Cardboard is made of recycled wood! And it compresses into the micro spaces in the pocket, thus creating virtually solid neck joint that emulates a solid set neck. Unrelated Btw: I was privileged to tour the original Fender factory in Fullerton given me by Mrs Gloria Fender met Leo. A memory that I treasure!
A partial shim on the front or back of the heel will leave an air gap in the middle. Over time, the heel of the neck may warp, and may no longer be flat. I use a full shim for a solid mount, no effect on tone.
It's the neck screws being too tight, nothing to do with the shim, this can happen on any fender, even a P bass. Just loosen the screws and it'll resonate again. Full pocket shims are great, they lower the action without changing the angle of the neck, you still have lots of original wood contact on the pocket walls and through the bolts, a bolt on doesn't resonate like a Gibson anyway, I've had this problem and it's always the screw tightness every time.
someone else also chimed in with this info. Thanks for sharing. The strange part is, I finish up all my setups by loosening each neck mounting screw by a half turn, then retightening without forcing or making them too tight. and I've never had an issue with the short cardstock or plastic shims...only the full pocket shims. I have another guitar in today that the client says is exhibiting this issue so I will try approaching it with this in mind and see if there's any difference from the results described and shown in the video.
@androtekman6131 The card thing is an illusion. Cardboard depresses easily, wood less so - so when you squish tight into card, you're not literally bending wood. Wood on wood too tight does cause lack of resonance, your literally compounding the wood making it more dense. Trust me, it is the neck tightened to tight, and yes, you can use card and other things, but those have their own issues.
@androtekman6131 If you go tight the neck bends with a partial shim, then ski ramp, well maple bends for sure anyway, if not immediately then definitely over time, I've had several P Bass's I have had to file down the frets nearest the body on because someone people did that to them (I blame TH-cam), it also really solves nothing in the long run.
Also if they aren't full pocket it can lead to the sky jump distortion on the fretboard. You are essentially creating a cavity which in combination of the screws pulling the neck into that cavity will distort the neck. Not immediately but over time. Wood warps over time and the effects can only be seen often after years. So always go for a full pocket shim instead of a partial.
@EbonyPope here's a thought that goes against what the Internet world believes in. A partial shim regardless of its material, when placed behind the 2 rear neck screws, might cause a 'ski jump'. However, if the shim is located in front of those screws, that ski jump problem will not happen because there no support propping up the neck at the back. If anything, the opposite might happen and you get a nice fall off (reverse ski jump) which is usually desirable.
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😉🤙
You stumbled upon the reason for the added resonance when you trimmed the shim to fit into the compressed section of wood nearest the body end of the neck pocket. The transmission of energy, whether being vibration or electricity, is diminished by an interruption of the energy along the length of the the conductor, in this case being wood. Allowing the energy to continue unimpeded to the end of the circuit of the vibrations in the neck increases the transfer of frequencies with less energy (trebly frequencies), into the body. I believe the full pocket shim distributes the energy of those frequencies across the neck joint toward the opposite end, which is under tension, causing the attenuation of those frequencies. If you're still reading, what im trying to say is: it sounds better with the shim thimmed to fit the compressed section of wood that has been there since1963.😅
I agree with this. I think the stress distribution in the neck pocket under tension broadly will be a small and reducing compression patch around the outer pair of screws, which are tightened sufficiently to keep that compression - and a patch of direct compression between the neck heel and the back of the pocket. The inner pair of screws probably contribute very little. In addition, the axial pull of the strings forces a longitudinal force through the end of the neck into the wood behind the pocket. If the screws are in shear, there's something wrong with the fit. That means the the major point of vibration transfer will be deep into the heel pocket and through the card shims. Using a full pocket shim may be moving the point of vibration transfer further out of the neck pocket. As with all things guitar related; the theory is one thing. What matters is what works in practice!
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 don't know, man... I just have to ask, and... PLEASE... Don't take this the wrong way, chill out, ok? Here we go: CAN THE REAL SHIM LADY PLEASE STAND UP?
I installed a 0.25-degree shim in my 1999 AVRI '57 Strat. Even with the action set fairly high, the guitar would still fret out during slight bends past the 16th fret. The shim adjustment made a world of difference; it now plays effortlessly, allowing me to achieve two-and-a-half-step bends even with low action. It also resonates better than ever before.
@nickh1193 great info! As I said to another, this video never refuted the functionality of these shims. They have the same ability to lower action as a short stack of cardstock (as Fender did on the AVRI offset guitars). The nuance in my argument was that I and others heard a noticeable drop on resonance as compared to having cardstock shims or no shims (particularly on fender tremolo loaded offset guitars)
@@totallywiredguitars Not questioning your expertise whatsoever. :) In theory, you would think more surface area of the neck contacting the neck pocket would help with resonance, but it’s not always the case. Science is a complex thing. lol
@nickh1193 def didn't take it that way! Was just clarifying as a few folks commenting are highlighting that these full pocket shims do actually get the job done, and I am in full agreement! Now whether it's worth it for someone to shell out $ vs an equally effective free DIY solution, and/or if the resonance thing is problematic comes down to the player
Full shims restored the bottom end resonance on my personal guitars. But yes all wood is different. But also in my experience full pocket shims have reversed ski jumps so take that as you will.
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.
For a little more on this, think of the spot where you pick as the epicenter of a an earthquake. The soundwaves go out from that point, up to the fret, and then back down. With a better neck joint, the energy is transferred better and isn't being lost as sound as it would be with a bad connection. You don't really want ANY vibration in your neck because it's cutting that energy. But again, amplification makes this pretty much a non-issue. I think people really overestimate just how complex an electric guitar is and how many things we make a big deal out of are 100% placebo. What matters, however, is how intangible values like vibe inspire us to play better. A new guitar won't magically make you play better, but it may make you more excited and have more fun which leads to playing more, getting better, and just being inspired a little bit more. A bunch of stickers might just do more for you than any boutique pedal could, if that's how you're wired.
I had a similar issue with a 2004 Strat. I used a full shim because "YOU NEED A FULL SHIM"... SOMETHING changed, I pulled that shim out and installed 2 layers to the back of the pocket of business card (or match book covers) like we did back in 1980's and Voila! The guitar lit the fluff up!
@@totallywiredguitars I did as well! Marketing works! "Full shims give more contact and means more sonic resonance"...meanwhile, the old school way sounds better? go figure? AND it saves $15 per shim!
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.
In my experience with those shims, they're typically made of some species of pine (conifer). This spongy softwood pinched between the two hardwood surfaces could be the deadener you speak of.
Follows your worry,.. But think the screws in the body are about the same, and a body which is not ash, will hardly be able to make a big difference in a guitar. Washers, (as I know) will make the guitar sound more thin, (almost like a ply-body,) - in my experience that is!.
In this case all of them have been maple. Both expensive (stewmac) and import (Amazon no name brands) have the same exact effect. Maple is the most common of the Fender bolt on neck woods...so you'd think there should be no loss in resonance. As others have pointed out, the perception of more resonance may be due more to the slight gap left by short inner pocket shims, creating almost an acoustic sound hole that gets plugged up when using a full pocket shim and results in a duller sound acoustically
I wonder how well a full pocket shim would do if it was saturated in thin CA glue first to make it denser and harder. Might help to retain that spanky bolt on resonance.
Was a bit skeptical by the title but glad I watched the whole thing! I’ll still probably keep the stewmac shims in the neck of some of my guitars but I won’t be going out of my way to buy more lol
To be fair, my test group for this has all been jazzmasters. Perhaps, with how the bridges are on a strat or tele, it's different...bc it has to have did the trick for at least some people right? Otherwise they'd all be huffing and puffing about it all over the internet. But I think your approach after seeing this is smart. I would be curious, if on yr next setup (on a non offset) if regular old business card shims may result in an even more resonant guitar
@@totallywiredguitarsI have two jazzmasters, a jag and mustang with a floating trem haha all of them have a full pocket shim. This definitely gives me some ease though, I have a card stock shim on my hardtail Strat that I was meaning to replace but this video def made me wanna just leave it alone haha looking forward to more content!
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.
If you create contact points without a full pocket shims you are essentially creating a cavity into which the neck wood will be pulled into over time. That's what creates that dreaded sky jump on the neck/body transition.
7:59. The smaller partial shim may simply allow for higher pressure. Maybe the full shim doesn’t get as tight. When I made a full pocket shim I used maple acoustic guitar net setting shim wood. Then I double stuck the wood into the neck pocket. Next I stuck sand paper on the back of the neck and sanded the angle into the shim using the neck itself. Kind of the way PRS sets their final neck angle before gluing their set neck guitars.
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 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.
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.
The important thing when shimming is to put the shim strip between the screws furthest in. If you place the shim after or before the screws it off course will potentially pull to a bend of the tree/neck, but if you put the shim between or somewhat before the last screws you counter that by pulling directly on to the shim with the screws. That will create minimal, if one at all, break angle.
Thanks for sharing! I've only ever done it the old fender way, all the way in the neck pocket, directly beneath the end of the heel. And in all my time doing this (about to be 16 years) - I haven't once had a client who I built or serviced a guitar for (both vintage or new) that had either stock shims or shims put in place by me, that came back to me with a ski jump issue.
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.
I heard the guy from Stewmac say you should always have a little bit of tension on the trus rod to make is resistant more. He said it while Joe Bonamassa was show off his 59 bursts. It always stuck with me. Maybe it has something to do with that. Sometimes it’s a few things and not always just one issue. Thank you for sharing this. I love these kind of videos. It’s these little things you can’t learn from a book and just makes you that much better of a tech after the experience.
I'm in agreement with Dan Erlewine, if that's who you're referencing - with regards to truss rod tension. I find a neck that's dead straight with the minimal amount of relief that one can get away with, is much more resonant than a guitar with too much relief / upbow. I'm glad you enjoyed the vid! I love diving into it with these kinds of discoveries myself. It's true that being a good tech requires not only by the book knowledge, but innovating and inventiveness based on first hand experience and experimentation! My only wish is that I could experiment much faster, bc I often get lost deep within these rabbit holes 😂
Not that it massively effects the tone once amped but I've always preceded to buy maple or mahogany shims from a local woodworker. Soft wood shims can act like a shock absorber if stopping the neck and body touching. A resonant guitar always feels nice to play.
That’s exactly the question I was going to ask. Would a full shim made of the same wood as the guitar body give the desired resonance. I’m just starting out on setting up guitars so this video and thread has explained a lot to me.
Yeah it's as.easy as common sense really. I've been a guitar tech for 28 years so not a real "old timer" yet but I've always used the same of a harder material to retain the best contact/transfer. I'd be happy to hear it makes zero difference amplified as I've never noticed but it doesn't effect the feel of the instrument to the player which is what I'm after. Cedar and softwoods are often used for shims as they're cheap and plentiful plus easy on tools.
@stewartmitchell8007 thanks for chiming in Mitchell! I just wanted to ask...based on yr comment, would you consider the maple shims stewmac sells to be soft?
Of your getting technical there's a janka scale for the hardness of wood and obviously maple is perfect for maple necks and mahogany as it's harder than mahogany. So yeah the stewmac ones would be perfect. I've even made my own ones from hard epoxy before when requiring a specific angle.
