Not wishing to be rude to anyone, there’s a bit of a phobia or pre-occupation or hair-trigger for neck resets on vintage guitars sometimes. It isn’t always necessary. I wrote the following down and keep it as a word document for situations around neck resets.

Re action..

1) Firstly, set truss rod for correct amount of relief ie very slightly concave, virtually flat – or a slight variation thereof to suit your playing style. The truss rod is only for this purpose, not to adjust the action per se, although obviously the action is affected by the truss rod setting.

2) Take material off the bottom of the saddle until it just peeps above it’s slot. You will then have to recut the string guide slots to re-introduce a decent ‘ramp’ or string angle in order to provide downforce and stability on the saddle.

3) If you need to, remove the saddle and skim the top of the bridge by one or two mm. Obviously you then have to repeat (2) above.

4) Cut the nuts slots as low as you can for clean sound and low action.

5) Consider fitting a Bridge Doctor to lower the bridge a tad more.

By doing those things above you often can easily lower an action by 3 – 4mm which for most guitars will negate any need for a reset. The adjustments I mention are not for the the feint hearted, with respect, you have to know what you are doing, so if in doubt get a pro to do the job.

I have found that fitting a bridge doctor does not actually lower the bridge that much, it has more of a beneficial effect in stopping it tilting, and also reducing fan shaped tautness in the top below the bridge, thus ‘opening up’ the guitar for a much bigger, fuller sound – and that has been proven by JLD with graphs and recordings.