DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

Looks really nice.
Couple of evenings ago I looked at classic Seymour Duncan pick ups for my 'kit' Chinese 355.
They can be around £150 a pair and the loom and pots are naff too, so those would be needed at the same time.
Trouble is, a new Epiphone is only twice that and has excellence well above this kit!

There is a nice Epi on eBay for restoration but that is £200.

Decided to pause for thought...

Meantime, thought I would try to fix the poor action of the Taylor Big Baby.
It has never been good, but was finish when I got it.
It lives in its excellent gig bag, maybe that has done it no favours?

The neck is bowed, and the truss rod supper tight, nothing left to set it against the string tension.
Thus, the only line of attack is to shim the neck.
Easy to remove the neck, and find the tapered shim from the factory.
However, you can get others! Maybe I need to try harder.

This guitar is at 0.1 of a degree, but to see what could be done I shimmed the body with dense card, about 1mm thick at one end of the neck block, so the angle change was dramatic.
Helped with the action on the 12th fret, bought it down to about 3mm, so still miles out.
No fret buzzing along the neck, but the joint looks awful.

The Taylor is almost the worst guitar to play I have.

Today had a close look/ play of the Tuxedo 3.
The neck is so bad...
Put it back on the wall!

leaving any guitar at concert pitch when not being used is not reccomendeded - a simple detune for long term storage is all thats required. I'm not a luthier but have set up many a guitar. Using the 6th string as a guide press at 1st and last fret and there should be some distance between the string and fret board around the 10th fret - truss rod adjustment will sort out if too concave, flat or worse convex. Next issue is angle of neck to body and/or height of bridge. I get that's why you want to shim this to see if it sorts it? I'd suggest using a 1mm material to see if it works, if not then a luthier could plane the neck where it fits the body got get alignment angle correct. I have a '63 Levin acoustic with similar issues. Will post it up next on this tread as needs sorting and will poss do myself.... good luck post some pics...

https://youtu.be/Nz4_UHCMqf0

!!!!!!

Lovely rendition!

Try this:
Hope to try to fix my Taylors sky-high action over the weekend.

https://youtu.be/bky7m-u0v2E

You can't be disappointed after 1.5 min mark

https://youtu.be/gOH_EmURZp8

911hillclimber wrote:Lovely rendition!

Try this:
Hope to try to fix my Taylors sky-high action over the weekend.

Worth watching/ listening to Jonny to get into the mindset? Not acoustic but interesting to hear the words of wisdom.

https://youtu.be/-V-kMF2Sk3o

https://youtu.be/nONCCSdA9Ds

Or maybe just get him to do it

To use a specialist is the last resort!
Thanks for those.
The Taylor is hardly used as I find it so unpleasing to play, it was like it from new and not cheap at all!
My Taylor 'bubble' was burst.

So, a bit of messing won't loose me anything, might even be much better.

I think neck off, get more truss-rod movement and re-set the neck angle.
What could go wrong!

Decided to have a go at the Taylor this morning, so a bit of guitar tech on here for a change by a keen DIY'r….

Issue was that the action was sky high at the 12th fret, scale length is 25.75". As the guitar stood, the gap between the bass E and the fret crown at the 12th was 3.3mm!

The neck looked bowed to my eye, action at the 1st fret was fine. String (steel) angle at the bridge was good, so I was reluctant to drop the saddle height, but the drop would need to be huge, about 4mm!
I had tightened the truss rod to the max, and felt any more effort would break something, but the feel was that the nut had bottomed on the thread length.

The neck comes off easily, just two crude wood screws. They were tight and released with a frightening crack, strings all very slack of course!





As can be seen, there was a factory shim (the ones you can't get) and mine had a fine taper of 8 thou over 2". Taylor have a suite of these taper shims and the differences are very fine.

My first 'adjustment' was to pack the underside of the shim with thin but stiff car, 70 thou thick. 3 of these stacked up was not enough to fix the 12th action. Jacking the neck up in a 'linear' manner would not work, and the gap between the tail of the neck and the face of the sound board looked awful.

It was clear a taper adjust would be needed and I did not fancy home adjusting my factory shim using hand tools (sandpaper).

Decided to try another approach, get the neck straight or even convex by the truss rod.

The neck was indeed bowed , sighted using my 1 meter steel straight edge, a concave bow with about 30 though gap in the middle.
Took the truss rod nut off and added 1 thick form M6 steel washer. If the small (M5) nut was bottoming on the rod threads, then this would allow a bit more of a tweak.

Indeed, the nut done up well got the neck flat and a 1/4 turn more got it convex with a rocking of the straight edge of about 15 thou. I anticipated the strings would pull it to flat.

All the card shims out and everything tuned to standard pitch and the 12th fret clearance is 80 thou, maybe 75. difficult to actually measure.

This has improved the playability of this fragile guitar no end, but I still don't like it!

Good to see the Taylor getting some work done on it, it can only make it better. Now for my 1963 Levin NC 26. Showing it in its sorry state, much neglected (by me) so time to sort it out. The soundboard has a bad crack and Ive noticed other cracks on the sides. The original finish would have bee tobacco sunburst which it still has on its back and side. I may refinish the top as at the moment it is natural but possibly with a clear coat rather than try to refinishing to match the existing colours - nearly impossible. Most of the damage has been caused by the guitar drying out over the years so today I'm going to start rehydrating as see how that goes before repairing the cracks. Need to also give some thought to the considerable wear to the soundboard and possibly fit a scratch plate... - will post progress later...

Lovely!
Been looking on ebay to find something interesting to repair/refinish.
Not bothered about something valuable just something interesting. Early Japanese electric would be nice.

Doubt I could do wood splits, I don't have enough clamps. All I've seen on google have a million clamps and some superglue.
That almost rules-out anything acoustic.
Hope to see more of your rebuild!

brilliant

Indeed, perfect!

Here is another great voice and really good guitar backing.

https://youtu.be/q7xbvPSh7YU

The one and only Peter Green

https://youtu.be/T_2CPywLInc

The guitarist in there later line up wasn't bad either. I played this at a family get-together, finger picking but not as fancy as Lindsey's solo, when my Dad was still alive so makes me remember him.

https://youtu.be/1sQ7cuYgjzw

Sent from my Redmi 7 using Tapatalk

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It's actually Jeremy Spencer playing slide guitar/singing in that first clip.

At that time they had 4 guitarists - John McVie on bass + Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer & Danny Kirwan ...

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