This is a wonderful video, you are very articulate. Maybe it’s the pure wood on the neck that is causing the resonance issue, move out the full shim, then you have a shim, then full pocket neck wood on the body. Brilliant! And btw you pulled off this bill bye guy! Lol, love this channel
Thanks so very much! Happy to hear I'm not just rambling on incoherently, which is how I feel I sound sometimes when I'm explaining something based on my own findings after falling deep down a rabbit hole! 😂
Hmm, I’ve used all sorts of shims and lately I’ve just relied on full pocket shims because they seem to be more consistent when I tighten the neck down. I haven’t had any issues myself but, I guess I’ll have to remove it on one guitar I have and try to do an A/B test just to see if I find the same thing out.
Wood to wood is better contact the Sim acts as a buffer and stops the transfer vibration between the strings and body you are literally proving that the body and neck materials do actually matter in the tone of the guitar well done❤
The pocket shim does not allow the sound waves to propagate through the joint, as they impede the transfer of energy. Impedance mismatch of the materials causes the wave to reflect back and not cross the joint.
@totallywiredguitars you did a great job with the explanation, I just rembered some of it from a physics/material science class. I had thought about this until I saw your video. I have a strat to fix when I get some time.
Thank you, I've been really wondering about those full pocket shims. Stew Mac pushes them hard but I always wondered if they'd deaden the tone. I cut my own short shims out of pokemon cards for my jags and jazzmasters
@graysonschissler6215 poké-shims?! GOD-tier lol I actually kind of love how playful one can get with the types of cards you can use for shimming. Come to think of it - i think I have some pokemon cards somewhere myself. Just gotta check if they're worth anything first 🤣
@@totallywiredguitars Dead seriously, I just sold the better part of my childhood Pokemon card collection... With the money, I got a nicely refinished 64 jag neck and body AND a 1960 hardtail strat body! Glad I held on to those so long!!
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
Everything on a guitar that is not the string is there to support the string. So it helps to think of a guitar's neck and body as an energy absorption 'system'. The more rigid the system, less of the string's vibration energy is absorbed over time, which is perceived as greater sustain and resonance. So, while an infinitely rigid string support is impractical, various combinations of wood and metal (and even carbon fibre) have been tried with varying degrees of efficacy. We all have our favourite combinations based on the intricacies of how the string energy is absorbed or reflected.
That was interesting. Have to take your word on the actual change in resonance but less surface area for the vibrations to pass through sure could improve things. Should we now reconsider Fenders Micro-Tilt mechanism?
@DerBullgod def worth testing out for yourself! It's quick and relatively painless, and am curious on folks who have jazzmasters / Jaguars as well as strats and teles to see if different guitars react to these full pocket shims differently and if this may just be a Fender offset issue 🤷♂️
Veeeery interesting. As an engineer (who has turned this over in my mind quite a bit) this ski jump fear just doesn’t really hold water - fundamentally unless there is something pushing the fingerboard down between the neck bolts there’s no reason it should collapse there. I’ve never experienced it, so afaik it’s mythical. Now, ski jump where the neck meets the body? Sure but that’s unrelated.
I think you’re 100% correct about the soft wood shim acting like a deadener. I’m an engineer and I own a machine shop. I could make custom aluminum shims to incredible accuracy. Aluminum is excellent at transferring mechanical energy. Let me know if you want to collaborate and I’ll reach out for specs.
That would be awesome to try! I wonder if full pocket metal shims, constructed at the same angles the stewmac shims come in, .25, .5 and 1 degree, would be any better than their maple shims. Additionally I wonder how those might compare if you made short shims as well from metal
@@EbonyPopeBut yeah it will tell you the facts but what one person hears isn't necessarily what the next person hears, I could think a guitar sounds great you could think it sounds trash, if you get me
I always found masking tape to work extremely well. On a 25.5" scale neck, each later of tape equals about 0.12-0.15 degrees of tilt, depending on the brand.
Steel screening if the neck has shift issues, otherwise business cards, masking tape, playing cards, sandpaper, offcuts of veneer, whatever. Neck and nut shims. No magic lost. I am happy I no longer do it professionally anymore. Musicians can be impossible at times.
I know it's not reversible but by this logic would there be more vibration transfer by sanding down the neck pocket by a 1 degree angle instead of adding shims?
yep, that absolutely is the correct way, but that should be done during construction. Mods like that on a finished instrument unfortunately will diminish its value :( Not to mention all the stamps in the pocket will be gone. I try to avoid shimming as much as possible and would never do it during building process.
I have a Les Paul w/ a ski jump. The tech said he got most of it out, on a re-fret. It was the fretboard that had lifted after the 19-20th frets, that he never took care of
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.
If there's a sonic difference with shim angles or types it will be at the bridge (break angle and string-saddle contact force), not in the pocket itself. Any obvious effect will be a direct effect on string vibrations.
I'm not sure if you watched the whole video but I recreate virtually the same exact angle - measured with calipers the thickness of the full pocket wooden shim at its thickest part and recreated it with short shims made from cardstock. No changes to the bridge. As some have guessed in other comments, perhaps the perception of "more resonance" from short / inner pocket shims is coming from the slight gap between the neck and neck pocket - almost like an acoustic sound hole - that ends up sounding plugged up / duller when using a thick 1 degree full pocket shim 🤷♂️
I've experienced the "deadening" issue with offset setups, and it's not the shim. It's not the shim material, as either wood or plastic is fine. It's tightening the neck screws too tight that causes the problem. Back them off a bit, resonance returns.
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!
👏👏👏 super valuable insight, appreciate you sharing! Especially the bit about how you even took the extra step to make one out of a harder wood and still the same results.
I'm sorry to hear that. This is fascinating though. Clearly there have to be some folks that experience the opposite, otherwise how could this have passed the collective litmus test for so long? Could it be an offset with tremolo specific issue? I wonder
I’ve made two good quality partscaster Teles - both needed reversed neck shims. Used full pocket shims - one 0.25 and the other 0.5. Both necks are now angled perfectly and play very nicely but neither guitar (one swamp ash, the other alder) is as resonant acoustically as my 35 years old plywood Squier Strat(!) 👍
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.
I determined that these shims are too soft but become appropriately stiff if you impregnate them with super glue. As for the ski jump, it did form when I'd used a strip of credit card instead of a shim
Thanks for chiming in! You're among a handful of others in the replies that shared this same experience. Can I ask, so before the superglue, the full pocket shims made your guitar sound less resonant but then after, it resonated as well if not better than direct neck to neck pocket connection (ie. no shim)?
@@totallywiredguitars I did this in a squire jaguar. First I tried a piece of credit card, but after tightening the bolts and setup, i was quite sure a ski jump appeared almost right away, and I had some problems setting up low action (i like 1.2 - 1.8 mm action on 12 th fret). This ski jump was very slight, but I am very sensitive to minor changes. Next I have used a full pocket shim but the guitar seemed a bit less resonant and, what's worse, these shims need time to settle as wood compresses. So basically in the first week or so the shim continues to compress and maybe that's why the weird feeling of lack of rensonance. I even sold this guitar because it made me furious. Next time I did my partscaster which also used a full pocked wooden shim. At first I used it without glue and noticed the usual issues. Next, I decided to glue the shim to the neck, which made it hard. It become impregnated with the super glue and guitar now resonates well, even better than other guitars without the shim.
@truthinesssss perhaps with strats it's a different story! I wonder if a 1 degree would decrease it or if this is offset guitar specific weirdness. Good to know and thanks for sharing!
I installed a .25 on one squier Strat and another .50 shim on another squier Stat for the sole purpose of fixing the action and it worked perfectly. As for Resonance I didn’t even take notice as to what resonance they had beforehand, because they both sounded like crap because of stock ceramic pickups. So when I upgraded to AlNiCo 5 pickups they sounded amazing, so I didn’t even feel like I needed to worry about resonance. I used the Amazon bought ones, by Tosicam, that were solid Maple shims, so the neck would resonate straight through it if it was screwed on tight. I don’t think I have a problem with them resonating because they were solid maple shims.
@jeremiahmeraz9298 this was my thought exactly but found the opposite. But I, and the clients that brought up the issue to me, were very familiar with how their guitars resonated before and after the full pocket shims were installed. That frame of reference I think is crucial on whether folks pick up on this as an issue or not
@@totallywiredguitars yeah, I assume as much, but if it sounds good after installation, then the shim is only there for neck angle purposes, on that guitar. Besides if it mattered what was in between the neck and body so much, the major companies wouldn’t be just throwing random pieces of scrap, card stock, and even folded up duct tape pieces into it, because I’ve found all of the above in them.
@@totallywiredguitars I went back and tried all of my electric guitars (18) and the two that I put full shims in had equally long resonance to my other guitars. I am not sure why your shims soaked up vibration, but I’m positive that full pocket shims work on the ones I installed.
@@grooooved yeah, give or take a second or so. I worked on all of them and set them all up. I can’t speak for you or anyone else, but they all have great resonance. I’m sorry that you don’t get the same results. But it feels like you are slightly jealous that I have that many guitars, and am able to set them all up myself. All it takes is a little of practice, and a little/lottle bit of money for tools.
Mant factors cause a ski jump Mainly tension and natural stability Pick up a guitar , strum and check for resonance (it should be loud and ring well) Brace it in your lap and bend neck forward and backward ( it should not move) Next , do some pinch harmonics (the nastier , THE BETTER) OF COURSE how it plays for you If it fails in any of these areas Hang it back on the hook
Hey man; thank you for putting up this video! I have about six or seven stewmac shims that I bought earlier this year and have yet to install on my bass guitars. Previously I would use mini post-it note pads to provide the shimming. I saw a post from someone who has a plek machine and provided some quantitative data of a guitar with and without a "traditional" 'shove-some-stuff-in-there-shim' (😆) and the data seemed to support some logical conclusions in my head about how this type of shim could cause slight deformations at the end of the fretboard. Afterwards I took out all my shims in a panic and resolved to put in some "proper" shims. I still think it's a good idea, as the stewmac shims are maple and should provide better resonance transfer than post-it-note paper. But I think you are correct in that if you remove the direct point of contact between the "top" of the body pocket and the neck, you are probably doing a dis-service to the superior wood used in our treasured instruments. Maybe there is a middle ground here? In my case, I did not buy the shims with the pre-drilled holes because I'm not a believer in a one-size-fits-all approach. In theory, when I have these shims installed, I should be able to have it done so that there is still contact between the top of the pocket and the neck, while providing the same "filling of empty space" that the angled maple shims allow you to achieve. Since my shims do not have any pre-drilled holes, I should be able to have then aligned in this manner. Unfortunately I am about to start college in a couple weeks, so I do not know when I will have the $$$ to start installing the shims (As I would want a luthier to do it). But if any of what I am saying makes sense here, and you were interested in testing out this alternate method of installing the stewmac maple shims, I would love to hear your opinion of if it solves the problem that using 100% of the pocket space for the stewmac shims seems to be causing. If it does not solve the problem, then maybe there is a benefit to having this empty space in the pocket vs using a shim that provides a more complete taper. Thanks again! This was very interesting to watch.
@Polyinstrumentalism thanks so much for this thoughtful response & analysis! I def think you bring up a number of points that merit further investigation and also make sense! I'm curious myself and if I happen upon any further findings will try to make a follow up, regardless of whether it supports or refutes what I discovered here
Liked and subscribed. This is a great discussion. A little more info on the ski jump is that it appears on mandolins and acoustic guitars. True rod adjustment can make it worse. Sometimes you have to re-shoot the fretboard and refret to fix it. Fiddles don't have this issue but the fingerboard is free floating. It's an interesting topic for sure.
