Okay to Sand Down Bridge?

Dutchmilk

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Bought a 1960 "Orlando" Baritone uke for $10 the other day off of Facebook. I'm confident the top is solid mahogany not sure about the back/sides but it sounds marvelous (rich and loud, warm tight tone with lots of resonance). I put new D'Adario Titanium DGBE strings btw.

So I really like it but the action is terrible, like 3.5mm - 4mm. It has somewhat of a neck angle and there is no saddle to sand down (the saddle sticks up out of the bridge only about 1mm).

My thought is to sand down the entire bridge (from the top, without ungluing it) and carve a slot for a new low saddle. I'd want to drop the string height at the saddle by around 1/8" (I think) to make it even worth it.

This thing is enjoyable to mess around with but would be so much better with reasonable action. However, I don't want to mess it up and I'm not wanting to pay a luthier $$$. What would you advise?
 
Well, I’m no expert on the technical side of things but that just can’t be the “right” answer. The right answer has to be some kind of neck adjustment but what that would involve or how much it would cost, I have no idea. But having said that, it’s your uke and you’re only out $10 if it doesn’t work, so have at it. :p
 
A lot of baritones have truss rods to adjust the angle, you may be lucky with one that will help correct the neck angle.

Something is obviously wrong there, maybe they tried putting steel strings on it, maybe if you lay a heavy weight on the heel with it face down minus its strings it will regain a better angle, I guess anything is worth trying. :)
 
Bought a 1960 "Orlando" Baritone uke for $10 the other day off of Facebook. I'm confident the top is solid mahogany not sure about the back/sides but it sounds marvelous (rich and loud, warm tight tone with lots of resonance). I put new D'Adario Titanium DGBE strings btw.

So I really like it but the action is terrible, like 3.5mm - 4mm. It has somewhat of a neck angle and there is no saddle to sand down (the saddle sticks up out of the bridge only about 1mm).

My thought is to sand down the entire bridge (from the top, without ungluing it) and carve a slot for a new low saddle. I'd want to drop the string height at the saddle by around 1/8" (I think) to make it even worth it.

This thing is enjoyable to mess around with but would be so much better with reasonable action. However, I don't want to mess it up and I'm not wanting to pay a luthier $$$. What would you advise?

ALL older acoustic guitars (at least the wood ones....) eventually have this problem - typically after 25 years or so. The "correct" solution is a neck reset, which is a really big deal, hard to do well, and quite expensive to have done. The quick and dirty solution has always been to just sand down the bridge, just as you suggest. I wouldn't recommend that on a vintage Martin perhaps, but with a $10 beater, go for it. If you're lucky the saddle may be deep enough for you to avoid having to route a new saddle slot (which is NOT easy to do well without the proper router setup) and just sand down the existing saddle. Good luck!
 
Sounds to me like the neck is warped.

When I looked into this type of problem I found that you have to lower the saddle by 2 to get a string height reduction of one.

Best case would be a truss rod as Keith said.

Sanding down the entire bridge and re-cutting the nut slot might work but would take some real skill. Also, you could only do this to the point where the saddle slot is still firmly attached to the rest of the bridge or if not enough wood was left it could split off.
 
Curious if the OP tried this and how it worked out?
Seen this done on some acoustic guitars and it worked fine.
 
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