12-string set-up blues

[Rick Homan]

A friend brought me a no-name, laminate 12-string for set-up. The fit and finish on it are quite decent. The action was so high as to be unplayable. The joint of the neck heel to the body looks solid: no finish cracks.

To date, I have:
1) installed JDL Bridge doctor to flatten the bellied top. It worked like a charm, and the guitar sounds great. I used the brass-pin version, because there is no place to drill a hole in the 12's bridge.
2) lowered the nut slots for .012 - .016 string height at the first fret.
3) tightened the truss rod as far as it will go -- I think.
4) shaved the saddle as to not much more than radius.

As a result, the guitar plays nicely in first position, but from about the fifth fret on the action gets high. String height at the 12th fret is 8/64" (3.175 mm) . My friend would like to have it play for fingerstyle all along the neck.

My options would seem to be:
1. Shave the entire bridge down so the saddle can be lowered further.
2. Do a "saw-sand-and-bolt" neck re-set." From its general construction, I am guessing this is a post-1970 mass-produced guitar, so removing the neck is probably not an option.

Any thoughts about getting that string height down? Thanks, in advance!

[Nick Anthony]

nope you're spot on....bridge doctors suck...play any atlas series breedlove(they all come stock with the jld and they all sound like crap) ...and a neck reset is what it needs ...and i'd bet my last dollar to a donut that its a dovetail

[Nick Anthony]

and i am a warranty taylor guitar tech....and taylor never has and probably never will ust the JLD...and Breedlove only uses it on the cheepies

[Antonio Cotichini]

In a similar case (again a 12 string!) I had to take away all the frets and nut, sanding the fretboard lower on the nut direction and re-fret. Plus, deepen the bridge slot almost at the soundboard level after lowering the bridge top, to avoid a too low piece of bone-saddle. Also a long work on the new bone nut slots to reach the maximum playing comfort without buzzing.
12 strings ARE hard beasts!
Good luck
Antonio

[Mark McLean]

Hi Rick
It sounds as if that neck joint does move a significant amount under tension. I forgot to mention in the last post an anecdote of mine. I got off E-bay a partly constructed kit 12-string. Turns out that it was a pretty crappy guitar but good for teaching me some lessons about 12-strings. The neck joint was designed to be a butt-joint (no mortise/tenon or dovetail) and it was supposed to go together with a couple of dowel rods to hold it (an idea that was never going to work). I set the neck angle for low action and converted it to bolt on and thought that would be pretty solid. No way - under tension the joint shifts enough to make the tuning unstable and it is unplayable. Last night my 18 year old son was trying to play it and eventually declared it to be a "piece-of-**** guitar". Sadly, he is correct. With your friend's guitar, even of you saw the neck off, reset and bolt it - you will have a butt-end joint like mine which is even weaker than the one it has now. The action might be better but I don't think he will be happy. I recommend my option 3.........
Mark

[Rick Homan]

I do see the wisdom of option 3, Mark. I did come up with another option -- Let's call it 2.5 -- which involves tuning the whole thing down a step. The action is good all along the neck then. Actually, even down a half step helps a lot. I'll see if the owner might find it useful enough this way: fine for solo work or capo up if one needs to match keys.

[Jeffrey L. Suits]

I'd saw, and convert to bolt-on. You're in SF?

[Rick Homan]

Yes, I am Jeffrey. And you?

[Jeffrey L. Suits]

I'm over the bridge, east bay.

[griff]

No name laminate 12 string guitars have a limited lifespan. Sure you can shave the bridge to a wafer, plane the fretboard from the nut end, or convert to a bolt-on, but usually you're buying time at a too-high cost (I mean that literally...those jobs are expensive for what you get from the instrument).

That said, 1/8 (I assume that's the low E string?) isn't too bad for a 12 string. The 12 string guitar requires higher action and thus more strength and better left hand posture than 6. You won't be able to set it up like a race car and not get a little jangle from a less disciplined player. If it were me, I'd put some relief back into the neck, shave the bridge if it has enough meat to do so, and tell him you got another two or three years out of the guitar and to start saving for a new one. With your time and the cost of the Bridge Doctor, you've already got more into it than it's worth.

[Tim Mace]

It's a ghood idea to lower the tuning a step.......1/8" at the 12th sounds pretty good too. Are you using octaves or unisons?Silk & steel?Did you give it a name yet?How'bout Ledbelly?Or led berry or leadbury in a nice inlayed
headstock?Show us a picture!

[Rick Homan]

Here are some photographic details of the thing in question. I'll appreciate any conjectures about its origins.

[Tim Mace]

made in Nonami @ 1995?