วีดีโอ

Jajaja something so esoteric for me to find , jajaja , you nailed it. You thought it was the ghost of Leo messing with the guitar , jajaja.

Very interesting , certainly I'll apply some of your ideas if u don't mind , I liked the mustang bridge on top of the tunematic posts , I will go for that. I have a question about what you did with the neck : you bought a Fender neck made in Mexico if I understand correctly , did it match the pocket and the holes ? . The JM necks that I found in London are JM Vintera but no matching headstocks , is just an USA thing ? I will definitively look more exhaustively into that but if you can answer my question that will explain why I can't find them here . Thank you very much , you are a very nice guy , any other greedy bastard would ceratinly keep the find of those bushings in Amazon to him , what you give you get , what you sow you collect . I'm in the process of doing something similar but I don't think I would change the neck or the pick ups , only if I find a 9 1/5 radius neck with matching headstock and if the holes, the height and the pocket adjust is right and I know I'm asking too much, but it has to be a perfect neck for this guitar . I think he got a perfect neck bc the aesthetics and for his playing preferences and I'm very happy for him . I have the same pickguard he has , but I kept the aluminum pickguard in place so I put the tortoise shell pickguard on top of the aluminum one , it feels very robust and there is no hum. Only the top wheels of tone and volume are a lttle bit under the level but is not a problem I even like it that way . Just wanted to share that, it works for me . Have a nice day brother.

Hey man, can you go into more detail about how you remove those legs off the bridge on your first mod? I have a similar setup here and I really liked that idea but I’d like to know how to safely remove the legs as well as what diameter you used to get that rocking action goin

Well done Sir!

What do you think of the Guyker Jazzmaster bridge? It’s got rolling saddles. Haven’t seen much info about it since it’s newer.

I haven't used the nova bridge but I got the stay staytrem bridge and it's so good. Also relatively cheap

where can you get official avri virbratos?

I wish you would’ve made this video like a year ago, before I dropped $200 on a Halon bridge. Great video!

🤯

Thanks for the video, really interesting.

Heyo! Thanks for producing entertaining and useful offset content. Been following on IG for awhile, now following here. Cheers!

Love this guitar. Thank you Eddie. 🙏🏼

I’m cumming

Legend

as always cool video :)

🐄🐄🐄

Shut up

I have used all kinds of materials for shims. My poor explanation of why I think the full shims can dampen the resonance may be that the vibration spreads throughout the shim itself before it is transferred to the body. So essentially the shim is the middle man in a transaction, and we all know the middle man always takes his part of the deal. EDIT, just got to the part of the video where you mentioned similar.

thank you for this. I just bought a cheap Esquire top loader as a back up for my Les Paul Jr for gigs. Getting the action right meant hardly any break angle for the strings, resulting in major sitarring. Yesterday I shimmed the neck with some card board and it seemed just fine. On the lookout for full pocket wooden shims because sure they must be better right? Thanks to this video now, I'll just leave it be. Yesterday that Esquire came to life for me. Could it possibly be because if you use a full body shim, there is something between the neck and body? Where as with just some cardboard or a pick or whatever, at the end of it the neck is actually touching the body?

Just bought mine today. Good to know this fix. Thanks for posting!

I shim guitars using a popcicle stick . you have to sand it till its almost paper thin , even though its thin it still raises the neck quite a bit

I'm sorry I'm not buying it. Confirmation bias dude...

Leo Fender's method was actually to get the neck screws mostly in, then get the strings up to pitch, then tighten the neck screws down. This way, the string tension is pushing the neck into the body as much as possible before screwing in. Now, your shim is right on and ski jump is right on.

I always used one of the shop's business cards. Cut in half for a little, folded in half for more, and I'd trim off what was necessary to fit the width. My own Strat has a folded one. Never once had a complaint and my setups had plenty of return customers each time they got another guitar.

