correcting neck alignment - how to?

[bcncello]

Not long ago, soon after acquiring my current student violin, I found that the neck was not properly centered so the bridge must be placed off-center, 2-3mm towards the bass side. I've been thinking ways to solve this bad alignment of the neck and thought perhaps to unglue the top just under the neck block, pull on the scroll sidewise a bit and then re-glue.

 

Could this work?

[Brad Dorsey]

No.  The fingerboard would not move towards the center because the neck and the block would still be glued to the back.  And you do not want to try to separate the neck and the block from the back.

 

Instead, you might think about doing something with the fingerboard.  The simplest way to center the fingerboard would be to plane enough off the bass edge of the overhang to center it.  However, this could make the fingerboard overhang too narrow.

 

Another possibility would be to remove the fingerboard from the neck and reglue it so that the overhang is centered on the body of the violin.  The problem with doing this is that then the fingerboard would no longer be exactly aligned with the neck.  You could correct this mis-alignment by removing a bit of wood from the edges of the neck and the fingerboard, but this could lead to other problems like making the neck too narrow or requiring some varnish touch up.

 

Finally, you could remove the present fingerboard and fit a new one that is centered.

 

A more drastic remedy would be to remove the neck and reset it centered.

[Fiddler45]

 

 

Finally, you could remove the present fingerboard and fit a new one that is centered.

 

 

 

This is the easiest and most effective, if it is not too far off.

[bcncello]

Finally, you could remove the present fingerboard and fit a new one that is centered.

That would be to glue a centered fingerboard on an off-centre neck?

[Brad Dorsey]

Yes.

[JesseBrano]

All of these responses are way off center.  You ... GO TO THE CHIROPRACTOR!! 

[Brad Dorsey]

...you could remove the present fingerboard and fit a new one that is centered...

 

For more information on this, go to:

 

http://www.darntonviolins.com/violinmagazine/book/setup.pdf

 

Scroll down to page 13 and read the "Therapeutic Fingerboards" section.

[G,dae]

Does this need to be recentred other than for aesthetic reasons? Will it actually play/sound any better or worse if everything else is in the correct position but the fingerboard is off centre??

[Brad Dorsey]

1 hour ago, G,dae said:

...Will it actually play/sound any better or worse if everything else is in the correct position but the fingerboard is off centre??

Not necessarily.  The only way to find out is to try it and see what happens.

[nathan slobodkin]

While the neck and finger board position does not affect sound very much the bridge position in relation to the center of the instrument and to the bass bar and sound post definitely does. The problem with a misaligned FB is that if you put the bridge in the right place the instrument becomes difficult or impossible to play because the strings are so far off the edges of the Board. You can improve the situation with a lopsided Board and some compromise with the bass bar but if you want the best out of any fiddle a straight neck and fingerboard alignment is pretty important.

[Jeff White]

Just  a thought.  He said it was a student violin.  If the maker of this instrument could misalign the neck, then they could also misalign the BB.  Possibly check to see if the misaligned neck lines up fine with a misaligned BB. 2 wrongs make a right..well, kinda............  I can't see that any student violin is worth the expense of making a theraputic fingerboard.  What is the violin?