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I have a Breedlove in for some set up work. There's enough strange things in this instrument here to make me stop and wonder and ask for some perspective.

There's .022" relief, the b string nut slot is a tad low, but the rest of the strings are okay heights (using the hold the string down at the 3rd fret and tap method.) The action at the 12th fret is 4/64" on the low E, and 3/64" on the high E. So there's too much relief, but everything else is pretty low. The customer says the guitar feels kind of hard to play, I think that's probably the relief that he's feeling. However when I bring the relief down to .010" (still too much) the guitar becomes completely unplayable except for the lightest touch. At this point, I'd usually set the relief and go ahead and raise the action at the nut and bridge, however the neck angle seems screwy, there is almost 3/16" of saddle protruding at the low E, the slot is .204" deep with an UST. When I hold a straight edge on the fret board it clears the bridge by about 3/32" that seems awfully overset. If I increase the action with a higher saddle I feel like it may be sticking too far out of the slot.

I feel like the geometry is what it is regardless of any design quirks, but there's that huge breedlove brace inside the guitar, and I wasn't sure if that would affect set up or neck angle in any unforseen ways.

Thoughts?

I had one in the shop a few years ago that had just recently been reset at the factory and they overset it by a large amount. I ended up making a wedge shaped shim to fit between the heel and the body to remove some of the neck set. The shim was about 1/8" thick at the heel and tapered to nothing under the fretboard. The wedge was shaped to match the contour of the heel. It looked a bit funny but it functioned fine.

By the way, many of these came from the factory with a Bridge Doctor installed.

I've worked on a couple of them. None seemed as wacky as what you're describing. As for that bridge doctor thing.... I've had requests to remove them. Too much mass damping the top. I don't think it affect your angles at all.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Okay, so there's actually 5/32" of saddle in the slot sitting on top of the UST, with 3/16" exposed at the highest point. Will adding 1/32" or 3/64" of height with a new saddle be too high? That would give me 7/32" to almost 1/4" exposed saddle. I just don't have the experience to tell me what is too high.

It's too high if it falls out under string tension or tips over....

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Or cracks the bridge?

As a small aside, this guitar has a pinless bridge. Is there less torque on the saddle since the strings aren't coming up out of the top?

Here is what Frank Fords says about the bridge doctor in Breedloves



That big thing hanging down is bolted to the bridge, and has a rod that just pushes lightly against the endblock. This unique arrangement completely eliminates the tendency of the bridge to "roll" forward under the string tension. This extra support is how Breedlove can get away with the radical scalloping of the main top braces without structural difficulties.

I do not recommend removing the Bridge Doctor. The top bracing is designed to be very light and have the Bridge Doc carry the load, so to speak. The top may not be very stable without it.

The pin-less bridge has the same torque. I think 1/4" of saddle is too much. That is what the guitar that I worked on had. It had such a sharp break angle that the player was breaking strings at least once a set. Removing some of the neck set and lowering the saddle to about 3/16" solved the problem (along with a suggestion to not strum the guitar with such a heavy hand).

It's a possibility.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Yeah, the neck is over set. But what are you going to do you reset the neck? some customers want to spare no expense, but I just say make the saddle a little higher and make the customer aware of what's going on and the possible risks.

You could also suggest they get rid of that pickup and go with something different to have more saddle in the slot.

Pat

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Pat

This doesn't address the neck angle or saddle height, but the comment that you not strum heavily is consistent with an article a few days ago that said Breedlove left Taylor to specifically make responsive finger style guitars, and that he intended to depart from traditional design. I am not smart enough to understand the full implications of this setup / design, but I read (maybe at frets.com) that more saddle showing will give greater string clarity and separation vs. less saddle showing with give more overtones. So, if they are making a finger picker more saddle showing makes sense... until it falls out or breaks the bridge . The comment above about getting all kinds of noise with anything but the lightest touch when the action was lowered reminded me of this. The odd geometry aside I wonder if light touch is just an attribute of the design. The Breedlove article was old, but it did say they they were departing from convention. So, maybe this is by design, or maybe it was made on a Monday.


I did overshoot the angle on parlor I reset a while back. I made a little taller bridge, with a deeper slot and put in an extra tall saddle, it looked crazy, but it sounded really good for playing f/s

Regards, GS

Breedloves can have higher saddles and the necks are intentionally overset to accommodate and require a higher saddle and it all is supposed to work in concert with that horrible bridge doctor thing.

Interestingly they seem to need the higher saddle to be somewhat... responsive but if you remove the bridge doctor without addressing the neck angle so that a normal height saddle can be installed it will rip the bridge off in short order from all the torque on the high saddle and no bridge doctor to help counter it.

It's a failed design (in my opinion and experience) and all you can do is return it to Breedlove specs and try not to get any on ya. It's not unusual for these to have 1/4" of saddle proud of the bridge....

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Ann Arbor Guitars

You might be able to adjust a bit more rotation into the bridge with the Bridge Doctor, that way you might be able to remove some saddle height.

That's what I thought, too. Why build a guitar that you know might have problems and install hardware to prevent it? Seems counterintuitive to me.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

A long time ago I put a bridge doctor in a guitar that was developing a bit of a belly. I took it back out. However I agree that since it is intended to be part of Breedlove's structural design I sure wouldn't remove it from this guitar. Do what it takes to make the geometry correct.

Thanks everyone. This is what I was looking for, there is enough different going on in this guitar I just wasn't sure what was intended in the design, and what might result because of the design.

Its funny how the guitar world is, (and probably most other fields too), there are those people who are absolute traditionalists, and then there are those people who love innovation. I guess it really does take all kinds. Personally I reside in the camp that thinks there isn't a better guitar than a telecaster, or an old Martin for that matter, only different. Having said that I can appreciate the small incremental innovations that have occurred to address some of the initial quirks found in the different designs, but a lot of the innovation does seem to be only for its own sake.

Do you think a bridge doctor is something that needs regular attention? Will the tension back off over time?

Yes, I put one in a guitar I built once (to compensate for its under-braced top) and found that with changes in humidity I needed to adjust the tension a bit (quarter turn, maybe) to keep steady pressure and get the best result. If it is too tight you kill the responsiveness of the top and the sound is dead. If it is too loose the thing doesn't do its job, and also it can vibrate in unpredictable ways in response to certain note frequencies and cause wolf notes. I didn't like the thing and eventually re-topped that guitar. The BD sits in a drawer now (I never throw anything away).