Acoustic-Electric advice needed....

[duhvoodooman***]

I have been interested in reading about your experience with the Masterbilt. Has it not arrived yet? It seems like it has been a while. It definitely will be interesting to hear about the new Epi, for sure.

Yep, it arrived on Fri. Mar. 3. I am very pleased with the guitar and have been playing it a lot. It's got a really nice, rich dreadnought tone, it plays great, and the workmanship is excellent. The cosmetic "defects" are ridiculously minor, so getting $175 off the going price of $600 was a killer of a deal. It had just one issue that bothered me a bit--the saddle seemed very high to me, protruding almost 3/8" above the bridge piece. That translated to a rather high action once you got up around the cutaway. The neck relief was fine, so it was really just a saddle height issue. The saddle actually leaned slightly back toward the neck from the string pressure, so I was also concerned that it might be stressed to the point of cracking at some time in the future.

I really didn't want to fool around with that myself, so I took it to a local luthier who was highly recommended to me by a guitar-playing coworker. The guy is the authorized Martin warranty service rep for this area and also builds guitars, and really knows his stuff. I brought it over to him and he worked on it while I sat there & chatted with him. When he measured it, it turned out that the string height at the twelfth fret was pretty close to right on spec on the bass side, but a bit high on the treble side, so he removed the saddle and sanded off a bit diagonally toward the treble side. In the process, he found that the factory had installed a couple of thin shims under the saddle in the bridge slot, beneath the Nanoflex pickup strip. We decided to take one out, to lower the saddle in the slot a bit. This dropped the string height slightly below spec, but no buzzing occurred, so that's the way we left it. This noticeably improved the action up around the cutaway, and the lean of the saddle is much reduced. The guitar plays like butter now--very comfortable when playing for an extended amount of time, even for a soft-fingered electric guy like me.

[Eric***]

The guitar plays like butter now--very comfortable when playing for an extended amount of time, even for a soft-fingered electric guy like me.

Cool deal, DVM. When are you going to have it in action? That's the fun part!

[duhvoodooman***]

Cool deal, DVM. When are you going to have it in action? That's the fun part!

I used in in our second praise band rehearsal this past Saturday--got compliments on how good the guitar sounded. The first Sunday we're scheduled to play is the week after Easter, Apr. 7th.

[Eric***]

I used in in our second praise band rehearsal this past Saturday--got compliments on how good the guitar sounded. The first Sunday we're scheduled to play is the week after Easter, Apr. 7th.

Rawk! I was hoping we would be playing on the same day, but I'll be running sound that day instead of playing. I guess you'll have to rock twice as hard for me!

I'm of the impression that tone compliments are usually due at least 50% to the person making the sounds, so that's some nice feedback.