How to adjust the height of a glued neck (little taylor)?

Question

I have a little Taylor that its strings are too high for me. I tried to remove the nut and sand it, but it's glued. How can I do it? Thanks,

Answer 1

I have several Taylor Guitars including a Baby Taylor (their smallest scale guitar) and a GS Mini (their next to smallest "travel guitar"). Martin calls their short scale travel guitars "Little Martin".

Several things you should be aware of. Taylor does an excellent job setting up all of their guitars (including the Baby Taylor model produced in their Mexico plant) from the factory with comparatively low action. So it would be highly unlikely that the nut itself would need any adjustments.

While on the subject of the nut (slotted part at the headstock end of the neck) On every acoustic guitar I have ever seen, the nut is glued on. If it wasn't glued on it would fall off whenever you removed the strings. You can remove the nut because the glue is not designed to create a permanent bond, but if you do remove the nut from a guitar, you will need to use the proper glue to reattach it so that it will stay in place during normal use but can be detached in the future should it ever need to be replaced.

The saddle is what the strings rest on at the other end of the guitar. The saddle is not usually glued but sits in a slot in the bridge which is attached to the top of the body (aka soundboard). In some guitars the fit could be tight and may require pliers to remove - but it is probably not glued.

Filing the bottom of the saddle down is one way to lower the action on an acoustic guitar. But again, the original factory set up on your Baby Taylor most likely provided for a low saddle height.

The Baby Taylor and the Big Baby both have a heelless neck that is removable. It is attached by two phillips head screws through the fingerboard at the 16th fret. The screws penetrate the soundboard and go into a block inside the body of the guitar.

One thing you should check is to be sure these screws have not worked their way loose which would allow the string tension to pull the neck forward in a way that would create a very high string relief near the body (high action). If you remove all the strings you should not have any wiggle in the neck. If the neck has any wiggle with the strings removed, you need to tighten the screws.

If you tighten these neck set screws yourself, be sure to use a case hardened, high quality phillips head screwdriver that is the correct size to fit snugly in the screw holes with no slack. You don't want to strip these screws. The screws should be tight enough to remove any wiggle in the neck but be careful not to over tighten the screws or you could damage the fingerboard or the neck. Do not use a screw gun or drill under any circumstances.

Another thing you should know about Taylor Guitars is that the necks are designed to be adjustable (for proper angle) but it's not necessarily a do it yourself adjustment. The guitar comes from the factory with the proper neck adjustment but sometimes environmental conditions exerted upon the wooden neck will change the neck angle and a neck re-set will be indicated.

A neck re-set on a Taylor guitar is accomplished by removing the neck and changing the shims that are in the neck pocket. If you remove the neck from your Baby Taylor, you will find a wooden shim under the tailblock of the neck with a number on it. An authorized Taylor repair technician will usually have an assortment of these shims at varying angles (each angle has a different number). To re-set the neck angle, the technician would calculate (or determine through trial and error) the correct shim to put the angle of the neck back to factory specs.

The Baby Taylor has a truss rod which can be adjusted to change the amount of relief between the strings and frets in the middle of the fretboard. Often a truss rod adjustment is all that is needed to restore a guitar to a comfortable level of playability. The truss rod can be adjusted to allow a slight curve in the neck so you don't get any fret buzz and can be tightened to cause a neck with too much of a bow - to straighten out. If you tighten the truss rod too much, your neck might have a back bow resulting in bad fret buzz.

The Truss Rod on the Baby Taylor requires a deep well 1/4' nut driver with a thin wall. Taylor makes a truss rod wrench for their guitars but don't include it because they prefer you take the guitar to an authorized Taylor Tech to have any adjustments made. You can also buy a Taylor truss rod wrench from Sweetwater Music online for $4.00 US. Taylor Truss Rod Wrench

Finally, Taylor recommends light strings for the Baby Taylor. If you have medium strings on yours, the extra tension could cause more of a bow in the neck and contribute to higher string relief closer to the body. As Dr. Mayhem suggested, it might be worth trying a set of lighter strings than what you are presently using.

For a detailed explanation on how string gauge can affect the action of your guitar and also how to adjust the truss rod to get the proper amount of relief between strings and frets read this on Stack Exchange: Guitar set up - string gauge and truss rod adjustment

And one more thing, if you are the original owner of the Taylor Guitar, you have a lifetime warranty so you just need to find out where the nearest Authorized Tech is and take it in for an adjustment under warranty. If there is not one near you - you will have to pay for shipping to send it to Taylor's repair shop.

Good luck.

Answer 2

There are a number of options here:

• You can lower the nut by sanding. This is ideally done by removing it first, but you can sand the nut in situ (carefully) to make the strings closer to the fretboard down at the bottom of the neck.
• You can lower the bridge - usually by sanding as well - to lower the distance to the fretboard higher up the neck.
• Or as Basstickler commented, if the guitar has a truss rod you can use that to bring the neck closer to the strings, but it does this by changing the curve of the neck so it's not as obvious or as easy as you might want. It also can damage the neck if you get things wrong!

You could also try putting on lighter gauge strings, this will have a double effect - it will allow the neck to straighten a little, which should lower the string height, but also lighter strings are easier to press onto the frets so this may be all you need.