Recently I picked up a few acoustics guitar from clients and friends which has the same common problem: a belly top which raised the bridge and also the strings, making the action too high that is unplayable. It's kinda tough to tackle this sort of problem since it is impossible to reverse a deformed wood top to a flat top.......
Stewmac is selling a JLD bridge Doctor that claims to flatten the top effectively.....after sufficient reading of reviews online I decided to go for it and see how it works..:))
This is the components of the JLD bridge doctor, it's actually a SUPER SIMPLE device but cost way too expensive for a piece of wood and a wooden stick plus 2 plastic tubes......fortunately I bought another one and can start mass producing the device...haha...
Drilled a hole to insert a screw that secure the JLD to the bridge....
The screw hole was covered up by a pearl inlay dot...
The stick is suppose to press to the wall of the bottom of the guitar, however, the battery compartment gets in the way, I came up with a solution of making a C shape wooden stand that "stand" on the 2 side of the compartment. It's actually even a better way of installing since the force of the rod is dispersed between the 2 leg of the stand, and since the surface area is larger, it would exert a more even force and provides more friction....lol
The outcome:
After installing and fine tuning, tweaking the device, the top is much lower and flatter, although the action is still a bit high and need to sand down the sadle a bit to get the best action, the device succeeded in holding the top flat and prevent it from deforming further.
The tone doesn't changed much, some folks said that the sustain and tone enhanced after installing the device...probably,yea....i dont know,haha
close-up of the fingerboard before sanding, it's glossy but not smooth at all...
Worked on the fingerboard for a few hours today and get the upper part polished to a satin finish, the epoxy at the end is a bit thin, another layer will be applied on the bottom part...which means the painful sanding have to start again.....ar.....
Filling the slot, level the surface with 14"radius sander block.....
Carefully mixing a ratio of 3:1 of epoxy and hardener.........
嘗試在一支fender squier 做relic，發覺在polyester body 上做relic 是一份苦事，的確不可能做到好似nitro lacquer 般的fade out 效果，不過在neck 及 pickguard 的relic 效果不錯..
