But right now, as a left-handed guy who plays guitar...it's real hard to find good ones. If you're a real player, you know that you can go into a music store that has > 100 guitars hanging on the wall, and at best 1 or 2 "have your name on them" - fit you, sound the way you want, play well for your style and so on. That's at best, maybe it's like looking for a spouse - 1 in a million would really be the right one.
So I've found just a few over the years...money no object-- 3 in 60 years, not counting a reliably mediocre Ovation (that did save my bacon when there was nothing else). And with acoustics, you can't just string them the other way and reverse the bridge...it's glued and so on.
All acoustic guitar makers are walking a fine line between sounding great and lasting a long time. To make it short - good sound comes from thin wood stressed to within an inch of its life. And so, the good ones eventually pull the top up and the action goes to hell. Yeah, for a while you can sand down the bridge saddle and even cut the groove deeper (danger Will Robinson, this is hard to do right and might break a piezo pickup if not perfectly flat), but in the long run... there's just too much to make up that way.
For the purpose of this post, I'm going to assume you have taken care of the neck and have just the right slight concave curve in it, and that it's mounted straight - that's another world I won't go into now. Other than knowing that adjusting the truss rod takes awhile to fully take effect and to avoid overdoing it - just wait after each try a little bit - not much there.
Edit: while somewhat of a taste issue, which interacts with neck twist (deliberate or otherwise) - most would think the perfect neck curve is when you fret a string at the first and 12th or 14th frets, and in the middle the string is about .005" off the frets. YMMV of course, and I've had ones that may as well have just been flat and didn't buzz, but that's "luck". Filing frets is doable if they were just wrong, but it's like cutting the long leg on a 4 leg table to make it stop rocking - you'll never get there unless you're very good AND lucky. Filing down fret N to make it stop buzzing there will almost inevitably make the buzz move to fret N+(some random number close to 1).
So, we want to bend the top back down...and against all the BS on the internet, no, nothing bad happens even if we go past flat (self-appointed experts who obviously not luthiers say that the top arch is on purpose. Nope, it's just unavoidable... these are all built with flat wood. I've yet to see a hand-scraped arch as in a Stradivarius).
Ok., we have a bent/arched top and we can't play this thing anymore. Just ordering a new one is not going to happen even with money - they just aren't out there.
So, it turns out that wood is amazingly willing to be bent, if you are patient and use the tricks - moisture and heat and time. I made this simple jig with two aluminum channels, a couple of bolts, and a piece diced off a 2x4 as a spacer to just press on the middle part of a guitar top. Simples.
just don't overdo the tightening at first - finger tight on the nuts (3/6" carriage bolts, not super fine threads). Check it daily and maybe crank on a little more if it seems warranted. Sigh, this can't be a step by step "just do this one weird trick" because - everything worthwhile in life calls for judgement.
I wetted the top from the inside with a wet paper towel, and placed a wet paper towel in a plastic tupperware type thing inside the box. I sealed up the big hole by laying a plastic bag over it...that's the moist part.
I put on the clamp and tightened it. Earlier this year, the first time I did this, I then parked the thing in front of a propane radiant heater and let it get cooked a bit for some days when the thing cycled.
This one, I'm just using the sun, which is, if anything hotter, and probably safer if it doesn't melt the neck glue joint. It generally lasts all day without cycling much (don't leave your baby in the rain, doh).
And I'm happy to report, that the #2 backup guitar which I tried first, and which had become basically unplayable with a > 1/4" action at the octabe, responded quite well and is very happy now with a lower action - I went a little below "flat" on the top and it sprang back some under tension and is now pretty close to just right.
So now my #1 baby is on the porch getting it's treatment - a few days or more.
Remember, some people bend wood ridiculous amounts with steam, pressure, and time. Here the issue is not to break the glue between the bracing and the thin top, and to let *both* get there at the speed they will move - the brace is just going to take longer. Time is better than more force here.
- Here's my sweetie in the beauty parlor
I'd point out to those "Experts" that
#1, this is proven to work on real guitars, by me, ones that weren't cheap - or easy, and that I care about a lot.
#2, the guitar was a loss so there was nothing to lose.
As always, "at your own risk and don't go full retard".
Some gratuitous pix of my other acoustic lover - she doesn't wear the fancy makeup, but who cares? This is post - re-bending.
- Fishman amp is the best...I like the EV pl-20 too.
- Could have gone a little further on the action, but fine. It WAS horrible.
- Tempting to invoke Ave's "focus, you fsck".
My electric is a Les Paul Leftie with a very low serial #....I got lucky.
