Swingster Neck Angle

[Bobstay]

Hi Gang...........

 

I recently bought a Swingster.

 

I love the guitar, however I was getting some string noise.

 

I thought I may needed to get the frets leveled.

 

I took it to the Luthier and after he checked it out

he told me that the noise was due to the fact that

the angle of the neck was wrong.

 

He explained that the strings were coming into the bridge

and a low angle and then they were coming off from the bridge

to the tail piece at a low angle and that was what was causing the noise.

 

I believe he said the low angles were not providing enough string tension.

 

He said he didn't like to be the bearer of bad news but I should

return the guitar and ask for another one with the hopes that the

new one would have a sharper neck angle.

 

I did return the guitar to Musicians Friend and I am waiting

for the to send me a new one.

 

 

As he explained it it made sense............

 

But I have done some research on the inter net

and I can't seem to find anyone else talking about this.

 

 

Is what he said correct?

[Bluesman J]

I purchased A Swingster Royale about six months ago and have had no problems with intonation or anything else. Wait for the replacement...my thoughts,you were just the unlucky receiver of a not so perfect Guitar. Good Luck.

 

 

 

 

[SpruceTop]

I had an '05 Gretsch 6120 that had too shallow of a neck angle. The first symptom was that the bass strings would often hit the neck pickup pole pieces. The pickups in a 6120 mount straight into the top bracing. So you can't lower the pickups unless you cut into the top bracing as far as I could tell. Also, the pole pieces were screwed in s far as they would go. So the other choice to avoid hitting the neck pickup while playing was to raise the strings. But the string height was already at my upper limit. Or maybe remove pole pieces...

 

I know this symptom is not the same as yours but it does demonstrate that set neck's can be installed at the wrong angle.

[Jayyj]

As a fan of Gibson and Epiphone semis and Bigsby B6s, I'm no stranger to the dreaded bridge rattles that can occur with this setup, usually rattling saddles that don't have enough downward force to push them down against the bridge or strings that are vibrating weirdly due to not being properly seated in the saddle. Usually some fettling with the Bigsby gets me to a point where everything works smoothly, but I'm surprised it should be a problem on a guitar that was designed for this set up. Having said that there is often a margin of error when it comes to neck pitch, and it's quite possible your guitar has a slightly underset neck, so well worth sending it back.

 

Good luck with it!

[Gordy01]

If the neck angle is too low, and the bridge is adjusted to the bottom of its' travel to get good action, it is possible to not be able to adjust the tail piece low enough to get a good string angle angle over the back of the bridge. Even at that there would have to be almost no angle at all to get string slop noises.

Usually the problem would be that you can't adjust the pickups low enough like Sprucetop said.