Pls Help: New Loar neck and bridge height irregularities question

[LoarMan]

Hello Experts, As some know I recently received a new LOAR 600 from Sweetwater. The neck doesn't looks straight to my eye, and they sent it to me with the bridge set so that the bridge is much higher on the base side than it is on the treble side. I'm worried that when the weather changes I might not be able to raise the action on the bass side. the action is currently low as I requested and it plays like a dream. I had them plekk it. I'm and closing
some pics and I'm wondering if I should return it or not. So many of you were unbelievably helpful when it came to examining the wood grain. Thank you for reading this.

[mr. beaumont]

What's the action at now?

I can't really detect if neck is off by pics...you could get a bridge with a little more wood on it, the stock Loar bridge is kind of small height wise (the actual saddle piece), makes it look like it's sitting higher on the posts. This would give you more play before the bridge is too high and in danger of slipping off the bottom.

Those necks are FAT...I don't think it'll be moving much...so you might not hae to deal with very much in the way of seasonal adjustment.

[Robin, Wales]

You do know that the bridges are not glued on archtops? They are just held in place by the string tension. This means that it takes a little adjustment to get the bridge in the right place and nicely lined up with the neck, plus the intonation correct. If someone takes all the strings off at a string change then the bridge falls off and you have to start again. So I lot of us use a little masking tape to show the bridge position if all the strings have to come off - or just change the strings one at a time.

What I'm saying is that your neck "misalignment" may just be that the bridge is not sitting on the top in its perfect position - a very easy fix! Loosen the strings a little, move the bridge, re-tension the strings.

Regarding your bridge being set high. As Mr Beaumont says, there are many different archtop bridges of many differencing heights, shapes and materials. And swapping a low one for a higher one is not too difficult a job. There are a number of YouTube videos showing how to do so. But if your present one is working for you just fine then its not a problem.

[fpuhan]

^^^^ This should be a sticky.