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I recieved this project in pieces with some of those pieces missing. It did not have a nut and the lower bridge was removed. This is my stopping point as I have never run into a guitar with an extra fret at nut end and have no idea where to measure from, the nut or the fret. Also if stings were resting on fret or what my clearance would need to be. These are critical questions needed before re-attaching lower bridge for correct intonation. I was thinking of simply cutting extra fret and material off and then setting my intonation in the standard nut to center ot 12th fret X 2, but I would like to understand why epiphone ever added this fret in the 1st place and keep it to original as best I can.

Please see attached photos, thanks for any help, 

Marvin

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Ah, that is a zero fret. I think there was a pretty substantive discussion about these recently - try the search function.

Zero frets are just a different way of doing the nut. What you install as a "nut" instead becomes just a set of guides for the strings to pass through so that they are lined up correctly over the zero fret. You want to make sure that your guide nut doesn't decrease the break angle of the strings over the zero fret.

I'd leave it, it won't hurt your intonation at all. That crappy bridge, on the other hand, will probably never intonate correctly as it was made and originally placed. That is where you should focus your attention.

I dig the headstock overlay, btw - if it can't be original, might as well be cool!

Thanks for info, I just joined frets.net last night so I missed earlier discussions. I agree on lower bridge as well. Peg head was damaged so rosewood with inlay was my repair, thanks for compliment and your help. I'll go with leaving zero fret and get this one finished.

Marvin  

As Mark said , measure from centre of fret , then when setting up with strings  , check its height as I often find zero frets too high and this blows the intonation on 1st few frets . Easy way is then slot it like a nut , then you can file it down to depth of slots and its right.

get "complete guitar repair" by H. Kamimoto and read the section on intonation. The proper location of the bridge is not 2 x the distance from nut to 12 th fret. It needs to be longer to compensate for bending the string down to the fret. Without proper compensation the guitar will not play in tune.

Hi Marvin.

A bit of a digression but......

If that is a MIJ FT series Epiphone, you will want to examine the integrity of the neck block before proceeding with any other repair.  This is a well known issue with this series of instruments. They frequently crack and cause all sorts of problems.

If the neck block is intact, you're home free.  If not, others will give you the info on how to address that issue. For your sake, I hope you find it intact.

Best of luck...and I'll second the "COOL" comment on the headstock inlay.  Nice design man :-)

I'm going to zig a bit here too. Looking at the pictures, I'm struck but the "grain" of the top. It looks like someone removed the top layer of a plywood guitar. The residual bridge pin holes seem to indicate that this was a 12 string at one time too.  Are you sure this will be a functional guitar when you finished? 

Oh yeah , Ned is right , I would probly bin it after seeing that soundboard .

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