Cheap Flying V - strings to high

[Boris Bezenšek]

Recently I bought a moderately cheap Westone Flying V guitar. (Not a Japanese one, but one of those German - made in China) Everything was pretty much OK, except that the strings were a little to high for my taste. I tried to lower the action by putting on lighter gauge strings and tightening the truss rod and it worked quite well for a while. And then a few days ago I noticed a gap between the neck and the body, so I tightened the screws holding the neck and the strings just dropped flat on the fingerboard. I unscrewed the neck to see what's going on there and I saw a crudely hollowed top part of the neck pocket and I also found a guitar pick and a piece of plastic in there. Also the neck didn't sit in the pocket just right, it was more than a little wobbly. At this point I decided to fill the sides of the neck pocket with wood putty so it would get a more snug fit, and I also filled the hollowed out part and sanded it all to a perfect fit. When I reassembled the guitar I noticed that the strings were way too high and I was a witness to the reason why the previous owner decided to hollow out the top half of the neck pocket and shim the base of the neck.
Now for the begging for help part.
Could anyone help me with fixing this problem? Does anyone have an idea that can last longer than the one the previous owner had? Should I glue a piece of wood to the base of the neck to raise it? At a certain angle maybe?
Lowering the bridge, I think, is out of the question, since it is a stop tailpiece with a tune-o-matic-like bridge and it at it's lowest. I've been thinking (since it's sitting on the pickguard) about cutting or drilling the pickguard so the bridge sits directly on the body, but that wouldn't lower the strings a whole lot.
I thank any and all of you from the bottom of my heart for reading this in hope someone has a solution to this.

[Greg Robinson]

Recently I bought a moderately cheap Westone Flying V guitar...

Hi Porx85,
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Thanks.

[Mark Swanson]

Well, you see what others have done to make this guitar playable. They were on the right track, but perhaps had done a sloppy job of fitting the neck. We try to stay away from putty or filler and use wood where ever we can. If the guitar were mine I'd get rid of all the putty and filler and using a router I'd touchup the surfaces so they were nice and level and smooth. Then make and glue in wood pieces, and finally re-cut the neck pocket at the correct angle. By that time you would have fresh wood surfaces and a restored neck angle- bolt on the neck and play.

[Beate Ritzert]

Professionals ... please close Your eyes ... my thread gives an example whow to do this in the kitchen with a minimum set of tools.
I usually use a chisel to smooth the surfaces and then glue in some thin veneer if necessary (0.6 mm - allows sufficiently fine control of the depth of the pocket).

Just yesterday i had to correct and slightly reduce the foot of a neck which was rounded - with simple and cheap tools easily available for amateurs who are only occasionally doing some woodworking (not everyone has a router at hand...)

Stormy_Monday_Neck_Joint.jpg (19.69 KiB) Viewed 6658 times

The image shows an intermediate stage after cutting off the excess wood. In subsequent steps everything which has become black by the graphite is carefully taken away until in the end the whole surface would become black. Finish with carefully sanding the surface on a sanding paper fastend on a plain surface (table...)
A similar technique can applied in the pocket.

BTW: I saw a similarly sloppy correction in our Epiphone EB-0 bass which had also been made in China. They seem to take what they can get into their fingers while mounting the compontents...

[Boris Bezenšek]

Well thanks for your ideas and help. I really appreciate the effort.
Through a lot of research, google-ing, your ideas and other forums, and since I do not have access to professional tools I came to this solution. (Well haven't fixed it yet, but this is what I'm working on) I cut a piece of wood at an angle and glued it to the joint of the neck. I'm about to grind and sand it, and hopefully it will work just fine.

The neck pocket:

The neck:

The piece of wood I cut the shim from:

Applied glue:

Fixing the shim to the neck:


Would you say it's at least close to ok?

[Mark Swanson]

You're on the right track. You should have used a larger, thicker piece of flat material placed between the clamps and the shim, called a "caul", to spread out the pressure from the clamps and make sure the entire shim gets pressed down flat to the neck.
And I hope you bolted it all together before gluing, so that you could tell if you have the angle on the shim correctly cut. It's a lot easier to shape the shim before you glue it in place.

[Boris Bezenšek]

Well I did it... Bolted the neck back on... Put the strings back on... Broke a string, found a replacement, put it on... Adjusted the truss rod.. And it's just fine. I guess I went a little overboard with the sanding. And as a result I got a kind of a medium low action as opposed to what I was used to on a guitar I had before which had a "very close neighbour to buzz" action, but it really isn't that much of a problem. Thanks to your support I got a nice playable guitar and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart! Cheers!





(It looks much worse in the picture, than it actually is )