctor is adjusted so that it makes contact and the system is under tension, but not so much that if you reach inside the box, you can still spin the dowel with a little effort. Don't loosen the Bridge Doctor as that won't do anything for you.

My personal feeling is that it needs a neck reset to put it in the proper playing position. The trick here is that giving it less set moves the saddle back, hence the previous post about using a wedge. No great solution here.

Given how dry things have been, I'd let it acclimate to a normal RH for several weeks and reassess, then make a decision.