@thomaswagner6495 thank you kindly! I agree, I've found this study to be super fascinating...and it's funny how we as humans will tend to try to discern fact from fiction based on how things are explained. I'm not trying to cut down those respectable and experienced techs / luthiers who think shims cause ski jump, but rather to open up the discussion and perhaps even get more data! The core of my video barely touches on that complex topic and is definitely more focused on the affect of full pocket shims on acoustic resonance, for those whom that factor matters
I've been researching all the different methods to shim a neck and here's what I'm thinking, the reason the current full pocket shim are made of a soft wood, I believe if you were to have a hardwood shim it shouldn't loose it's classic sound. Just a thought I'm not a professional but am an metal Smith and engineer, so has anyone checked this out ?
@cosmicblackHD these shims I've used have all been made of maple. Same wood (on paper) as the neck itself - but maple does come in different varieties, and indeed these could be softer than the neck and / or body wood
not hearing a difference until you hit the strings harder in the after test. i've went from no shim to a .5 degree to fix the angle of a jazzmaster and it didn't change resonance, a strat (needs a 1 degree, but close enough for now) also didn't change the acoustic sound of the guitar. it's possible it is a placebo effect or the wood used in the shim perhaps, but mine were pretty much the cheapest i could find on amazon. it wouldn't make sense that cardboard and an air gap could transfer vibration better than wood to wood contact, but it could be changing the wavelength...
Yeah, I have to admit. I’ve had the same results on (the dozen) basses I’ve done this too. Plays better and sounds worse. I’m gonna try saturating the full pocket shim with epoxy though before I give up on them. Can’t stop tinkering.
Tinkering is good until yr tinkering way more than playing! Haha this is my life and I often lament it 😅 please report back! My two cents, after discussing more with others in the comments: I don't know if it has to do with the density of the shim material, because if it did, then the cardstock shims should not be more resonant. I think now that the direct contact between the neck and neck pocket as well as the gap making an acoustic hole, is why they seem more resonant - whereas a full pocket shim gets between the two and plugs up this acoustic hole and in effect sounds duller
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?
I have found that unplugged resonance is not necessarily synonymous with sustain. To me it seems that there is an indirect relationship between the two
@joeferris5086 I lowkey agree with this - having a resonant Fender Jaguar for example doesn't mean it has good / long sustain - its still shorter & more percussive than say a tele
ive played jaguars for over 20 years i was buying back when you could get 60s models for a couple hundred bucks back when nobody cared ive used little shims and full pocket shims with geat results its all about knowing how to set up your guitars and using propre materials. look at spruce its softer than maple yet in acoustic guitars spruce tops sound better than maple tops. like i said ive owned a bunch of mustangs and jaguars. you need to take each guitar as its own instrument what works for one may not work for another. my 1963 jaguar has a small shim and my 1964 jaguar has a full size pocket shim both are very loud acoustically and sustain great. so many people get fooled by the placebo effect. i have repaired a guitar that had a visible ski jump it was a 60s guitar you have to tighten the neck extremely tight and it takes years and a piece of wood that happens to bend that way under pressure. treat each intrument a it own piece do what that instrument needs and youll be good
For basses, I have had the best experiences with maple veneer, approx. 1.5mm thick, approx. 1 cm wide. I then sand it into a wedge shape (I stick this onto a sanding block using double-sided adhesive tape...then I drag the whole thing over sandpaper until it fits) and that's it. Personally, I wouldn't use paper, cardboard, plastic or anything like that, but that's probably not so important. I'm convinced that the *_direct contact_* between the neck heel and the neck pocket, i.e. the body, is decisive...and logically this doesn't happen at *_any_* point with a full shim! I'm thinking of a tuning fork right now... Full pocket shims? Tried it once...never again! Money wasted, unsatisfactory result. The prices for that wooden cards are absolutely ridiculous!
We're working with about the same specs of 1.5mm - that is what allows me to get about 2.5mm height between the pickguard and base of the rocking bridge on this guitar for enough break angle behind the bridge and thusly, the appropriate string tension to keep the rocking bridge functionality at its most optimal and stable. And the result when using full pocket maple veneer is identical to yours: it does its job just fine but unsatisfactory in the resonance dept!!
Interesting stuff! One question wouldn’t doing a 1.5mm inner pocket old school shim actually be creating a deeper angle than the full pocket 1.5mm shim? Just wondering if we should compensate somehow by making it not as tall… great vid in any case Eddie!
@sleepingtruck thanks my friend! In this case the full pocket 1 degree shim actually was 1.6mm. If the inner pocket version is the same or tiny bit less thickness than the thickest part of the full pocket shim, how is it creating a deeper angle, when the rest of the neck tilts back to full neck to body contact? Do you mean because the thinnest part of the full pocket shim still has some thickness? I think the difference in this case is negligible. I actually had to slightly lower the bridge on this particular example to match the previous action. Hope that helps!
Yeah that’s what I meant - because there’s material at the thinnest part of the full pocket - removing that increases/steepens the angle. Gonna give it a try!
@sleepingtruck would love to know how it goes. Question: have you also noticed this kinda muffling / deadening effect on resonance when using full pocket shims?
Try the full pocket shims again, but elongate the holes slightly so the neck can shift front to back slightly. Bolt it on and string it up to tension, loosen the neck bolts slightly so the neck slides back against the body tightly then tighten the bolts not over doing it. See if that makes a difference.
I can see how the full length shim of soft wood would be a dampener at the heel joint. Having a shim under just two screws means full neck to body contact at the other two screws. Makes a lotta sense to me. Anybody try a denser material (like a short brass shim) under just two screws?
@@PeteKaster - my experience back in the day with an Asian strat made in plywood; there was an steelwasher in the pocket(might have been 2?). That ply-body guitar sounded very thin, and with standard pickups(a bit microphonic) one really could get strange noise/sounds. When Shimmed with a full pocket, maple shim, that guitar actually got quite nice,.. So, I do believe that dampened it's resonance to the better!.
I think they're good for the most part, though, if someone likes a lower bridge for less tension (on fender trem loaded offsets) - you either have to reverse shim or reroute the neck pocket which is not ideal
@rockstarjazzcat they do! And Fender Japan have had angled neck pockets for years now on their offsets. The downside is...if someone wants to lower their bridge so they have less string tension, then a reverse shim is necessary 🤣
I was always wondering why adding a spacer instead of designing in that .125" spacer to the body making? Create that little hill in the pocket. Sure it would be an extra operation or two but wood to wood resonance like a long tenon LP is ideal.
@@rockstarjazzcat The Fender Jaguar manual (which no one read) clearly showed it was meant to be used with a shim and I think they DID ship with one pre-installed for a time. They definitely used to ship Jaguar strung with the 12s it was designed for instead of the 10s or 9s that new models are shipping with these days to please "the modern market".
Good video and I see your point. Even on my phone speaker I could hear a bit more "zing" with the new shim. I have a full shim on my Xaviere JT 100 Offset (I am learning to up my Luthier skills and rewired the electrics closer to Fender (1 Meg pots, Orange Drop 47 capacitor (preference), Switchcraft jack) to get the most out of the stock pickups. I also added locking tuners and Tusq string trees and it came out ok. I have Stringjoy 12s on it and the guitar has a very warm and full authority to its sound. Now this is my first Offset and I wanted a "dumbed down" electronics and I am mainly a Tele guy and I appreciate the Tele formula (could it be that the JT stands for "Jazzy Tele?!?"). Add to that that it was the best bang for the buck at $250ish that I could get an Offset for at the time. I definitely appreciate the Offset formula as I also play hollow bodies (love that Rockabilly and Psychobilly) so I will be upgrading the bridge and trem (going for the Tele style Haylon bridge and trem set that costs more than the guitar and all the upgrades I have in it) in the future. So I never noticed a "zing" or a resonance that is lacking in this Import guitar when I got it stock. All the upgrades I have done have made it better including the full size neck shim. I also had to do a "fill and redrill" on the neck pocket and neck as whoever drilled the bottom forward hole at the factory (the one hole where getting it right is crucial) screwed up and did it twice so the layer in-between the wrong hole and right hole was spongey and flexible. So that doweled both holes and drilled a new one and it got better. I also shielded the internal cavity (copper foil tape with conductive adhesive) and pickguard which helped reduce noise issues from the pickups. I like GFS pickups for budget guitars (my favorite so far is the Surf 90, basically a DeArmond meets a P-90 in a humbucker size) and the guitar came stock with the Jazzmasters which I know loads of people use them to upgrade Squiers especially. Happy with the pickups, the body is decent, paint looks great, the guitar has a very solid feeling resonance which could be described as "muted" however it never had a zing to mention. I should point out that my favorite pickups are Filtertrons and P-90s so a warm resonance is par for the course. I have had the "ski jump" but only on my current bass guitars. It's to the point they need to have frets removed and get sanded down to fix them. I think its the Arizona desert that plays on that. I do mess around with wiring and setups and I mainly do these on budget Import (Squier adjacent) guitars. I do like JD Moon and Kaish as upgraded switches over OEM since full size switches tend to be too big for Import cavities. I use mainly CTS and Bornes mini pots (usually due to tight cavities)to get the guitars to behave more like Fender, Gibsons, and Boutiques from a "control feel level." Its not the same but for the throw and the dynamics, pretty close.
@@totallywiredguitars Yeah, thousands of people, even millions agreeing on total bullshit, it would be so unheard of... Make the opposite video, and you'll get the same comments, totally agreeing the shim is way much better. The reality is you couldn't tell the difference between the two if it was recorded with the same playing (because you are playing harder after your modification, consciously or not). You couldn't even tell them appart in your own hands (providing you're masking any visual clue)
I use 1" strips of sandpaper. Same idea but I just think they feel a little more dense and a bit thinner. I want the smallest amount of shim that gets the job done but I think the real key is the neck connecting to the body directly to create the vibrations.
You scratched your head when you said i was scratching my head, lol it made me laugh i love little subconscious things like that 😂 Which way does the grain go on those full pocket neck shims?
😂I noticed that too! on all the ones I've had in the shop, stewmac and no name brand, the grain on the maple shims goes vertically and not across the shim (if held upright like a playing card)
@totallywiredguitars okay cool I know what you mean, my thinking was if the grain ran horizontally on the shim could that be a reason but guess not lol 😆 I've got a sandpaper shim in my Mustang and it seems to work fine, I might try a full pocket maple to see how it effects the sound if any.
I've been doing this since 1977 (yeah, I'm that old) and I've shimmed more necks than I care to count. Cardboard, brass, pickguard plastic, etc. and never had a neck "grow a hump" shimming like Leo did! I too have found that the shims seem to throw a wet blanket on many guitars. Some worse than others? When a customer insists on a full pocket shim I use walnut and make my own. Walnut is hard and very musical unlike that piece of 2 x 4 they're selling you. Side note, how much pocket contact is there with the "adjustable" bolt on necks? Keep Loothin'!!!
@@totallywiredguitars Isn't it funny how every new thing is a must have? "You simply can't set up a guitar correctly without a $1500.00 fixture and another $5000.00 in "our" special tools"? Total BS! Before we know it the only correct way to refret will be with the guitar in a jig with the fretboard facing the floor while hanging by your feet like a bat! My most used tool is a 6" machinist's ruler! How did we ever get a guitar even playable before the internet? Treat ever guitar like a patient and above all, Do no harm! Keep Loothin'!
