Dreadnought action 0.120 inch 3 mm...too high?

[Tony Done]

Too high for me, especially at the treble side, where I would be looking at about 16 to 1.8 mm, with 2.5 mm on the bass side. You still have some saddle left that you can lower, but maybe not enough if the treble side action is 3.0 mm. If you do lower the saddle, I would also cut ramps between the pin holes and the saddle to maintain a reasonable string break angle over the saddle.

If the worse comes to the worse, I would be thinking lap steel.

[RodB]

Originally Posted by RodB

How are you adjusting the action? Have you measured relief in the neck?

Originally Posted by Todd Yates

It might help if you could explain that a bit. It sounds like you have excessive relief because you perceive some sort of problem when you minimize relief.

Nobody can advise you correctly without knowing more information- they can just take an educated guess. if it’s playing OK near the nut, first set the relief then measure the action at the 12th fret. If this needs to be lowered you should then lower the saddle. if doing this is a problem I would advice you to take the guitar to a technician.

[Scatcat]

No problem to lower the saddle, the problem are the fret from 1 to 5 that are unbalanced and buzzing if i low the action....i try to adjust it...

[Tony Done]

Originally Posted by Scatcat

No problem to lower the saddle, the problem are the fret from 1 to 5 that are unbalanced and buzzing if i low the action....i try to adjust it...

That is likely because you have the neck too straight. Unfortunately it is a bit of a "no win" situation. - You increase the relief, the action gets higher, and you don't have enough saddle left to fix it.

One solution I have seen is to get the saddle very low, then dremel out troughs in the bridge in front of each string to get some clearance, with ramps behind the strings to get string break angle. I'm not recommending it, just saying.

[Scatcat]

I’ve tried different nut with different truss regulation and without touching the fret, I can go down to 0.120 (3mm) action at 12’ fret! Because when I go low 0.120 from saddle or from truss regulation tre first 5 frets in the low strings begin buzzering!
I have to go to a good Luther for lower the frets