Any acoustic techs out there?

[Silver Sable]

I really need to lower the action on a nice 12 string acoustic... but I've never done it before. Has anyone around here worked on one before? I'm quite adventurous, but I don't want to ruin it.

[ryanb]

First make sure the neck is set up right. Then, to lower the action, you need to either modify or replace the saddle. You might want to keep this one and make another that is lower, since you may want to go back to this one when the weather changes ... depends on the guitar and the player. Then you can pretty much just file down the saddle to the right height. That assumes it isn't a huge correction and there is sufficient room on the saddle. You don't want the saddle either too tall or too short. If there isn't enough height in the saddle to take it out, you are looking at either bridge modification or a neck reset ... which is starting to get serious. If in doubt, find a good tech.

[David McCarroll]

Start by determining how much relief there is in the neck - 12 string guitars (obviously!) have a lot of tension on the neck, so you most often find that the neck needs a fair degree of truss rod tweaking before you tackle lowering the action in any other way - check the nut height, then the saddle height after that.

[Silver Sable]

Thanks! I'll try the simple things first. This thing just requires about twice the normal amount of pressure from the fingertips to press the strings down. Thus, to play it for more than a few minutes results in major hand cramping.

At least we have a great luthier in town who sets up acoustics. I'll try not to do anything irreparable.

[jb4674]

You also have to keep in mind the height of the bone nut in relation to the strings. What kind of guitar is the one in question?

Jimmy

[Silver Sable]

I believe it is the Takamine EG523SC-12

[Silver Sable]

Sorry to bump an older thread, but for completeness sake if anyone in the future had a question about doing this...

I took out the plastic bridge piece and filed it down slowly. It was only after I got started on it that I saw something flip up when I pulled it out after checking the height. Sure enough, the mfg had put no less than 6 shims under the pickup connector. D'oh! So I left two shims under that connector to even out what I had shaved off by that point, and pulled all of the shims out from under the bigger bridge piece. Viola! Now it plays much better without serious infliction of pain to the left hand.

So yeah! Big lesson learned. Always look to see if there is something removable before you start filing off pieces that must stay.