See experienced luthier Gerry Hayes' (Haze Guitars) online writings on ski jumps. And the fact that in his experience they are often associated with narrow shims. It's not "misinformation". In other writings in forums you will see people sometimes confusing ski jumps with "12th fret kinks". So they're often arguing against the association, based on misunderstanding which particular phonomenom is being referred to. Hayes writes about that too. But no one is ever going to follow 100 necks for 10 years, some with narrow shims and some without, to see if the narrow shimmed ones are more prone to ski jumps. So we'll probably never know for sure.
@vw9659 I've definitely seen those writings and Haze himself was brought up in the talkbass thread that spans 10+ years, from 2014 where Haze wrote his piece in 2019. Haze himself had discussions with another prominent luthier and contributor to that thread, where they had productive back and forth and inspired Haze to write an addendum to his original post. His conclusion: he'll continue to use full pocket shims but even he himself is not fully convinced that his hypothesis that short shims are the culprit behind his definition of ski jumps, is actually correct.
@@totallywiredguitars as I said we'll probably never know for sure. But Hayes has had necks with narrow shims and ski jumps (he doesn't say how many). And hasn't mentioned seeing necks with ski jumps but without narrow shims. The association he draws hasn't come from nowhere. The extent of anyone else's direct experience of vintage guitars with narrow shims (old enough to have developed ski jumps if susceptible) would have to be assessed up against his. But given the uncertainty I also like the "pub test" here. What do you think is possible or even likely ? If you put a narrow shim under just the far end of a piece of wood, and then screw that piece of wood down hard (including where the wood is unsupported by said shim), would you expect that piece of wood to bend over time ? Or would you not expect it to bend ?
I am more eng than great guitarist but what the issue is angle of the neck verus vibration of the area of the neck pocket to socket of the bod,.the full body shin covers the pocket mismatch wood can act as a vibration damper to the whole pocket . The new shim you install does two things it has a smaller area o f dampening still gives angle but more wood to wood vibration transfer therefore greater resonance because the four bolts pull there four corners too the wood where the four bolts pull the full shim to the whole bottom and some side less wood contact of the vibrating neck, just my opion on guitars i have work on plus the little trick at the end sits the neck under tention sits the neck better to increase vibration contact first video of this type i have seen nice job remember any space between wood reduce vibration transfer
I took my 66 pbass to a chap not far from me- who’s very reputable- he put a thin wooden veneer shim at the innermost part of the neck pocket. I didn’t like that he used a drill to tighten the screws, but i digress, i get it home and it became clear within minutes that he’d given it an instant ramp/ ski jump. I promptly removed it, and set the bass up again myself- the ramp was gone. Perhaps it’s a matter of the shim needing to fill the space behind the screws more thoroughly? Perhaps he tightened the headstock side screws first and the bridge side screws second, causing the end of the neck to press into the body while tightening, causing a compression issue like the talk bass forum had described. Who knows. I still have a healthy millimetre of adjustment space on my low e, so i’m all good for the time being 😂 Great video and very informative, i’ll be following up that bass chat thread! There’s a lot of knowledge on that forum! Cheers
@craigridley9618 now this is weird. Ski jump by all metrics and accounts usually doesn't form instantly. There's not enough pressure for wood, or any material to force a bump to develop immediately as a result of placing something in a neck pocket. The term ski jump refers specifically to a bump /hump in a fretboard that once it develops, usually needs to be addressed by removing frets, planing / re-radiusing the fretboard to be straight once more. So if it what you experienced was "ski jump" it certainly would not disappear as soon as you removed a shim.
The shims that came on a custom guitar I bought in the 90s (previous owner wanted something retrofitted to make it play different, I think) were very, very thin, almost foil thickness brass inserts the luthier had made up. They went as deep as your card did in this video.
The main reason a solid guitar "resonates" is because the truss rod is in tune ....try and have a think about that one folks. Free tune any guitar to itself ( when it resonates ),then alter the truss rod tension and hear what happens .
hey man i just did the opposite went from a small cutout shim i made to a full contact one. For my guitar the full pocket shim made it resonate way more the guitar sounded practically dead with the cutout shim.
If a guitar needs a shim, that means the real problem is with the pocket or the neck flat correct ? Fix it there. And WHY is the standard, rounded neck heel ends and large radius pockets and not flat and square ? My story about feel and resonate is this. I have a first time owner of a 1988 Casio PG 380 MIDI synth Guitar (High end Strat full of electronics). I bought a used one off of ebay in very nice condition. When I played it, it felt dead compared to mine. When I looked inside someone coated all the cavities heavily with black conductive paint. Mine had a light sprayed on factory coating.....some things do make a BIG difference.
you may want to try a steel or aluminium full body shim just to see if the wooden shim does cause dampening, metal shouldn't (I think) have a dampening factor. Personally I'm old school about shims i.e. playing cards or matchbook covers etc.
I'm lost, one guy says his maple shims had no negative effect. Others point to the less dense pine shims as an issue. and ''old school'' uses cardstock paper. sometimes people just seem to bitch to bitch. I made a partscaster, its in proper alignment and the bridge saddles are frighteningly low, but, it intonates and the action is great. aint no way in hell Im putting shims in because the bridge is too low until I run out of set screw.
@@MrSoulauctioneerIt's the neck to body contact at the top of the joint that seems most critical in this exercise. The choice of material of the thin shim at the bottom of the joint is an additional variable that may or may not make any difference. Hope that clears it up a lil. Cheers.
You don’t need to be even someone who has work with wood, but merely understanding physics to realize that the amount of force required to force a ski jump on the heel of a neck cannot be accomplished by a thin piece of cardboard, pick, plastic or any other material When the next screws are tightened appropriately. This is particularly obvious when you deal with a guitar like the one featured in this video that has the truss rod at the heel. There is absolutely no way that on Fender neck a ski jump could ever be created with something, that is a mere millimetre or less in thickness being used as a shimming device the old Fender way.
If the narrow shim is changing the neck angle (the reason for using it) then it is by definition forcing the end of the neck higher. As the neck is screwed down tight against the flat at the other end of the pocket, you have two forces on the neck acting in different directions. Why wouldn't it be possible for that to bend the end of the neck wood upwards over time (years) ? Expert luthiers like Gerry Hayes, who has seen more necks than most of us, believes that it happens. Wood differs in strength for many reasons (including saw direction), as does the clamping force of the top screws and the size and compression of the narrow shim materials used by Fender and others. Fender chose from three different thicknesses if I recall correctly. So it's not surprising that it happens to only some necks. And if not narrows shims, what causes ski jumps (not "12th fret kinks") in those necks that have them ?
@@vw9659 I think you're into something there!.. And wood are drying/expanding different in the 2 sides of a block.. Also a big difference in how a dryed out tree-block differs.. Dry, -about 10%, will act when milling, different with a 7% wood-block.. And trees are absorbing moisture from environment it is stored in,.. So the variety of factors from it's cut to milled, are a key also..
My guitar came with a small piece of wood and a cut up pick as shimming in the neck pocket put there by the previous owner and this indeed did not create a ski-jump but instead it warped the neck pocket into a convex shape which gave me a seriously awful day of crafting custom shimming and setting up the entire guitar from scratch to get it structurally stable.
I just want to inject my experienc, granted I am a Novice at best guitar repair guy. I have 2 Matsomuku made Univox bolt on LP copies. one is all original with prob the factory cardboard shim. The other was a husk I bought and someone re-routed ther pocket and much too deep. So I took some mahogany I hand and cut it to fit and glued it in. The angle was wrong so I also got a Stewmac full pocket shim which I also glued. The one with the shims is much much more resonant. Idk?
I started to suspecting that there is more to the topic than I thought after one YT video. There was recording studio owner discussing his gear and there was part when he pull up Tele made by respectable luthier. Despite the guy was metalhead he wanted well made classic with classic sound. The guitar has interesting flaw for him in this regard. It came out to well and the guitar was too loud and resonant. So, it didn't sounded like classic Tele in his mind. He talked about this with the luthier and he suggested interesting solution to the "problem". Luthier told him to put one cigarette paper to the neck pocket to "calm the guitar down". This allegedly worked and it sounded like old Country Tele. So, apparently it more about where and how is the body connected to the body than material.
I've had similar findings. It's almost as if the full contact wood shim is muting the vibration and string transference.The material doesn't even matter much, just the angle it creates. But honestly, I'm not sure that the JM and Jaguar are the right guitars if you're concerned about subjective tonal properties.Just get a" tone wood" PRS, so your audience can get back to their naps.
Cardboard is made of recycled wood! And it compresses into the micro spaces in the pocket, thus creating virtually solid neck joint that emulates a solid set neck.
Unrelated Btw: I was privileged to tour the original Fender factory in Fullerton given me by Mrs Gloria Fender met Leo. A memory that I treasure!
The main problem with that Jazzmaster is the red dots on the headstock. Those things would be absorbing the Mojo Frequencies.
@@Gruntle 🤣🤣🤣
That pink switch tip won’t help either!
@jasonwebster6397 lol. Not my guitar!
A partial shim on the front or back of the heel will leave an air gap in the middle. Over time, the heel of the neck may warp, and may no longer be flat. I use a full shim for a solid mount, no effect on tone.
I have used aluminium foil for this just folding up as many layers as needed and about 12mm wide and it worked a treat.
“Mike Adams would like to know your location”
@@LiamCreus-bp3bf BROOKLYN babyyyy
It's the neck screws being too tight, nothing to do with the shim, this can happen on any fender, even a P bass. Just loosen the screws and it'll resonate again. Full pocket shims are great, they lower the action without changing the angle of the neck, you still have lots of original wood contact on the pocket walls and through the bolts, a bolt on doesn't resonate like a Gibson anyway, I've had this problem and it's always the screw tightness every time.
someone else also chimed in with this info. Thanks for sharing. The strange part is, I finish up all my setups by loosening each neck mounting screw by a half turn, then retightening without forcing or making them too tight. and I've never had an issue with the short cardstock or plastic shims...only the full pocket shims. I have another guitar in today that the client says is exhibiting this issue so I will try approaching it with this in mind and see if there's any difference from the results described and shown in the video.
@androtekman6131 The card thing is an illusion. Cardboard depresses easily, wood less so - so when you squish tight into card, you're not literally bending wood. Wood on wood too tight does cause lack of resonance, your literally compounding the wood making it more dense. Trust me, it is the neck tightened to tight, and yes, you can use card and other things, but those have their own issues.
@androtekman6131 If you go tight the neck bends with a partial shim, then ski ramp, well maple bends for sure anyway, if not immediately then definitely over time, I've had several P Bass's I have had to file down the frets nearest the body on because someone people did that to them (I blame TH-cam), it also really solves nothing in the long run.
Also if they aren't full pocket it can lead to the sky jump distortion on the fretboard. You are essentially creating a cavity which in combination of the screws pulling the neck into that cavity will distort the neck. Not immediately but over time. Wood warps over time and the effects can only be seen often after years. So always go for a full pocket shim instead of a partial.
@EbonyPope here's a thought that goes against what the Internet world believes in. A partial shim regardless of its material, when placed behind the 2 rear neck screws, might cause a 'ski jump'. However, if the shim is located in front of those screws, that ski jump problem will not happen because there no support propping up the neck at the back. If anything, the opposite might happen and you get a nice fall off (reverse ski jump) which is usually desirable.
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😉🤙
Thanks for sharing my friend! Glad to have you and so many others chime in and share similar findings as I thought I was going crazy.
