Official Luthiers Forum!

I've got this Seagull 12 string that I've been restoring. I've had it strung up for a while now after repairing the broken headstock and the guitar looks strange. The top has almost no dome. There is about .016" clearance on the edges of the top. I know this can sometimes be the sign of a dried out guitar, but this guitar has none of the other symptoms and humidity has been pretty constantly between 45% and 50% lately. The guitar was probably $4 or $500 dollars when it was new, so perhaps this is just the reality with inexpensive guitars?

My limited experience with inexpensive 12 strings is they frequently have too much dome - my old D12-28 had developed quite a belly before I had its neck reset. How is the neck angle?

Its passable. With no tension a straight edge clears the top of the bridge nicely, with tension a straight edge just bumps the top of the bridge. There's still an okay amount of saddle left too. I will say the bridge looks awfully thin though, and it looks like it came that way. This all might just be normal, and I'm just not used to twelve strings, it plays okay, and sounds good.

Could it just have been built dead flat, assuming that string tension would pull a slight dome into the top? If so, it seems to be doing a little better than expected!

How is the guitars state of hydration? How is your RH? That picture is a classic case of what a dried out guitar top looks like.

_________________
Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

That's what I thought too Brian, but there don't seem to be any other signs of de-hydration, and the RH in my shop for the last couple months has been in the high 40s/low 50s.

Again, I'm not sure there are any problems, it just seems very strange to me.

A flat guitar top is not unusual. It may have been built that way. What you don't want to see is excessive outward bowing or any sinking.

The reason I asked is that most of the time when you see a severely dehydrated guitar with a shrunken top the neck angle will look over set - one of the characteristics is that the action will drop and they get buzzy. If the neck angle looks OK or even underset then I would guess that the top is just naturally flat.

I've played several Seagul 12 strings, mostly the cedar topped ones and thought they were pretty good bang for the buck guitars. They have simple bolted neck joints that tend to come loose - I have done two "resets" by merely popping the paper off the neck block and snugging up the bolts.

Yeah, it's probably fine. I generally think Seagulls are great value as well, inexpensive, but they don't tend to cut the important corners. It's probably just how this guitar is, like I said it's set up well, sounds good, no other obvious flaws structural or otherwise. It just looks kind of odd. Oh well, moving on...