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String alignment issues

3K views 8 replies 7 participants last post by  Max 
#1 · (Edited)
I just strung up the strat I'm putting together to check alignment/action and I'm having some string alignment issues - the E string is practically hanging off the fretboard above the 12th fret.

Here are some pictures to illustrate the problem:





I've got very little experience with setup, but presumably it has to be either:

1. Nut alignment (which, as you can see, I've messed with to no avail)
2. Neck alignment - maybe a shim between the neck and the side of the pocket on the treble side?
3. Bridge alignment - is there anything I can actually change about this?

Any ideas would be much appreciated! :D
 
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#2 ·
You don't mention what you've done to this guitar or what has changed? If the neck has been off - check that. Some guitars have a little wiggle room in the neck pocket while others are snug. With the type of saddles you have there- depending how you adjust each little Allen screw the string will shift across the saddle which will translate to fairly big movement across the neck. Get the string height where you want it but use one screw higher or lower than the other to shift the string alignment.
 
#4 ·
That is most likely neck pocket shift.

Here is the procedure to correct it:
1) With strings at tension, loosen the neck bolts about 1/4 turn
2) GENTLY pull the neck upwards to you while holding the guitar in playing position (too much force can crack the neck pocket so don't yank just pull gently.
3) Re-snug bolts but don't crank them down 100% just have them be snug.
4) Tune and play :metal:
 
#6 · (Edited)
There's not really enough space in the neck pocket to angle it much more. I've put a shim in which helps a little bit, but I think the root of the problem is at the bridge. My other strat has a similar neck but a bridge with thinner string spacing.

EDIT: Turns out I might have to get a different trem which has the wider mounting holes but thinner string spacing.
 
#9 ·
Wirelessly posted (Hivemind: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

You realize you're not shifting he whole neck over ideally right? Just rotating it mildly. I've had neck so tight you hold a guitar body up by the fit alone, and you could still adjust it a bit
 
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