You stumbled upon the reason for the added resonance when you trimmed the shim to fit into the compressed section of wood nearest the body end of the neck pocket. The transmission of energy, whether being vibration or electricity, is diminished by an interruption of the energy along the length of the the conductor, in this case being wood. Allowing the energy to continue unimpeded to the end of the circuit of the vibrations in the neck increases the transfer of frequencies with less energy (trebly frequencies), into the body. I believe the full pocket shim distributes the energy of those frequencies across the neck joint toward the opposite end, which is under tension, causing the attenuation of those frequencies. If you're still reading, what im trying to say is: it sounds better with the shim thimmed to fit the compressed section of wood that has been there since1963.😅
you are awesome! love this response, especially because I could never explain it with this level of technicality. Much appreciated!
I agree with this. I think the stress distribution in the neck pocket under tension broadly will be a small and reducing compression patch around the outer pair of screws, which are tightened sufficiently to keep that compression - and a patch of direct compression between the neck heel and the back of the pocket. The inner pair of screws probably contribute very little. In addition, the axial pull of the strings forces a longitudinal force through the end of the neck into the wood behind the pocket. If the screws are in shear, there's something wrong with the fit. That means the the major point of vibration transfer will be deep into the heel pocket and through the card shims. Using a full pocket shim may be moving the point of vibration transfer further out of the neck pocket. As with all things guitar related; the theory is one thing. What matters is what works in practice!
@PeterWasted well stated!
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.
Love these tech videos, bro. Keep 'em coming! Thanks!
@richarde3378 thanks my friend 🙌
I don't know, man... I just have to ask, and... PLEASE... Don't take this the wrong way, chill out, ok? Here we go:
CAN THE REAL SHIM LADY PLEASE STAND UP?
@@basildog007 🤣🤣🤣
I installed a 0.25-degree shim in my 1999 AVRI '57 Strat. Even with the action set fairly high, the guitar would still fret out during slight bends past the 16th fret. The shim adjustment made a world of difference; it now plays effortlessly, allowing me to achieve two-and-a-half-step bends even with low action. It also resonates better than ever before.
@nickh1193 great info! As I said to another, this video never refuted the functionality of these shims. They have the same ability to lower action as a short stack of cardstock (as Fender did on the AVRI offset guitars). The nuance in my argument was that I and others heard a noticeable drop on resonance as compared to having cardstock shims or no shims (particularly on fender tremolo loaded offset guitars)
@@totallywiredguitars Not questioning your expertise whatsoever. :) In theory, you would think more surface area of the neck contacting the neck pocket would help with resonance, but it’s not always the case. Science is a complex thing. lol
@nickh1193 def didn't take it that way! Was just clarifying as a few folks commenting are highlighting that these full pocket shims do actually get the job done, and I am in full agreement! Now whether it's worth it for someone to shell out $ vs an equally effective free DIY solution, and/or if the resonance thing is problematic comes down to the player
Full shims restored the bottom end resonance on my personal guitars. But yes all wood is different. But also in my experience full pocket shims have reversed ski jumps so take that as you will.
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.
For a little more on this, think of the spot where you pick as the epicenter of a an earthquake. The soundwaves go out from that point, up to the fret, and then back down. With a better neck joint, the energy is transferred better and isn't being lost as sound as it would be with a bad connection. You don't really want ANY vibration in your neck because it's cutting that energy. But again, amplification makes this pretty much a non-issue. I think people really overestimate just how complex an electric guitar is and how many things we make a big deal out of are 100% placebo. What matters, however, is how intangible values like vibe inspire us to play better. A new guitar won't magically make you play better, but it may make you more excited and have more fun which leads to playing more, getting better, and just being inspired a little bit more. A bunch of stickers might just do more for you than any boutique pedal could, if that's how you're wired.
Thanks dude this is exactly what ive been focused on. I made my own full pocket shim and was really unhappy with the results!
@mattwesthaver6909 I was really expecting folks to dive in here contradicting me but happy to hear I'm not alone in this perception!
I had a similar issue with a 2004 Strat. I used a full shim because "YOU NEED A FULL SHIM"... SOMETHING changed, I pulled that shim out and installed 2 layers to the back of the pocket of business card (or match book covers) like we did back in 1980's and Voila! The guitar lit the fluff up!
See! Gosh I'm so glad so many of you are validating my findings. I thought I was going nuts!
@@totallywiredguitars I did as well! Marketing works! "Full shims give more contact and means more sonic resonance"...meanwhile, the old school way sounds better? go figure? AND it saves $15 per shim!
Another one here with a twice folded piece of card in the neck pocket of my Strat
@@bullyakker seriously!!! Hate feeling duped 🤣
@davem4845 need to hit up the grocery store to buy some playing cards and try em
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.
In my experience with those shims, they're typically made of some species of pine (conifer). This spongy softwood pinched between the two hardwood surfaces could be the deadener you speak of.
Follows your worry,.. But think the screws in the body are about the same, and a body which is not ash, will hardly be able to make a big difference in a guitar.
Washers, (as I know) will make the guitar sound more thin, (almost like a ply-body,) - in my experience that is!.
In this case all of them have been maple. Both expensive (stewmac) and import (Amazon no name brands) have the same exact effect. Maple is the most common of the Fender bolt on neck woods...so you'd think there should be no loss in resonance. As others have pointed out, the perception of more resonance may be due more to the slight gap left by short inner pocket shims, creating almost an acoustic sound hole that gets plugged up when using a full pocket shim and results in a duller sound acoustically
@@totallywiredguitars SCIENCE is Cool ! 🤘🏻😝
“Acoustic sound hole”. Ok, sure.
@@mranalog241 🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️
I wonder how well a full pocket shim would do if it was saturated in thin CA glue first to make it denser and harder. Might help to retain that spanky bolt on resonance.
@woundedmonk1884 wow. Good point! I wonder. If you ever try it out please report back!
Was a bit skeptical by the title but glad I watched the whole thing! I’ll still probably keep the stewmac shims in the neck of some of my guitars but I won’t be going out of my way to buy more lol
To be fair, my test group for this has all been jazzmasters. Perhaps, with how the bridges are on a strat or tele, it's different...bc it has to have did the trick for at least some people right? Otherwise they'd all be huffing and puffing about it all over the internet. But I think your approach after seeing this is smart. I would be curious, if on yr next setup (on a non offset) if regular old business card shims may result in an even more resonant guitar
@@totallywiredguitarsI have two jazzmasters, a jag and mustang with a floating trem haha all of them have a full pocket shim. This definitely gives me some ease though, I have a card stock shim on my hardtail Strat that I was meaning to replace but this video def made me wanna just leave it alone haha looking forward to more content!
@@gloryxkid thanks a ton my friend!!
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.
If you create contact points without a full pocket shims you are essentially creating a cavity into which the neck wood will be pulled into over time. That's what creates that dreaded sky jump on the neck/body transition.
7:59. The smaller partial shim may simply allow for higher pressure. Maybe the full shim doesn’t get as tight. When I made a full pocket shim I used maple acoustic guitar net setting shim wood. Then I double stuck the wood into the neck pocket. Next I stuck sand paper on the back of the neck and sanded the angle into the shim using the neck itself. Kind of the way PRS sets their final neck angle before gluing their set neck guitars.
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 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.
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.
The important thing when shimming is to put the shim strip between the screws furthest in. If you place the shim after or before the screws it off course will potentially pull to a bend of the tree/neck, but if you put the shim between or somewhat before the last screws you counter that by pulling directly on to the shim with the screws. That will create minimal, if one at all, break angle.
Thanks for sharing! I've only ever done it the old fender way, all the way in the neck pocket, directly beneath the end of the heel. And in all my time doing this (about to be 16 years) - I haven't once had a client who I built or serviced a guitar for (both vintage or new) that had either stock shims or shims put in place by me, that came back to me with a ski jump issue.
@@totallywiredguitars I know, what I said is just to absolutely minimize the upcome of such a problem as much as possible.
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.
I heard the guy from Stewmac say you should always have a little bit of tension on the trus rod to make is resistant more. He said it while Joe Bonamassa was show off his 59 bursts. It always stuck with me. Maybe it has something to do with that. Sometimes it’s a few things and not always just one issue. Thank you for sharing this. I love these kind of videos. It’s these little things you can’t learn from a book and just makes you that much better of a tech after the experience.
I'm in agreement with Dan Erlewine, if that's who you're referencing - with regards to truss rod tension. I find a neck that's dead straight with the minimal amount of relief that one can get away with, is much more resonant than a guitar with too much relief / upbow. I'm glad you enjoyed the vid! I love diving into it with these kinds of discoveries myself. It's true that being a good tech requires not only by the book knowledge, but innovating and inventiveness based on first hand experience and experimentation! My only wish is that I could experiment much faster, bc I often get lost deep within these rabbit holes 😂
Not that it massively effects the tone once amped but I've always preceded to buy maple or mahogany shims from a local woodworker. Soft wood shims can act like a shock absorber if stopping the neck and body touching. A resonant guitar always feels nice to play.
That’s exactly the question I was going to ask. Would a full shim made of the same wood as the guitar body give the desired resonance. I’m just starting out on setting up guitars so this video and thread has explained a lot to me.
Yeah it's as.easy as common sense really. I've been a guitar tech for 28 years so not a real "old timer" yet but I've always used the same of a harder material to retain the best contact/transfer. I'd be happy to hear it makes zero difference amplified as I've never noticed but it doesn't effect the feel of the instrument to the player which is what I'm after. Cedar and softwoods are often used for shims as they're cheap and plentiful plus easy on tools.
@stewartmitchell8007 thanks for chiming in Mitchell! I just wanted to ask...based on yr comment, would you consider the maple shims stewmac sells to be soft?
Maple is a very soft wood. Rosewood is harder. Most people don't know that
Of your getting technical there's a janka scale for the hardness of wood and obviously maple is perfect for maple necks and mahogany as it's harder than mahogany. So yeah the stewmac ones would be perfect. I've even made my own ones from hard epoxy before when requiring a specific angle.
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
This is a wonderful video, you are very articulate. Maybe it’s the pure wood on the neck that is causing the resonance issue, move out the full shim, then you have a shim, then full pocket neck wood on the body. Brilliant! And btw you pulled off this bill bye guy! Lol, love this channel
Thanks so very much! Happy to hear I'm not just rambling on incoherently, which is how I feel I sound sometimes when I'm explaining something based on my own findings after falling deep down a rabbit hole! 😂
Hmm, I’ve used all sorts of shims and lately I’ve just relied on full pocket shims because they seem to be more consistent when I tighten the neck down. I haven’t had any issues myself but, I guess I’ll have to remove it on one guitar I have and try to do an A/B test just to see if I find the same thing out.
I used Amazon ones that are solid maple full pocket shims and they seemed fine to me. 🤷♂️
@JosePineda-jn8jk curious to know the results my friend!
@jeremiahmeraz9298 those ones were just as s#!+ as the 4x as expensive stewmac ones (at least on vintage spec Jazzmasters)
Wood to wood is better contact the Sim acts as a buffer and stops the transfer vibration between the strings and body you are literally proving that the body and neck materials do actually matter in the tone of the guitar well done❤
@@666pinkster 🙌🙌🙌
The pocket shim does not allow the sound waves to propagate through the joint, as they impede the transfer of energy. Impedance mismatch of the materials causes the wave to reflect back and not cross the joint.
