Official Luthiers Forum!

Hello everybody. I'm a newbie here, and a new guitar maker too. I just completed my first one. When I strung it up and tried to adjust the string height, I nearly maxed out the height adjustment screws on the bridge. (This is a non-tremolo, strings-through-the-body type of bridge.) With the screws so high it's a bit hard to adjust the intonation. Basically I think my neck (glued in) sits too high for the bridge.

So I was considering making a thin block (say 1/8") for the bridge to sit on, raising the level of the entire bridge. Has anybody else tried such a thing? Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Is it a bolt neck?

Shim the outside edge to make the neck angle shallow, that way you can lower the saddle height screws and still be able to get the pickups to the right height.

You may have trouble keeping the pickups close to the strings otherwise, especially if they are single coils.

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Actually it's a glued-in neck, so it's a bit too late for shims.

The pickups are an issue too. I've got two humbuckers, which are now sticking way out from the pickup rings so that they can be close enough to the strings. It works, but it's a bit ugly.

Just a thought: You could add a new top to the body to increase the overall height.
It would depend on how far the fretboard is from the existing body top.
I had this problem on a Tele kit I was building. I glued on a 1/8" thck maple top, drilled holes over the existing pickup cavities, and used a pattern bit to cut the top by following the existing cavity edges.

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Should work fine.