toyL said:
I am "clueless", and yet we still have an "inexpensive" guitar that OBVIOUSLY fell to shit because the strings were too heavy...what size strings does this particular model ship with?...it's really no more complicated than that...and I'm "clueless"
Yes, you are clueless, because while the problem was caused BY SOMETHING ELSE ENTIRELY. What part of a badly fitting saddle do you not understand here? Or is the part where the saddle did not sit deep enough in the bridge to support the tension? Either of these things have nothing to do with the guitar, and EVERYTHING to do with a bad repair.
toyL said:
"Taylor" is the only company that I am aware of that "bolts" their necks into place as a ""standard" practice. Anyone know of some other company that does this?
Santa Cruz, Breedlove, Larivee, Lowden (IIRC, ask Muttley), and a growing number of small shop builders to boot. Oh, and Martin, on their lower end guitars (i.e., anything lower than a style 18); don't let the "tenon" joint fool you, when they come loose they pay us to, get this, TIGHTEN THE BOLT.
And of course, that is just talking about high end guitars. Most cheap guitars these days are made with bolt-on necks, including Fender, Washburn, Yamaha, lower end Alverez, etc.
toyL said:
I own a cheap ($350) Washburn that has the neck-bolt mod according to Taylor's specs, and the action on this guitar is tremendous--like playing a well set-up electric--very little string "tension", it's entirely uneffected by humidity and temp changes...in fact, I've never had to take it back to the shop ever since the mod was performed several yrs ago...and
How old of a Washburn? If it is within the last few years it probably CAME with a bolt on neck. If it is an older one, then you spent WAY to much money on a bad repair, on a guitar which should have just gone in the trash anyway. You will certainly never get your money out of it.
toyL said:
BTW--I'm very selective/careful about string-sizes--if I go "heavy" on 2 or 3, I go a bit lighter on 2 or 3 of the others.
Good for you, but it doesn't change the fact that you have no idea what you are talking about. In fact, it is quite reasonable to believe that you are doing something very bad for your neck by not using a balanced set of strings. If you look at the tension at pitch of standard sets of strings, each string is at very close to the same tension. That is how string companies design their basic gauges, and while I'm not sure it matters much, there is reason to believe that not using a balanced set can cause a neck to warp.
toyL said:
I'd love to hear you explain exactly what the "major problem" is with "OVER-BUILT"--"inexpensive guitars". Could it possibly have anything to do with the materials used, design, or workmanship?
The problem with an over-built guitar? I'd think that would be obvious - they sound like shit. The top can't move enough, or at enough frequencies, to provide a decent sounding guitar. Does anyone with an IQ in the triple digits need that explained? Hell, for that matter, I'm not sure that you even need to get very high into the double digits to get that one. Sure, it is very possible to go too light, but that is rarely an issue in mass produced guitars.
toyL said:
Yes, I understand what light, medium, and heavy mean "today". However, when I first picked up a guitar 30-some years ago, lights were .008...you get the picture?...and there's plenty of great sounding stuff out there that was performed and recorded when the both of us were barely out of our diapers.
No, they weren't. I've got string packages in my shop from back when we had a shop brand of strings (made for us by D'Addario, but with our own packaging) which are older than that, and the gauge of strings from the major manufacturers hasn't changed since our shop opened - 36 years ago, this year - Extra-lights have always been .010s, lights have always been .011s, and mediums have always been .013s. People have moved to LIGHTER strings over the years, seeing as how they can now amplify their instruments, and no longer need to make their guitar so loud (the tendency of players in the 30's-50's is what lead Martin to shift the X brace back and stop scalloping the braces on their guitars in the 40's and 50's - they were spending too much money on warranty work from all the Bluegrass guys using .014 heavies on their D28's so they could be heard along side the banjos). Back in the seventies, we sold more mediums than anything. These days, we sell lights 10-1 over everything else on the wall. Back in the sixties, Eric Clapton had to steal strings from a banjo set to get a .010 for his ELECTRIC, and acoustics have always used heavier strings than electrics. In point of fact, I would not be at all surprised if I were to find out that no one even MADE an .008 back then. Seriously dude, given your complete lack of memory, you should probably have gone a little lighter on the Mary Jane back in the day.
toyL said:
Well said, Flamin Lip. Straight to the point.
Except, of course, he was COMPLETELY WRONG. Martin recommends mediums on many of their guitars.
toyL said:
Exactly what is a "well designed and made guitar"?
I know the jargon can be a bit dense at times, but really this one seems pretty self evident. A well designed and made guitar is one which is designed and built to play well, sound good, and hold up to reasonable normal use. The use of mediums is, by the way, well within the realm of reasonable normal use.
toyL said:
...does Cort even make an electric/acoustic model worth the expense of simply replacing the bridge?
One or two. I've actually seen some Archtops they made which were quite impressive for the money. They weren't Moll's or anything - hell they weren't even Eastman's, but some of them were as good as anything Epiphone puts out.
toyL said:
--apparently the owner of this guitar has some doubt.
Actually, I don't think he has any doubt at all, he knows his guitar is not particularly valuable, and probably not worth the work it needs. The real point here is that they should have done a better job of fixing it in the first place, and not having done so they should fix their own mistakes; pretty standard customer service stuff in MY business plan, though not in most of America, apparently.
toyL said:
Exactly what is a "factory" guitar?...and "why" does HR.com have so many posts asking whether or not such and such guitar is "worth" the expense of such and such repair?
You know, "factory" isn't even jargon, so what don't you understand? A factory guitar is made in a factory setting, such as all of the inexpensive guitars on the market, but also Martin, Taylor, Gibson, etc. This is as compared to what Muttley and I do, which is small shop builders doing most or all of the work themselves. "Factory" versus "hand-made" is what we are talking about.
toyL said:
Do you really think that banging on 13s "everyday" is somehow less stressful on the neck than simply loosening the strings and letting it sit?
Less stressful? No, but if you are playing it everyday you are also (unless you are really dense) looking at it everyday, which means that if a small issue comes up you can do something about it before it becomes a major problem; you can't do that if you have it in storage. Also, when guitars are put up for storage, the climate control tends to be less consistent, so you can have issues from that, and constantly tuning and detuning your strings will cause a lot of unnecessary fatigue on the strings, causing them to wear out much faster than they need to. More to the point, guitars are meant to be played - it's good for them. Your gonna spend a lot more time playing it if you don't have to re-tune it every time you pick it up. Mostly, though, you have completely missed my point, which is that having it strung up with mediums (if it is properly setup) ISN'T GOING TO CAUSE DAMAGE.
Light
"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
I also have a Seagull that is the same. I work in retail selling guitars so 90% of the acoustic guitars going out the door are Chinese made. So when I am talking about most guitars I am talking about what most of the general public buys. Higher end guitars like Martin, Taylor, Larrivee, Gibson and so on for the most part handle a medium gauge string. 
I play with 12's because I like the tone. I may go back to 11's because it'd probably be healthier for the guitar and there wouldn't much tonal difference.