@danteedee8204 explained much more eloquently than my bonehead verbiage haha
@totallywiredguitars you did a great job with the explanation, I just rembered some of it from a physics/material science class. I had thought about this until I saw your video. I have a strat to fix when I get some time.
Thank you, I've been really wondering about those full pocket shims. Stew Mac pushes them hard but I always wondered if they'd deaden the tone. I cut my own short shims out of pokemon cards for my jags and jazzmasters
@graysonschissler6215 poké-shims?! GOD-tier lol I actually kind of love how playful one can get with the types of cards you can use for shimming. Come to think of it - i think I have some pokemon cards somewhere myself. Just gotta check if they're worth anything first 🤣
@@totallywiredguitars Dead seriously, I just sold the better part of my childhood Pokemon card collection... With the money, I got a nicely refinished 64 jag neck and body AND a 1960 hardtail strat body! Glad I held on to those so long!!
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
Everything on a guitar that is not the string is there to support the string. So it helps to think of a guitar's neck and body as an energy absorption 'system'. The more rigid the system, less of the string's vibration energy is absorbed over time, which is perceived as greater sustain and resonance. So, while an infinitely rigid string support is impractical, various combinations of wood and metal (and even carbon fibre) have been tried with varying degrees of efficacy. We all have our favourite combinations based on the intricacies of how the string energy is absorbed or reflected.
That was interesting. Have to take your word on the actual change in resonance but less surface area for the vibrations to pass through sure could improve things.
Should we now reconsider Fenders Micro-Tilt mechanism?
@DerBullgod def worth testing out for yourself! It's quick and relatively painless, and am curious on folks who have jazzmasters / Jaguars as well as strats and teles to see if different guitars react to these full pocket shims differently and if this may just be a Fender offset issue 🤷♂️
Veeeery interesting.
As an engineer (who has turned this over in my mind quite a bit) this ski jump fear just doesn’t really hold water - fundamentally unless there is something pushing the fingerboard down between the neck bolts there’s no reason it should collapse there. I’ve never experienced it, so afaik it’s mythical.
Now, ski jump where the neck meets the body? Sure but that’s unrelated.
Thank you for the info. As a tech, I drank the koolaid with the full pocket shim. Great video!
@@shredddr69 thank you friend!
I think you’re 100% correct about the soft wood shim acting like a deadener. I’m an engineer and I own a machine shop. I could make custom aluminum shims to incredible accuracy. Aluminum is excellent at transferring mechanical energy. Let me know if you want to collaborate and I’ll reach out for specs.
That would be awesome to try! I wonder if full pocket metal shims, constructed at the same angles the stewmac shims come in, .25, .5 and 1 degree, would be any better than their maple shims. Additionally I wonder how those might compare if you made short shims as well from metal
@@totallywiredguitars I would like to hear some recordings to know if that is just a myth or provides actual real world differences.
@@EbonyPopeBut yeah it will tell you the facts but what one person hears isn't necessarily what the next person hears, I could think a guitar sounds great you could think it sounds trash, if you get me
I’ve never seen this “ski jump” either. More propaganda for Big Shimming. I’ve always used playing cards folded or credit cards. Excellent video man
lol "big shimming" it's a f'n RACKET
I always found masking tape to work extremely well. On a 25.5" scale neck, each later of tape equals about 0.12-0.15 degrees of tilt, depending on the brand.
i used 3m sandpaper
Steel screening if the neck has shift issues, otherwise business cards, masking tape, playing cards, sandpaper, offcuts of veneer, whatever. Neck and nut shims. No magic lost. I am happy I no longer do it professionally anymore. Musicians can be impossible at times.
@@BETAsin 😳 The idea of sandpaper in the neck pocket ALWAYS makss me feel very uncomfortable. Why sandpaper of all things?
I know it's not reversible but by this logic would there be more vibration transfer by sanding down the neck pocket by a 1 degree angle instead of adding shims?
yep, that absolutely is the correct way, but that should be done during construction. Mods like that on a finished instrument unfortunately will diminish its value :( Not to mention all the stamps in the pocket will be gone. I try to avoid shimming as much as possible and would never do it during building process.
Definitely would love to hear an update video if the comments section develops this idea
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.
I have a Les Paul w/ a ski jump. The tech said he got most of it out, on a re-fret. It was the fretboard that had lifted after the 19-20th frets, that he never took care of
This demonstrates the type of ski jump at the end of the fretboard, that I described in another comment.
Great stuff!! I have done this experiment myself and concur with your findings!
@rotten_comics crazy right? Like for what folks charge for these...for a sliver of wood. It's nutty
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.
If there's a sonic difference with shim angles or types it will be at the bridge (break angle and string-saddle contact force), not in the pocket itself. Any obvious effect will be a direct effect on string vibrations.
I'm not sure if you watched the whole video but I recreate virtually the same exact angle - measured with calipers the thickness of the full pocket wooden shim at its thickest part and recreated it with short shims made from cardstock. No changes to the bridge. As some have guessed in other comments, perhaps the perception of "more resonance" from short / inner pocket shims is coming from the slight gap between the neck and neck pocket - almost like an acoustic sound hole - that ends up sounding plugged up / duller when using a thick 1 degree full pocket shim 🤷♂️
I've experienced the "deadening" issue with offset setups, and it's not the shim. It's not the shim material, as either wood or plastic is fine. It's tightening the neck screws too tight that causes the problem. Back them off a bit, resonance returns.
Interesting. Thanks for the recommendation. Will have to try this
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!
👏👏👏 super valuable insight, appreciate you sharing! Especially the bit about how you even took the extra step to make one out of a harder wood and still the same results.
I just put a full pocket shim on a bass vi and had this same feeling. Going to revert it and see if that's it!
I'm sorry to hear that. This is fascinating though. Clearly there have to be some folks that experience the opposite, otherwise how could this have passed the collective litmus test for so long? Could it be an offset with tremolo specific issue? I wonder
I’ve made two good quality partscaster Teles - both needed reversed neck shims. Used full pocket shims - one 0.25 and the other 0.5. Both necks are now angled perfectly and play very nicely but neither guitar (one swamp ash, the other alder) is as resonant acoustically as my 35 years old plywood Squier Strat(!) 👍
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.
I determined that these shims are too soft but become appropriately stiff if you impregnate them with super glue. As for the ski jump, it did form when I'd used a strip of credit card instead of a shim
Thanks for chiming in! You're among a handful of others in the replies that shared this same experience. Can I ask, so before the superglue, the full pocket shims made your guitar sound less resonant but then after, it resonated as well if not better than direct neck to neck pocket connection (ie. no shim)?
@@totallywiredguitars I did this in a squire jaguar. First I tried a piece of credit card, but after tightening the bolts and setup, i was quite sure a ski jump appeared almost right away, and I had some problems setting up low action (i like 1.2 - 1.8 mm action on 12 th fret). This ski jump was very slight, but I am very sensitive to minor changes. Next I have used a full pocket shim but the guitar seemed a bit less resonant and, what's worse, these shims need time to settle as wood compresses. So basically in the first week or so the shim continues to compress and maybe that's why the weird feeling of lack of rensonance. I even sold this guitar because it made me furious. Next time I did my partscaster which also used a full pocked wooden shim. At first I used it without glue and noticed the usual issues. Next, I decided to glue the shim to the neck, which made it hard. It become impregnated with the super glue and guitar now resonates well, even better than other guitars without the shim.
I put a .5 degree shim on my Strat and experienced an increase in resonance and sustain.
@truthinesssss perhaps with strats it's a different story! I wonder if a 1 degree would decrease it or if this is offset guitar specific weirdness. Good to know and thanks for sharing!
I installed a .25 on one squier Strat and another .50 shim on another squier Stat for the sole purpose of fixing the action and it worked perfectly. As for Resonance I didn’t even take notice as to what resonance they had beforehand, because they both sounded like crap because of stock ceramic pickups. So when I upgraded to AlNiCo 5 pickups they sounded amazing, so I didn’t even feel like I needed to worry about resonance. I used the Amazon bought ones, by Tosicam, that were solid Maple shims, so the neck would resonate straight through it if it was screwed on tight. I don’t think I have a problem with them resonating because they were solid maple shims.
@jeremiahmeraz9298 this was my thought exactly but found the opposite. But I, and the clients that brought up the issue to me, were very familiar with how their guitars resonated before and after the full pocket shims were installed. That frame of reference I think is crucial on whether folks pick up on this as an issue or not
@@totallywiredguitars yeah, I assume as much, but if it sounds good after installation, then the shim is only there for neck angle purposes, on that guitar. Besides if it mattered what was in between the neck and body so much, the major companies wouldn’t be just throwing random pieces of scrap, card stock, and even folded up duct tape pieces into it, because I’ve found all of the above in them.
@@totallywiredguitars I went back and tried all of my electric guitars (18) and the two that I put full shims in had equally long resonance to my other guitars. I am not sure why your shims soaked up vibration, but I’m positive that full pocket shims work on the ones I installed.
@@jeremiahmeraz9298haha 18 guitars with exactly that same resonance. Smells like tuna.
@@grooooved yeah, give or take a second or so. I worked on all of them and set them all up. I can’t speak for you or anyone else, but they all have great resonance. I’m sorry that you don’t get the same results. But it feels like you are slightly jealous that I have that many guitars, and am able to set them all up myself. All it takes is a little of practice, and a little/lottle bit of money for tools.
Mant factors cause a ski jump
Mainly tension and natural stability
Pick up a guitar , strum and check for resonance (it should be loud and ring well) Brace it in your lap and bend neck forward and backward ( it should not move)
Next , do some pinch harmonics (the nastier , THE BETTER)
OF COURSE how it plays for you
If it fails in any of these areas
Hang it back on the hook
Hey man; thank you for putting up this video! I have about six or seven stewmac shims that I bought earlier this year and have yet to install on my bass guitars. Previously I would use mini post-it note pads to provide the shimming. I saw a post from someone who has a plek machine and provided some quantitative data of a guitar with and without a "traditional" 'shove-some-stuff-in-there-shim' (😆) and the data seemed to support some logical conclusions in my head about how this type of shim could cause slight deformations at the end of the fretboard. Afterwards I took out all my shims in a panic and resolved to put in some "proper" shims.
I still think it's a good idea, as the stewmac shims are maple and should provide better resonance transfer than post-it-note paper. But I think you are correct in that if you remove the direct point of contact between the "top" of the body pocket and the neck, you are probably doing a dis-service to the superior wood used in our treasured instruments.
Maybe there is a middle ground here? In my case, I did not buy the shims with the pre-drilled holes because I'm not a believer in a one-size-fits-all approach. In theory, when I have these shims installed, I should be able to have it done so that there is still contact between the top of the pocket and the neck, while providing the same "filling of empty space" that the angled maple shims allow you to achieve. Since my shims do not have any pre-drilled holes, I should be able to have then aligned in this manner.
Unfortunately I am about to start college in a couple weeks, so I do not know when I will have the $$$ to start installing the shims (As I would want a luthier to do it). But if any of what I am saying makes sense here, and you were interested in testing out this alternate method of installing the stewmac maple shims, I would love to hear your opinion of if it solves the problem that using 100% of the pocket space for the stewmac shims seems to be causing.
If it does not solve the problem, then maybe there is a benefit to having this empty space in the pocket vs using a shim that provides a more complete taper.
Thanks again! This was very interesting to watch.
