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I am having a problem with high action on a couple of my hand made guitars....It seems after a year or so, the string action has gotten too high....When I put a straight edge (tension on the strings) on the fingerboard ,the end of the straight edge hits the bridge about halfway between the top of the bridge and the bottom of the bridge....With the strings off, the straightedge end will just touch the top of the bridge.I plan on doing a neck reset..This seems like a lot of movement to me...Any thoughts on this?......Larry

Larry, have you determined whether the neck is bowing or whether the whole neck is rotating? Is your fretboard flat still?

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

Steve the neck is straight to the 14 fret, after that the fingerboard extension starts to rise a little....

Are you keeping the humidity in your house in a reasonable range?

Barry....The humidity is a little high (60% right now)....I keep it in a case..The thing that concerns me most is the difference with the string on and the strings off, should there be so much of a difference in the alignment?

if you scallop the braces too close to the joint you can soften the top in an area that you don't want to do that to. You can make a fix with a plate change maybe . Do you have a picture of the top braces ? I don't like to scallop the X braces past the forward line of the bridge pins .

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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

John...I was kind of hoping I wouldn't get an answer like this ...I went through my pics and strangely enough I can't find a pic of my guitar X bracing...However I have one from an Irish Bouzouki that I made and the X bracing should be close to the one that I have in the OM..

well I dont see any transverse brace, or anything to stop the neck from rotating forward, on that top, what guage strings are you using ? Jody

Larry: From your discription of the problem I'd say you have a little settling in of the box with a bit of distortion,maybe a bit of flating of the back and slight rotation of the neck block.Does not take much to change things.If things have stayed this way for a while it sounds like a bit of a neck set should put you close to original again.
Tom

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Larry : Reread your post and noticed you said strings on to strings off you have a half bridge difference. Assuming a bridge of .375 that would be .187 change. This seems too much to me.I stand by my original post re: a bit of rotation of the heel block but think your troubles go beyond that, John Hall may have been closer to the real problem than I.
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

I may have caused some confusion when I posted the Bouzouki top has an example of how I scallop my X bracing...The top on the guitar is .115. The X bracing is 1/4 X 1/2"....I start scalloping around 1" from the intersection as shown in the pic....The neck relief is .003..The UTB area is flat. Around the bridge looks to be bellied nicely ( not distorted)...This is an OM and has very nice sound...It has been used in a recording studio with very nice results....But the action has gone to high...There is high humidity now but I fear the real problem is the bracing, as John as indicated...If people in here agree with this then I will simply replace the top...Do most of you scallop the X bracing and if so where you start to scallop ...John Hall say he doesn't like to scallop past the forward line of the bridge pins.....Larry