Alvarez RD410BK With Issues

[paul678]

Originally Posted by Ben-Had

When you say "if you put a straight edge on the fret tops, the ruler ends up WAY above the bridge," How much is "WAY" above? Have you measured it with the strings off and the FB adjust to dead flat? If it is more than .093" (3/32) you may have an issue with too tall a saddle. I'd start there

With the FB adjusted as flat as I can, the extreme fall away is still there,
and the distance is more than 4/32", almost 5/32".

The good news is that this guitar was never played very much, so the
frets are almost new, and have plenty of meat on them, so an
extreme fret leveling might save me here. It would not only make the
fall away less extreme, but it would get my space closer to 3/32".

That's probably what I should do, right?

[Ben-Had]

Maybe I confused you a little. How far above the "bridge" is the bottom edge of your straight edge? You want it approx 1/32" to 1/16" no more than 3/32.

[paul678]

Originally Posted by Ben-Had

Maybe I confused you a little. How far above the "bridge" is the bottom edge of your straight edge? You want it approx 1/32" to 1/16" no more than 3/32.

I understood you.

With the FB straight, and a ruler on the fret tops, the bottom edge
of the ruler is more than 4/32", almost 5/32", away from the top
of the bridge.

This was a problem that a local luthier pointed out to me as well, but
he suggested I rehumidify the guitar, and check again. He felt
the top of the guitar may be sunken, bringing the bridge down.

Again, I'm fairly convinced I can fix this by doing some serious
fret leveling. The difficult way would be to remove the frets,
plane the FB perfectly flat again, and re-install the frets, etc.

[Ben-Had]

I think his advice to re-humidify the guitar is good advice. Especially if you haven't been paying attention to it. This is the worse time of the year in most areas for humidity dropping and tops sinking. Two years ago when my son had an accident I left for a week at the beginning of December. During that week the humidity plummeted and I had not yet put my humidifier out. When I got back the tops on my guitars has sunk. One in particular dropped 1/32". So it is possible some of that is coming into play.

[paul678]

Originally Posted by Ben-Had

I think his advice to re-humidify the guitar is good advice. Especially if you haven't been paying attention to it. This is the worse time of the year in most areas for humidity dropping and tops sinking. Two years ago when my son had an accident I left for a week at the beginning of December. During that week the humidity plummeted and I had not yet put my humidifier out. When I got back the tops on my guitars has sunk. One in particular dropped 1/32". So it is possible some of that is coming into play.

Ok, I just checked it like this:

http://thbecker.net/guitar_playing/g...p_page_02.html

And I was able to see a gap of about 1/32" on both sides of the ruler.

The article recommends about 1/16th of an inch on both sides, so in theory,
my guitar is too dry.

But I'm wondering: If I live in dry Arizona, and I expect to stay here, and I expect to sell the guitar to someone else living here, shouldn't I just allow
the guitar to "settle in" and acclimate to the environment?
Because if I re-humidify it with a sponge, won't it just dry out again,
unless the owner always keeps it in the case? Isn't that a
bit too high maintenance?

[Ben-Had]

The "environment" is where the guitar resides most of the time and how YOU acclimate that area. I keep my guitar room between 40-50% RH at all times. That may mean humidifying or possibly dehumidifying (although where I live that happens less often). If you plan on controlling this it will settle in, if you don't control it your guitar/s are in for one heck of a roller coaster ride.