@Polyinstrumentalism thanks so much for this thoughtful response & analysis! I def think you bring up a number of points that merit further investigation and also make sense! I'm curious myself and if I happen upon any further findings will try to make a follow up, regardless of whether it supports or refutes what I discovered here
More videos. Your stuff is great. Keep up the good work
Liked and subscribed. This is a great discussion. A little more info on the ski jump is that it appears on mandolins and acoustic guitars. True rod adjustment can make it worse. Sometimes you have to re-shoot the fretboard and refret to fix it. Fiddles don't have this issue but the fingerboard is free floating. It's an interesting topic for sure.
@thomaswagner6495 thank you kindly! I agree, I've found this study to be super fascinating...and it's funny how we as humans will tend to try to discern fact from fiction based on how things are explained. I'm not trying to cut down those respectable and experienced techs / luthiers who think shims cause ski jump, but rather to open up the discussion and perhaps even get more data! The core of my video barely touches on that complex topic and is definitely more focused on the affect of full pocket shims on acoustic resonance, for those whom that factor matters
I've been researching all the different methods to shim a neck and here's what I'm thinking, the reason the current full pocket shim are made of a soft wood, I believe if you were to have a hardwood shim it shouldn't loose it's classic sound. Just a thought I'm not a professional but am an metal Smith and engineer, so has anyone checked this out ?
@cosmicblackHD these shims I've used have all been made of maple. Same wood (on paper) as the neck itself - but maple does come in different varieties, and indeed these could be softer than the neck and / or body wood
not hearing a difference until you hit the strings harder in the after test. i've went from no shim to a .5 degree to fix the angle of a jazzmaster and it didn't change resonance, a strat (needs a 1 degree, but close enough for now) also didn't change the acoustic sound of the guitar. it's possible it is a placebo effect or the wood used in the shim perhaps, but mine were pretty much the cheapest i could find on amazon.
it wouldn't make sense that cardboard and an air gap could transfer vibration better than wood to wood contact, but it could be changing the wavelength...
Yeah, I have to admit. I’ve had the same results on (the dozen) basses I’ve done this too. Plays better and sounds worse. I’m gonna try saturating the full pocket shim with epoxy though before I give up on them. Can’t stop tinkering.
Tinkering is good until yr tinkering way more than playing! Haha this is my life and I often lament it 😅 please report back! My two cents, after discussing more with others in the comments: I don't know if it has to do with the density of the shim material, because if it did, then the cardstock shims should not be more resonant. I think now that the direct contact between the neck and neck pocket as well as the gap making an acoustic hole, is why they seem more resonant - whereas a full pocket shim gets between the two and plugs up this acoustic hole and in effect sounds duller
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?
I have found that unplugged resonance is not necessarily synonymous with sustain. To me it seems that there is an indirect relationship between the two
@joeferris5086 I lowkey agree with this - having a resonant Fender Jaguar for example doesn't mean it has good / long sustain - its still shorter & more percussive than say a tele
well, resonance and sustain are absolutely NOT the same thing ;) Two different beasts that have an inverse relationship.
ive played jaguars for over 20 years i was buying back when you could get 60s models for a couple hundred bucks back when nobody cared ive used little shims and full pocket shims with geat results its all about knowing how to set up your guitars and using propre materials. look at spruce its softer than maple yet in acoustic guitars spruce tops sound better than maple tops. like i said ive owned a bunch of mustangs and jaguars. you need to take each guitar as its own instrument what works for one may not work for another. my 1963 jaguar has a small shim and my 1964 jaguar has a full size pocket shim both are very loud acoustically and sustain great. so many people get fooled by the placebo effect. i have repaired a guitar that had a visible ski jump it was a 60s guitar you have to tighten the neck extremely tight and it takes years and a piece of wood that happens to bend that way under pressure. treat each intrument a it own piece do what that instrument needs and youll be good
For basses, I have had the best experiences with maple veneer, approx. 1.5mm thick, approx. 1 cm wide. I then sand it into a wedge shape (I stick this onto a sanding block using double-sided adhesive tape...then I drag the whole thing over sandpaper until it fits) and that's it. Personally, I wouldn't use paper, cardboard, plastic or anything like that, but that's probably not so important.
I'm convinced that the *_direct contact_* between the neck heel and the neck pocket, i.e. the body, is decisive...and logically this doesn't happen at *_any_* point with a full shim! I'm thinking of a tuning fork right now...
Full pocket shims? Tried it once...never again! Money wasted, unsatisfactory result. The prices for that wooden cards are absolutely ridiculous!
We're working with about the same specs of 1.5mm - that is what allows me to get about 2.5mm height between the pickguard and base of the rocking bridge on this guitar for enough break angle behind the bridge and thusly, the appropriate string tension to keep the rocking bridge functionality at its most optimal and stable. And the result when using full pocket maple veneer is identical to yours: it does its job just fine but unsatisfactory in the resonance dept!!
@@totallywiredguitars You could also call it a slight improvement towards the worse...🙂
Would this apply to a Jaguar too? Great video thanks.
@Mbp182 yes. And thanks!!
Interesting stuff! One question wouldn’t doing a 1.5mm inner pocket old school shim actually be creating a deeper angle than the full pocket 1.5mm shim? Just wondering if we should compensate somehow by making it not as tall… great vid in any case Eddie!
@sleepingtruck thanks my friend! In this case the full pocket 1 degree shim actually was 1.6mm. If the inner pocket version is the same or tiny bit less thickness than the thickest part of the full pocket shim, how is it creating a deeper angle, when the rest of the neck tilts back to full neck to body contact? Do you mean because the thinnest part of the full pocket shim still has some thickness? I think the difference in this case is negligible. I actually had to slightly lower the bridge on this particular example to match the previous action. Hope that helps!
Yeah that’s what I meant - because there’s material at the thinnest part of the full pocket - removing that increases/steepens the angle. Gonna give it a try!
@sleepingtruck would love to know how it goes. Question: have you also noticed this kinda muffling / deadening effect on resonance when using full pocket shims?
And I have a $2,000 strat with micro tilt. IT DOES NOT HAVE A FULL POCKET ANYTHING. ITS A SMALL METAL PLATE.
Try the full pocket shims again, but elongate the holes slightly so the neck can shift front to back slightly. Bolt it on and string it up to tension, loosen the neck bolts slightly so the neck slides back against the body tightly then tighten the bolts not over doing it. See if that makes a difference.
I can see how the full length shim of soft wood would be a dampener at the heel joint. Having a shim under just two screws means full neck to body contact at the other two screws. Makes a lotta sense to me. Anybody try a denser material (like a short brass shim) under just two screws?
@@PeteKaster - my experience back in the day with an Asian strat made in plywood; there was an steelwasher in the pocket(might have been 2?). That ply-body guitar sounded very thin, and with standard pickups(a bit microphonic) one really could get strange noise/sounds. When Shimmed with a full pocket, maple shim, that guitar actually got quite nice,.. So, I do believe that dampened it's resonance to the better!.
Very interesting! How do you feel about angled neck pockets?
I think they're good for the most part, though, if someone likes a lower bridge for less tension (on fender trem loaded offsets) - you either have to reverse shim or reroute the neck pocket which is not ideal
Awesome video, telling it like it is and makes people think. 👍
Wouldn’t it be nice if Fender didn’t sell guitars that regularly need shims on first purchase?
@rockstarjazzcat they do! And Fender Japan have had angled neck pockets for years now on their offsets. The downside is...if someone wants to lower their bridge so they have less string tension, then a reverse shim is necessary 🤣
I was always wondering why adding a spacer instead of designing in that .125" spacer to the body making? Create that little hill in the pocket. Sure it would be an extra operation or two but wood to wood resonance like a long tenon LP is ideal.
@@totallywiredguitars Then perhaps they should come with shims pre-installed? :)
@@martinmartin8871 I think not completely dry necks (or bodies), can be the issue, right?..
@@rockstarjazzcat The Fender Jaguar manual (which no one read) clearly showed it was meant to be used with a shim and I think they DID ship with one pre-installed for a time. They definitely used to ship Jaguar strung with the 12s it was designed for instead of the 10s or 9s that new models are shipping with these days to please "the modern market".
Good video and I see your point. Even on my phone speaker I could hear a bit more "zing" with the new shim.
I have a full shim on my Xaviere JT 100 Offset (I am learning to up my Luthier skills and rewired the electrics closer to Fender (1 Meg pots, Orange Drop 47 capacitor (preference), Switchcraft jack) to get the most out of the stock pickups. I also added locking tuners and Tusq string trees and it came out ok. I have Stringjoy 12s on it and the guitar has a very warm and full authority to its sound.
Now this is my first Offset and I wanted a "dumbed down" electronics and I am mainly a Tele guy and I appreciate the Tele formula (could it be that the JT stands for "Jazzy Tele?!?"). Add to that that it was the best bang for the buck at $250ish that I could get an Offset for at the time. I definitely appreciate the Offset formula as I also play hollow bodies (love that Rockabilly and Psychobilly) so I will be upgrading the bridge and trem (going for the Tele style Haylon bridge and trem set that costs more than the guitar and all the upgrades I have in it) in the future.
So I never noticed a "zing" or a resonance that is lacking in this Import guitar when I got it stock. All the upgrades I have done have made it better including the full size neck shim. I also had to do a "fill and redrill" on the neck pocket and neck as whoever drilled the bottom forward hole at the factory (the one hole where getting it right is crucial) screwed up and did it twice so the layer in-between the wrong hole and right hole was spongey and flexible. So that doweled both holes and drilled a new one and it got better. I also shielded the internal cavity (copper foil tape with conductive adhesive) and pickguard which helped reduce noise issues from the pickups. I like GFS pickups for budget guitars (my favorite so far is the Surf 90, basically a DeArmond meets a P-90 in a humbucker size) and the guitar came stock with the Jazzmasters which I know loads of people use them to upgrade Squiers especially. Happy with the pickups, the body is decent, paint looks great, the guitar has a very solid feeling resonance which could be described as "muted" however it never had a zing to mention. I should point out that my favorite pickups are Filtertrons and P-90s so a warm resonance is par for the course.
I have had the "ski jump" but only on my current bass guitars. It's to the point they need to have frets removed and get sanded down to fix them. I think its the Arizona desert that plays on that.
I do mess around with wiring and setups and I mainly do these on budget Import (Squier adjacent) guitars. I do like JD Moon and Kaish as upgraded switches over OEM since full size switches tend to be too big for Import cavities. I use mainly CTS and Bornes mini pots (usually due to tight cavities)to get the guitars to behave more like Fender, Gibsons, and Boutiques from a "control feel level." Its not the same but for the throw and the dynamics, pretty close.
"I think that did it, I can't mesure it, but trust me bro"
well judging by the dozens and dozens of replies on this video sharing identical experiences, i'm not just on some bullsh*t
@@totallywiredguitars Yeah, thousands of people, even millions agreeing on total bullshit, it would be so unheard of... Make the opposite video, and you'll get the same comments, totally agreeing the shim is way much better. The reality is you couldn't tell the difference between the two if it was recorded with the same playing (because you are playing harder after your modification, consciously or not). You couldn't even tell them appart in your own hands (providing you're masking any visual clue)
I use 1" strips of sandpaper. Same idea but I just think they feel a little more dense and a bit thinner. I want the smallest amount of shim that gets the job done but I think the real key is the neck connecting to the body directly to create the vibrations.
what grit? :P
Yep, I could hear the change. Nice bit of sleuthing bro. I make my (partial) shims with folded aluminium sheet and that works too.