He never attempts to explain what he means by "resonate/resonance." It's a subjective word so it's not something that can be measured. As such we're just taking his word for it that one type of shim is better than the other. I had the opposite experience; I purchased a new Guitar (Slick SL-57 Strat copy) that was "blemished" pretty badly-it had a broken neck (near the headstock). So I had to take the neck off right away to fix the break. I knew that it had a factory-installed shim, of the non-full pocket variety. I put the fixed neck back on & played the Guitar for a couple of years. It had good sustain but I didn't love the neck angle & couldn't really get the action I wanted so I looked into shims. I found the full pocket type & on a whim decided to try one. The results have been great; the Guitar kept all of its sustain & maybe even added a bit. Still sounds/plays as expected. I was able to set it up with a bit better action as well. Nary a complaint. I thought I'd watch this video to see what could possibly go wrong but I'm not convinced that there's any difference. Someone in the comments brought up that with an older Guitar separating the wood that has been smashed together for 50+ years might lead to the "resonance" deficit that some folks are reporting. That may be true; my experience is with a newer instrument that didn't have all that time to settle in. With older instruments I'm sure there's some variety of voodoo going on that can't be easily identified. But I can report that on a newer Guitar using a full pocket shim was entirely successful; I couldn't be happier.

When Fender said they didn't do an American Ultra II Jazzmaster because the line is ultra modern and JM players are traditional minded I almost yelled at my screen. A super modern Jazzmaster is exactly what I've been waiting for.

Here’s an actual Luthier th-cam.com/video/gW6PgWN2m6w/w-d-xo.htmlsi=c40Iaiqw7TAgu3eG That debunks your method and the results why you are potentially going to screw up that neck pocket…

I feel like we are approaching the brass nut vs bone nut arguments again. Let’s try two washers made of various materials on the two pickup-side (compression) neck screws. 1/2inch OD? Brass, aluminum, maple, ebony, bone, etc. All the same thickness as required for the test instrument.

Yep. I came to the EXACT same conclusion and went back to using business card strips,bout 1/4" wide, and the loss of sustain and tone are minimal, if at all, compared to full neck pocket wood shims. I usually hole punch 2 holes in the card strip shims, for the neck screws, but on occasion may put them under or over the screw holes, depending on what the neck heel angle needs to be. And that depends on the pocket shelf itself, as well as the fret level, as well as the action from string to top of fret. There's a REAL disconnect of resonance, once the neck wood mass gets blocked by something as foreign as a full pocket shim, to the body. I'd rather not have to shim at all, but the card strip shim and the right placement of it, pretty much solves any neck angle probs for me. Glad you made this vid!👍👍 Back to playin.. Thanks n Mahalo😉🤙

Unfortunately since how the guitar resonates while being played acoustically has zero bearing on the tone when amplified it really does not matter and is basically all in the clients head. 😂

what the f is a neck shim??

Yes, and you can do that to amps cover too...

You've gotta say who that luthier in NYC is :) come on, it's driving us nuts :)

Definitely would love to hear an update video if the comments section develops this idea

Hi, its the scew tightness, not the shim, untighten the screws closest to the neck and you get resentence again, over tightened screws dulls the tone, and makes the strings feel tighter.

So one time I decided to listen to others tell me my old cardboard shim was inadequate and I should be using a full shim. I had an extra thick shim which was how my strat came from factory in 62. It was resonate as all get out to me I could feel it rumble under me when strumming. But everyone was like Oh you need a full shim it's so much better bro! So I put a StewMac one in and same issue, it became wimpy feeling and notes just didn't ring anymore. I thought the same exact thing that the wood was maybe too soft and spongy compared to the ash the body was made of. So I even made a full shim out of ash to the same exact degree in my woodshop. And guess what... it still was wimpy! It didn't improve the vibration feeling at all even with an ash shim. I put back the original cardboard stock shim.. and back to boom!! Some people trip about the void space old shims leave and think that robs it.. but full shims to me seem to rob it. Old school just works!

