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I was asked to try to bring an old archtop back to playing condition and have been working on it off and on over the past few months..
Some may remember it from fumble finger's get together back in October.
It has a real sloppy dove tail neck joint, about .100 inch per side gap that was partially filled with glue
The neck was a little loose so I started to steam it, the glue must have settled in and locked the neck in place.
The neck to body joint looked nice and tight so I made a couple of shims to fill the dove tail gap and thought it was good.
Now when I run a straight edge on top of the frets it is about .371 above the sound board about where the bridge would set.
How much gap should there be?
This is the bridge I thought I wanted to use but now I'm starting to wonder if I need a different one.
http://www.stewmac.com/Hardware_and_Par ... addle.html
Should I use a different bridge?
Best guess is that this is an old Harmony but no one is sure.

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Say what you do, Do what you say.

The normal gap and bridge height is one inch. Yours is way off.

The Stew-Mac bridge says it is height adjustable from 57/64" to 1-7/64".

You'll find it near impossible to squeeze a typical floating bridge under that. You may also find not enough downforce may cause problems in tone and buzzing. Generally you are looking for an inch or so.


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Dave it does not sound like you imparted a new, reset neck angle and instead just reattached the neck with less or no gap at the body joint.

The neck angle is too shallow as others have said so the neck needs to come off and be reattached after material is removed from the neck heel cheeks producing a neck angle in range for an archie and available bridges. The neck with the measurement that you offered is currently "under set."

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Hesh your correct, I did not reset the neck.
It set back into the body with no gaps that could be detected with a .002 feeler gage.
It looked to me like the angle was off some where around 3 degrees which seemed like a lot more than normal so I wanted to check and see if there was something I was missing before I started with a neck reset.
Thanks to everyone who replied.
I "think" this is going to be a great learning process for me.

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Say what you do, Do what you say.