Glad it came through even on TH-cam!
You scratched your head when you said i was scratching my head, lol it made me laugh i love little subconscious things like that 😂
Which way does the grain go on those full pocket neck shims?
😂I noticed that too! on all the ones I've had in the shop, stewmac and no name brand, the grain on the maple shims goes vertically and not across the shim (if held upright like a playing card)
@totallywiredguitars okay cool I know what you mean, my thinking was if the grain ran horizontally on the shim could that be a reason but guess not lol 😆
I've got a sandpaper shim in my Mustang and it seems to work fine, I might try a full pocket maple to see how it effects the sound if any.
I've been doing this since 1977 (yeah, I'm that old) and I've shimmed more necks than I care to count. Cardboard, brass, pickguard plastic, etc. and never had a neck "grow a hump" shimming like Leo did! I too have found that the shims seem to throw a wet blanket on many guitars. Some worse than others? When a customer insists on a full pocket shim I use walnut and make my own. Walnut is hard and very musical unlike that piece of 2 x 4 they're selling you. Side note, how much pocket contact is there with the "adjustable" bolt on necks? Keep Loothin'!!!
Validating to hear from someone who's been working on guitars with a rich history like yours! Thanks!
@@totallywiredguitars Isn't it funny how every new thing is a must have? "You simply can't set up a guitar correctly without a $1500.00 fixture and another $5000.00 in "our" special tools"? Total BS! Before we know it the only correct way to refret will be with the guitar in a jig with the fretboard facing the floor while hanging by your feet like a bat! My most used tool is a 6" machinist's ruler! How did we ever get a guitar even playable before the internet? Treat ever guitar like a patient and above all, Do no harm! Keep Loothin'!
See experienced luthier Gerry Hayes' (Haze Guitars) online writings on ski jumps. And the fact that in his experience they are often associated with narrow shims. It's not "misinformation".
In other writings in forums you will see people sometimes confusing ski jumps with "12th fret kinks". So they're often arguing against the association, based on misunderstanding which particular phonomenom is being referred to. Hayes writes about that too.
But no one is ever going to follow 100 necks for 10 years, some with narrow shims and some without, to see if the narrow shimmed ones are more prone to ski jumps. So we'll probably never know for sure.
@vw9659 I've definitely seen those writings and Haze himself was brought up in the talkbass thread that spans 10+ years, from 2014 where Haze wrote his piece in 2019. Haze himself had discussions with another prominent luthier and contributor to that thread, where they had productive back and forth and inspired Haze to write an addendum to his original post. His conclusion: he'll continue to use full pocket shims but even he himself is not fully convinced that his hypothesis that short shims are the culprit behind his definition of ski jumps, is actually correct.
@@totallywiredguitars as I said we'll probably never know for sure.
But Hayes has had necks with narrow shims and ski jumps (he doesn't say how many). And hasn't mentioned seeing necks with ski jumps but without narrow shims. The association he draws hasn't come from nowhere. The extent of anyone else's direct experience of vintage guitars with narrow shims (old enough to have developed ski jumps if susceptible) would have to be assessed up against his.
But given the uncertainty I also like the "pub test" here. What do you think is possible or even likely ? If you put a narrow shim under just the far end of a piece of wood, and then screw that piece of wood down hard (including where the wood is unsupported by said shim), would you expect that piece of wood to bend over time ? Or would you not expect it to bend ?
How did you know I was looking at the stewmac shims earlier today?!
@@negativeland5207 you're welcome 🙌
I do have some of those novak shims laying around somewhere, might try those out again.
@@negativeland5207 the vintage accurate plastic 60s style ones?? I feel like those would def work better lol
@@totallywiredguitars Yup! Exactly those ones.
I am more eng than great guitarist but what the issue is angle of the neck verus vibration of the area of the neck pocket to socket of the bod,.the full body shin covers the pocket mismatch wood can act as a vibration damper to the whole pocket . The new shim you install does two things it has a smaller area o f dampening still gives angle but more wood to wood vibration transfer therefore greater resonance because the four bolts pull there four corners too the wood where the four bolts pull the full shim to the whole bottom and some side less wood contact of the vibrating neck, just my opion on guitars i have work on plus the little trick at the end sits the neck under tention sits the neck better to increase vibration contact first video of this type i have seen nice job remember any space between wood reduce vibration transfer
Yes, and you can do that to amps cover too...
Very interesting and makes sense to me.
Thank you!
I took my 66 pbass to a chap not far from me- who’s very reputable- he put a thin wooden veneer shim at the innermost part of the neck pocket. I didn’t like that he used a drill to tighten the screws, but i digress, i get it home and it became clear within minutes that he’d given it an instant ramp/ ski jump. I promptly removed it, and set the bass up again myself- the ramp was gone.
Perhaps it’s a matter of the shim needing to fill the space behind the screws more thoroughly? Perhaps he tightened the headstock side screws first and the bridge side screws second, causing the end of the neck to press into the body while tightening, causing a compression issue like the talk bass forum had described. Who knows. I still have a healthy millimetre of adjustment space on my low e, so i’m all good for the time being 😂
Great video and very informative, i’ll be following up that bass chat thread! There’s a lot of knowledge on that forum! Cheers
@craigridley9618 now this is weird. Ski jump by all metrics and accounts usually doesn't form instantly. There's not enough pressure for wood, or any material to force a bump to develop immediately as a result of placing something in a neck pocket. The term ski jump refers specifically to a bump /hump in a fretboard that once it develops, usually needs to be addressed by removing frets, planing / re-radiusing the fretboard to be straight once more. So if it what you experienced was "ski jump" it certainly would not disappear as soon as you removed a shim.
I got a partscaster that i had to reverse shim the opposite way! But now is my best set up to perfect as any American strat.
The shims that came on a custom guitar I bought in the 90s (previous owner wanted something retrofitted to make it play different, I think) were very, very thin, almost foil thickness brass inserts the luthier had made up. They went as deep as your card did in this video.
The main reason a solid guitar "resonates" is because the truss rod is in tune ....try and have a think about that one folks. Free tune any guitar to itself ( when it resonates ),then alter the truss rod tension and hear what happens .
The gap makes the resonance , i use the large fender thin triangle picks cut a 1/4" wide😅
Bro, you're the first to say it! Maybe that gap is like the hole on an acoustic guitar 😂
I only use roasted maple shims🔥
hey man i just did the opposite went from a small cutout shim i made to a full contact one. For my guitar the full pocket shim made it resonate way more the guitar sounded practically dead with the cutout shim.
If a guitar needs a shim, that means the real problem is with the pocket or the neck flat correct ? Fix it there. And WHY is the standard, rounded neck heel ends and large radius pockets and not flat and square ?
My story about feel and resonate is this. I have a first time owner of a 1988 Casio PG 380 MIDI synth Guitar (High end Strat full of electronics).
I bought a used one off of ebay in very nice condition. When I played it, it felt dead compared to mine. When I looked inside someone coated all the cavities heavily with black conductive paint.
Mine had a light sprayed on factory coating.....some things do make a BIG difference.
Great Video. Thank You, Sir.
Thank you Tony!!!
you may want to try a steel or aluminium full body shim just to see if the wooden shim does cause dampening, metal shouldn't (I think) have a dampening factor. Personally I'm old school about shims i.e. playing cards or matchbook covers etc.
I'm lost, one guy says his maple shims had no negative effect. Others point to the less dense pine shims as an issue. and ''old school'' uses cardstock paper. sometimes people just seem to bitch to bitch. I made a partscaster, its in proper alignment and the bridge saddles are frighteningly low, but, it intonates and the action is great. aint no way in hell Im putting shims in because the bridge is too low until I run out of set screw.
I've always used aluminum foil' several layers gradually tapering down.
Compresses in for a tighter fit.
@@MrSoulauctioneerIt's the neck to body contact at the top of the joint that seems most critical in this exercise. The choice of material of the thin shim at the bottom of the joint is an additional variable that may or may not make any difference. Hope that clears it up a lil. Cheers.
Yes young grasshopper! Most excellent.
You don’t need to be even someone who has work with wood, but merely understanding physics to realize that the amount of force required to force a ski jump on the heel of a neck cannot be accomplished by a thin piece of cardboard, pick, plastic or any other material When the next screws are tightened appropriately. This is particularly obvious when you deal with a guitar like the one featured in this video that has the truss rod at the heel. There is absolutely no way that on Fender neck a ski jump could ever be created with something, that is a mere millimetre or less in thickness being used as a shimming device the old Fender way.
Exactly! And furthermore, why doesn't it happen to ALL of those vintage guitars, especially after 60+ years?
If the narrow shim is changing the neck angle (the reason for using it) then it is by definition forcing the end of the neck higher. As the neck is screwed down tight against the flat at the other end of the pocket, you have two forces on the neck acting in different directions. Why wouldn't it be possible for that to bend the end of the neck wood upwards over time (years) ? Expert luthiers like Gerry Hayes, who has seen more necks than most of us, believes that it happens.
Wood differs in strength for many reasons (including saw direction), as does the clamping force of the top screws and the size and compression of the narrow shim materials used by Fender and others. Fender chose from three different thicknesses if I recall correctly. So it's not surprising that it happens to only some necks. And if not narrows shims, what causes ski jumps (not "12th fret kinks") in those necks that have them ?
@@vw9659 I think you're into something there!.. And wood are drying/expanding different in the 2 sides of a block.. Also a big difference in how a dryed out tree-block differs.. Dry, -about 10%, will act when milling, different with a 7% wood-block.. And trees are absorbing moisture from environment it is stored in,.. So the variety of factors from it's cut to milled, are a key also..
My guitar came with a small piece of wood and a cut up pick as shimming in the neck pocket put there by the previous owner and this indeed did not create a ski-jump but instead it warped the neck pocket into a convex shape which gave me a seriously awful day of crafting custom shimming and setting up the entire guitar from scratch to get it structurally stable.
I just want to inject my experienc, granted I am a Novice at best guitar repair guy. I have 2 Matsomuku made Univox bolt on LP copies. one is all original with prob the factory cardboard shim. The other was a husk I bought and someone re-routed ther pocket and much too deep. So I took some mahogany I hand and cut it to fit and glued it in. The angle was wrong so I also got a Stewmac full pocket shim which I also glued. The one with the shims is much much more resonant. Idk?
I started to suspecting that there is more to the topic than I thought after one YT video. There was recording studio owner discussing his gear and there was part when he pull up Tele made by respectable luthier. Despite the guy was metalhead he wanted well made classic with classic sound. The guitar has interesting flaw for him in this regard. It came out to well and the guitar was too loud and resonant. So, it didn't sounded like classic Tele in his mind. He talked about this with the luthier and he suggested interesting solution to the "problem". Luthier told him to put one cigarette paper to the neck pocket to "calm the guitar down". This allegedly worked and it sounded like old Country Tele. So, apparently it more about where and how is the body connected to the body than material.
That's called placebo effect, and the luthier got rid of a corksniffing customer brilliantly 😂😂😂
I've had similar findings.
It's almost as if the full contact wood shim is muting the vibration and string transference.The material doesn't even matter much, just the angle it creates.
But honestly, I'm not sure that the JM and Jaguar are the right guitars if you're concerned about subjective tonal properties.Just get a" tone wood" PRS, so your audience can get back to their naps.
My niche is offset guitars 😅