lowering action on an 000-15M
 

Picked up a used Martin 000-15M. Great guitar, but the action is just a little bit high. I called Martin to ask how to lower it. They said to take out the saddle and sand it down. The action will be lowered at the twelfth fret by about two times whatever you sand off. He said no need to mess with the truss rod.

Has anyone here ever done this ? Doesn't sound too difficult, but figured I'd check here before trying it. I initially thought the truss rod would need to be tweaked.

Thanks in advance,,,,,

Other more expert feel free to chime in, but I'm pretty sure that your action will go down by HALF the amount you take off the saddle. The truss rod is for relief, not action, which are two different things. Care must be taken to keep the saddle absolutely flat on the bottom. Something that I struggle with!

I sanded my saddle a bit and filed the nut slots to right above first fret height. The nuts on both my 000-15M an my D28 were too high. Felt much better after the adjustments.

And I did adjust my relief. The amount of relief for any particular guitar is not cut in stone. Some may want less, with plenty of room on the middle frets for hard strumming; some may want the neck as flat as possible without buzz for light playing. If you do want to adjust yours, you'll have to get one of the elongated allen wrenches since the nut is way up inside the neck. About 3-4 inches I think.

tdq is right. If you want to reduce the string height at the 12th fret by 1/32", you'll need to file off 2/32".

My 000 is a marvelously easy player now. Great guitars.

I've done it a fair few times. My way is to mark how much I want to take off on the bass and treble sides - it is often different - then hold the saddle in a vise, using the vise jaws as a file stop. I then take off the excess with a coarse file, which takes about a minute, and finish by rubbing on a flat file or on medium abrasive paper stuck to a sheet of glass with carpet tape.

It may. Check straightness of the neck with a straightedge, or by pressing the string down on the first and 12th frets. You need a tiny amount of clearance (relief) at the 5th or 6th fret. This is usually about 0.006", or the thickness of two sheets of paper.
Adjust the relief with the truss rod before modifying the saddle.

^ - Bingo! Then, after setting the proper relief, as mentioned above, you'll need to remove 2X from the bottom of the saddle to reduce the string action by X.

Here's an excellent video on the process from MacNichol Guitars. FYI, Michael at MacNichol sells great replacement bone saddles through his Reverb shop. (No financial interest on my part, just a satisfied customer).

I looked at the neck, and it did not seem (to my eyes) to require a truss rod tweak. After making some measurements and marks, I sanded down the saddle. Re-strung and happy to say it plays great!, with good intonation everywhere.

Thanks for all the replies. The info was helpful.