Allowable Neck Misalignment?

[IdahoSwing58]

I have been working on this old Cervini ply bass, learning as I go. I fit a new Gollihur adj. bridge last weekend (the old one was not quarter-sawn, and had really wide grain at about a 45 deg angle to the face; real cheapo, sloppy-loose adjusters; etc. - no wonder it warped). In being careful to measure and get everything well-centered and even string spacing, etc., it became apparent that the centerline of the neck/FB was not co-linear with the center of the body.

What would be an allowable amount of neck/FB lateral misalignment with respect to the body centerline? In other words, if you sight down the FB from between the A and D at the nut, over the center of the bottom end of the FB, projecting onto the bridge top face, how far right or left of the centerline of a properly centered bridge would be considered acceptable?

Ideally, and on expensive instruments, I am assuming tenths of mm is likely. But, on a cheap ($1000-class) plywood, what is acceptable in your opinion? This is an angular mis-alignment, not a lateral offset, and there is no noticeable twist or warp. The FB is ebony, but not a high grade (some brown streaks, localized wavy grain, and a couple of pin knots visible, but still has good thickness).

On this bass, that extended centerline intersects the bridge face about 5 mm toward the E side. The result is that the G string crosses the end of the FB about 5-6 mm from the edge, while the E is in the 12-14 mm range.

I further assume a neck reset could adjust this alignment back to tolerance, but the cost is probably not worth it.

FYI - I got this bass as a learning tool. If I find I like it and pursue playing, I'll probably get a better lam or hybrid (UB Hawkes or NS Cleveland, maybe) in about 2 years. This one has decently acceptable tone and acoustic volume (adjusting the SP helped even out the response). I'm setting it up to make it comfortably playable. I'm sure the neck/FB has been this way probably since it was new.

Thanks in advance for your opinions/comments.

[Marcus Johnson]

Well, this is probably a luthier question. But as a player, I recently ran across a carved bass that was in the same shape as what you described. It is FUGLY, and the scroll was pointed towards the Northeast at an alarming angle. However, it posesses the sweetest Blue Note type sound I've run across in quite awhile. I think any time that you can spend playing any bass is worthwhile, if only to serve as a bad example for future reference (Cremona...oops, did I say that out loud? ) I started out on a fiberglass dog of a bass, and yet when I played it recently, I found I could make music on it.

[arnoldschnitzer]

That doen't sound all that terrible for a beater bass. Most basses, even when the neck is dead-center, will require some funny-business at the bridge. That's because the played-in top is rarely symmetrical in its arching. The way to deal with it is to make one foot of the bridge longer than the other. Then you can have the strings centered on the bridge, the bridge centered on the body, and the strings centered on the fingerboard.