I let a couple years go by without playing, and now that I've gotten around to picking it back up again I figured it was time to finally get myself something nice and quit struggling with cheap mandolins. I bought a used Breedlove American KF, and everything seems basically in order, the sound is nice, action is nice and low close to the nut.
Farther down the neck, however, it rises significantly (see attached photo). My understanding is that with the first fret held down the string should only be a few thousandths of an inch above the twelfth fret, but mine looks like it's closer to an eighth. This is with the bridge lowered as much as I could, backing the grub screws all the way out on the adjustable bridge, but it's still at that height. I assume moving the bridge on the carved body could lower it farther, but the intonation seems to be just about perfect right where it's at.
I took it to a local guitar repair guy who said he could set up a mandolin, but all he could think to do for it was adjust the truss rod a little bit, which didn't seem to make much of a difference. What I'm wondering is
- Is this action height a problem? I've never played a mandolin that wasn't something in the few-hundred-dollar range from a local shop, so I don't have first hand experience with a well setup instrument. I'm just going off of what I've found online about the ideal string distance. It feels like it plays easier than other mandolins I've played, but I don't know how much easier it could be.
- Assuming it does need to go down farther, are there other approaches that a luthier more experienced with mandolins could take to get it set up properly? I really like this thing and getting it properly set up would be ideal, but I've also got a limited return window so if there's just something wrong with the instrument I'd like to figure it out as quickly as possible
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