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Hello experts and enthusiasts, I need some help. For some quick background/context, this is my second attempt already to construct this guitar. Its an SG that I’m building, which represents the first set neck/ angled neck guitar I’ve built.

On the first iteration I got the neck angle all wrong and the action just took off at the 5th fret. Begrudgingly, I began deconstructing the guitar to try again. I ended up having to plane the body from the back in order to get to the glue joint on the neck which left me with a “top” from my original.

I re-made a new neck and a new body blank. I glued on the old “top” and bound the whole body. I think it came out pretty nice all things considered.

Now to the problem…. The action is still waaaay off from the 7th fret and up. I know I have about a 4 degree break angle in the neck but I think I didn’t put enough “meat” on the heal of the neck which means the whole thing just sits too low.

The bridge and tail piece are at their lowest setting too.

The only thing I can think of, outside of starting over again, is to sand down the pickup covers and mount the pickups flush to the guitar top. Then maybe put in a hard tail bridge?

Any other ideas?





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Okay - I need some dimensions from you. How thick is the guitar body? How high is the action at the 22nd fret?

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Before Chris and I start getting in each others way, I'll ask a couple of questions. Where does the fret plane hit the bridge when its at its very lowest adjustment? My goal, regardless of anything else about the body is that it just touches the tops of the saddle(s). With most guitars that allows you to raise the bridge about 1/8 of an inch and get acceptable action at the 12th fret (which is where I measure all of my guitars). Think about it, if you want action of 60 or 70 thousands at the 12th fret you need to raise the bridge twice that, which is very doable with a ToM and gives you lots of adjustment in the future.

Second, while I am not an expert on SG's I do know that Gibson changed neck geometry over the years. I have a picture of an old SG with lots of overstand and no neck angle, I have plans that shows 2 degrees of neck angle and very small amount of overstand. Either will work to achieve the criteria above - fret plane just touching the tops of the saddle - but you have to build it into the guitar as you are setting the neck. Most SG's are flat on top but have the bevel running around the edge of the body. Your pictures seem to show an arching of the body, at least the upper bout which might mean that you need more angle that the 2 degrees shown in my plans. LP's have between 3-1/2 and 4 degrees of neck angle but they have a significant arch.

edit - if you are getting conflicting advice I'll bow out and let you go with one person. Chris knows his stuff, we might approach things slightly differently. I don't want to confuse you.

ps - nice looking guitar

I will add one comment however. Melvyn Hiscock has several pictures of SG neck geometry and uses that as one of his examples of how do design yours. Looking at that might help you understand the direction to go.

I'll also say that every time I build a set neck guitar I spend a lot of time working the neck geometry with a dummy bridge that emulates the one I will be using. I want that completely dialed before the neck becomes a permanent part of the body.

The neck is over set and no amount of jumping though your sphincter is going to make it workable.

The solution is remove the neck and do what it takes to have a neck that fits well and is attached at a proper neck angle. There is no way to trick it or set it up around what you have now sadly.

Neck angle is perhaps the single most critical building aspect to constructing a guitar it has to be correct or near correct, period.

Alternatively you could remove the neck maybe and shim it but on a new instrument this is not what I would do, I would build it correctly no matter how many tries or how much time it sucked.

Sorry Matt if I sound negative, I'm a professional repair man in a busy Ann Arbor shop who deals with poor neck angles on a daily basis. This needs to be redone my friend.

Hesh cracks me up.

This one is your learning curve, strip it for parts and move on. I myself would beat it with a large hammer, chop it up on the bandsaw and then burn it. Yes, I have done that more than once, it can be quite satisfying.

Steve

Use it to harness my rage for not checking at like literally 30 different steps prior to now…. Lol


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Not negative, just honest. I appreciate it, thanks


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Wow, that is a gorgeous guitar!
I hope you get the neck sorted.
I agree, it looks like the body has been arched down towards the neck and the neck is sitting too low.

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

Hey buddy - hope you are doing great. We call a hammer a g*bson tool

Now that's the spirit you will be fine and let me know if I can ever help you too.

It is a beautiful guitar and I should have said that too. It just needs the neck angle redone and when she sings for the first time this will all be long forgotten.

If it was my guitar I would look at two possibilities. First, I would pull the guts out of it and try steaming the neck off. Its going to be invasive and there probably will be some finish damage but that can be fixed. If you can get it off then set it correctly and move forward.

The other possibility is to sink the studs for the ToM into the top and thus lower the saddles to match the string plane. I would start by, once again, removing all the electronics and laying a straight edge on the frets, see where the end is relative to the top of the saddles (at their lowest adjustment). That looks like a Nashville or Modern bridge, the ridge on the studs might be 30 or so thou which you might gain by counter sinking it flush with the top. You might also be able to grind a little material off of the underside of the bridge itself where it sits on the knurled adjusters to gain a little more.

And while my rule of thumb about the fret plane and tops of saddles will work every time you might be able to fudge a bit there and gain a little. In either case you probably will have some finish clean up work and probably lower the pickup rings, get the geometry right first.

Good luck, report back

ps - here is a guitar with a ToM that I'm setting the neck. The little shim under the bridge emulates the bushings and adjusters, the straight edge is laying on the frets.

I agree with suggestion number one but looking at his pics at the 12th the action is around 1/4" too high, that's a lot. And we know that what we have to do to the bridge stud wise is double the action discrepancy at the 12th. That means that attempting to work around the bad neck angle by lowering the bridge will require lowering it 1/2 an inch and perhaps more or a bit less.

That's not possible here so I would stick with number one. There is also the issue of lowering the pups, may need further cavity work and of course the pup rings will need to be flossed to near nothing and it will look funny.

So I like option one.

I agree that he may not be able to get there but just measuring the end of the straight edge off the top will tell tell him that. Getting steam in around the tenon on a set neck electric is not going to be fun.

Looks like a nice lap steel.

Dry heat such as from a resistance heater or heatstick style device could be a possibility.


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It appears as if you might not understand the geometry of how the neck interacts with the neck pocket, body, pickups and bridge. You might want to think about drawing your instrument out in full scale and move forward with what some of the fellows have advised. The drawing gives you a reference as to exactly the place setting of each piece interacting with each other.

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You could remove the fretboard to insert a tapered shim under the whole fretboard. This would give a thick neck under the higher frets. If you thought you could do it without hitting the truss rod you could thin down the neck from the back. Me, I kind of like necks that get thicker up the board.