Tailpiece Replacement

[PTChristopher2]

>>> I never even considered the possibility of a misaligned neck . . . except on a bolt-on, like a strat. I would imagine it would take someone returning to the bench from a very long 4 Martini lunch and then setting the neck . . . . to actually screw up enough to misalign it?

In my opinion it is easier than it may seem to have a slight mis-alignment in the neck. A slight change in a hand-cut dovetail or mortise/tenon can project easily to a 3mm (1/8) offset in the ideal tailpiece location. Likewise the tolerance stack-up in a production environment can (and does) result in some imperfect alignment.

>>> I've seen necks set with the tongue and mortise joint as well as the dove tail joint. I'm not sure I can imagine how a misalignment would occur.?.? Could you please . . "splain" further"

In my opinion it comes through the tolerance stack-up in a factory production process, and the minor human touch and imperfection in a bench-made guitar.

It is something to be very carefully considered when doing a neck reset. For example, on a flat-top you will be doing all sorts of careful (razor-sharp) chisel re-cutting of the dovetail. In such a case you need to be very careful to match up to the existing bridge location. (Which is only a small part of why guitars neck resets are not a way to make any real money - in my opinion anyway.)

On our archtops this slight misalignment offers no harm really - just the need to be mindful that we are not aiming the tailpiece for a given location on the body of the guitar, but rather for the centerline of the FB.

My opinion.

Chris

[PTChristopher2]

Oh and,...

The potential misalignment is not necessarily in the neck joint. Bodies can be unintentionally asymmetrical in the lower bout. Or if there is a center seam in the rim, it can be somewhat off-center. In my observation, it happens.

Chris