Is this a normal tailpiece height?

[Dave]

The photo in the OP looks perfectly reasonable to me. Raising or lowering the stop bar does absolutely nothing to the sound of the guitar, but avoiding undue pressure on the bridge will keep it from collapsing. Play on my friend.

I agree.
The tailpeice is adjustable for this exact reason.

I topwrap my guitars but it's not really necessary You cna just raise the tailpiece. The OP's tailpiece hieght looks perfectly fine. Nothing too extreme there.

 

[ChubbyFingers]

^ That's great.

I did my machine shop training - at Westland, the UK's main helicopter manufacturer, apprentice school - in the mid 80s using mid 40s Cincinnati machine tools. CNC was really only just coming in in those days.

We could achieve +/- 0.010" on lathes and milling machines quite easily, but diametral tolerances in the 10ths usually required grinding.

 

[ChubbyFingers]

So what's a normal tail piece height ... in 64th's ?

17-5/7ths 64ths

 

[donepearce]

^ That's great.

I did my machine shop training - at Westland, the UK's main helicopter manufacturer, apprentice school - in the mid 80s using mid 40s Cincinnati machine tools. CNC was really only just coming in in those days.

We could achieve +/- 0.010" on lathes and milling machines quite easily, but diametral tolerances in the 10ths usually required grinding.

Yes, when you have to use judgment to get the dimensions right it is important not to waste time. Don't try for better tolerance than the job demands. A high/low go-no go gauge is a good way to achieve this. It has to be accurate but you only need to do it once. I prefer to keep my nice measuring equipment away from machine tools as much as possible.

 

[ChubbyFingers]

Best bet these days is to keep ME as far away from machine tools as possible

 

[Guithartic]

All three have adjustable nuts and the strings are "only just" off the first fret.

That’s a great band name.
The Adjustable Nuts.

 

[Guithartic]

I’m fine with it now. I loosened the strings to see how high the stop bar could go before the screws came out. You can actually raise it until the stop bar is just above the saddles. So the height I have is fine. I took it to a luthier, he said it looks normal and showed me an actual ‘61 walnut SG, and the stop bar was about the same. I probably will top wrap anyway though.

 

[3bolt79]

I first learned Imperial measurements as a child then we switched to metric when I was about twenty. I guess I am bilingual in them still. But I have never understood failing to reduce fractions to their simplest form. I gather that in the timber trade you still use 4/4 instead of 1?

Yeah, pretty much. I wish that Stew Mac sold metric radiused Sanding blocks. It would make working on Ibanez guitars quicker. And yeah, when I think of Ibanez guitars, I am used to dealing with metric, as they publish their specs in mm.

Of course with a flat sanding beam it doesn’t matter if metric or SAE, but it takes a lot longer to do a leveling.

 

[Sootio]

I agree.
The tailpeice is adjustable for this exact reason.

I topwrap my guitars but it's not really necessary You cna just raise the tailpiece. The OP's tailpiece hieght looks perfectly fine. Nothing too extreme there.

Top wrapping works just fine. I raised my stopbar just to make restringing a little easier. 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.