This is actually something that bothered me with neck through and set necks for the longest time, though i could never put my finger on exactly why until i figured out that it was those designs specifically that do it. The irony is that a full shim or a glued in joint are transferring sound BETTER, and thats why it feels weird to us. Strings vibrate to produce sound waves, but sound waves and vibrations throughout the entire body are the results of the kinetic energy of the strings being lost. Acoustically, it will make your guitar sound worse and quieter, but since an amplified guitar produces sound through the interaction between the string vibrations and the magnetic field of the humbucker, it has the reverse effect, giving you more volume and more sustain because the strings aren't losing as much energy to the body, allowing them to vibrate more. Unfortunately, i think most of us play unplugged a lot more than we should, so we end up not liking that effect lol. It's also a weird placebo kinda thing where it just feels better and more natural to FEEL that extra resonance. The effect it ultimately has on the amplified sound is so minor that i will gladly give that up to soothe my dumb lizard brain. It's kinda like a gibson headstock feels better than an epiphone.

This guy's theory is you're tightening the neck screws with the neck under tension, which helps sound conduction th-cam.com/video/5P802vhtccc/w-d-xo.html

NGL - I've 100% used picks. Advantages: they come in precise fractions of mm and I have a bunch from when I was deciding what picks I liked and didn't like.

Just regarding the shim "angle," I've used 2-3 layers of Blue Painters Tape about 3/8 inch wide in the end of the neck pocket toward the bridge. I have tried many types of shim materials and sizes, and this was the easiest solution. I can't say if it affects the tone or resonance.

I suspect your dampening theory is right, but I think an additional reason might be that the flexibility (actually compressibility) of the cardboard shim also allows the neck to act as a lever, with its fulcrum where the heel of the neck joins the body of the guitar. This would allow the base of the neck to vibrate slightly directly against the soundboard (if my theory is correct). It would also make a guitar with a 'traditionally' shimmed neck even better than a new guitar.

at the end of the day it doesnt matter once you plug it in. it's an electric guitar, how it "feels" unplugged is pointless.

🤙

Sometimes if a bolt-on neck guitar leaning for example against the amplifier falls over, something happens presumably in neck pocket/neck junction, and the sound is not anymore what it used to be. The resonant ring and sing thing is gone because the neck pocket is not anymore as tight as it used to be. And it is very difficult to fix. I have seen that happen. You cannot perhaps notice it if you haven't played that guitar before the incident, but if you have, you immediately notice that something is wrong. It is very sad.

I do have a full pocket shim in a guitar, yes it kinda sucks away the tone. I think it might be a good option if you have a problematic build or an old Japanese pawn shop guitar that may not be playable in a lot of ways because a neck pocket may be incorrectly or roughly routed or damaged, but for a nicer guitar I wouldn't use one and just use a regular old shim at the heel, Actually my preferred shim is box cutter razor blade . Also from my experience that "ski jump" is actually caused by over tightening or too long neck screws going through the neck wood into the fingerboard wood. Doesn't have anything to do with shim

this is why woodworkers (particularly custom furniture makers) should work with luthiers. i'd bet dollars to donuts your shim is too soft a wood and or not a tone wood. naturally a hard tone wood, particularly one that is oily or resinous would be more resinous instead of a sponge.

I love your video but you blabber alot before getting to the main point and its annoying. Anyway i still love your vid keep on keepin on

You shouldn't listen to ANYONE that thinks you must have Stewmac anything for it to be a good repair. Especially shims. You can buy a $3 piece of maple/alder/whatever veneer and make your own if you feel the need. Pretty much anything they sell can be purchased or built cheaper. Even the big stuff like the neck tensioning jig and stuff like that. SM is the very last resort for me in 99% of cases. I only buy there if there's no other way to get what I need. That ain't often. At all. Finally, just because a full shim made one or two guitars worse doesn't mean you shouldn't use them on any guitar. There could be something specific to that guitar that's the problem. Unless you've been through this with HUNDREDS of guitars, you have absolutely ZERO to base this on. Oh wait. You have 2 or 3 cases to base this on. 🤦🙄 No I don't have full shims in my guitars and I don't have an opinion one way or another.

This is worth a Purlitzer Price, man!

I think that it's wonderful how Fender offset became the canvas for sonic exploration. In fact, it might be their defining ‘feature’. Embrace the idiosyncrasies!