Manchester Guitar Tech
Dell Arte Gypsy Jazz
Dell Arte gypsy jazz guitar bridge reprofile
The owner of this Dell’Arte DG-P1 “The Pigalle” oval soundhole gypsy jazz acoustic guitar was finding the high action a bit hard to handle so brought it in for a setup.
As you can see the solid rosewood bridge isn’t adjustable and to take wood off the bottom would have disturbed the nice “moustache”.
The only solution then was to reprofile the top. I deepened the string slots one by one until the string height was acceptable then ground the top of the bridge down so that the slots were about as deep as the string’s radius. I then reprofiled the sides of the bridge to restore the gentle curve before sanding smooth and polishing with gun stock oil.
Hi, I hope you don’t mind me asking a random question but I’m not a guitarist myself so the technical aspects are way beyond me.
I bought an Altamira M01 gypsy jazz guitar for my 15-year-old kid. It’s his first gypsy jazz guitar, he’s mad about that style of music which I find funny, I was a wee punk at that age.
He’s findind the action too high for him. He’s most used to an action around 2.8 to 3mm on the low e. but this one is around 4-5mm. I don’t know enough about it to say whether that’s just what those guitars are like or whether it is a fault?
Add into the mix that he’s left handed so if I need to return it there’s no real alternatives at a reasonable price in UK.
I googled the style and your name pops up so any advice or guidance you could offer would be much appreciated.
Gerald.
Yes that action is much too high. It can be lowered by re-profiling the bridge. Normally you’d sand the base but due to the construction of the moustache bridge the wood needs to come off the top. This is a bit trickier but any competent tech ought to be able to do it.
As a rough rule of thumb, for every 1mm reduction in action at the 12th fret you need to take 2mm of the bridge.