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Lemons (warning: G&L rant)

#21
Geri O said:
I’ve had the neck off of every Mike Lull bass I’ve owned (Five total).

I’ll admit, I wasn’t looking, but I don’t recall ever noticing a shim in the neck pocket.

I’m open to correction by another Lull owner, but I just don’t recall seeing a shim in any of them.
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Well a neck-through also doesn't have a shim, but if you ask builders, you'll find they bake in a slight tilt-back to the neck to emulate what a shim can do. Knowing how precisely Lull cut their necks and bodies, it wouldn't surprise me if that angle is baked into the entire cut.
 
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#22
I've taken apart basses that were no good & when I put them back together they were great.
I've taken apart basses that were fine & when I put them back together they weren't.
I've then done it again and sometimes they improve, sometimes they get worse...

Sometimes, it is just that act of taking them apart and reassembling them. It's the order of the screws, it's the angle of the pocket, it's the luck of the draw...

My method is to keep pissfarting about until it seems good enough, or I get so frustrated I take it to a professional. (my other method is, I don't touch my G&L. It's my good bass and will stay that way by only being touched by someone who actually knows what they are on about, not a self-taught goon like myself).
 
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#23
frankie5string said:
Well a neck-through also doesn't have a shim, but if you ask builders, you'll find they bake in a slight tilt-back to the neck to emulate what a shim can do. Knowing how precisely Lull cut their necks and bodies, it wouldn't surprise me if that angle is baked into the entire cut.
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I did notice that!

I’ve had a couple of Peavey TL5s and TL6s. Both neck-throughs.

I didn’t exactly measure them, but I did “sense” an angle to them.

They were both very fine-playing basses!
 
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#28
JKos said:
How in the world is the bass a lemon or defective? It was fine before you took it apart and now you can’t get it back together properly. You completely changed the finish on the neck. That’s on you.

You’re upset because you ruined your bass and want to place the blame elsewhere.

This car’s a lemon. I pulled the engine out, modified the cams and now it doesn’t run exactly like it did before.
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Refinishing the back of neck has no affect on the neck pocket (body) and would only affect the neck itself if I removed the finish on backside of the heel, thus making it thinner. Which I did not. Neither does taking the neck off and putting it back on with a piece of sandpaper of equal size as the original and in the same location. Replacing the sandpaper with a similar piece was the first thing I did after I noticed the difference.

I have owned 12 basses in 45 years. None of them required a shim until this one. I have disassembled and reassembled basses as well as built them from parts. None of them had any such issues afterwards. I have setup and modified my basses for 40 of those 45 years. None of them had any such issues afterwards.

Obviously - the bass worked, a change was made, now it doesn't work. That's not the point. I have never struggled this much to make a bass functional and playable, and I'm no rookie. And I don't remember writing that the bass is ruined. I wrote that it is flawed, which it is. If a thin piece of sandpaper is the "glue" holding together the entire functionality of the bass, that is a manufacturing issue, not a "me" issue.
 
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#30
smtp4me said:
Not really sure if this is a cry for help, or just a rant. Maybe both. Apologies if this a little long...

I have a G&L LB-100 Tribute, purchased new about two years ago. I immediately swapped the factory strings for Chromes and set it up to my preferred specs. I've made seasonal adjustments to the truss rod, but no other changes.

I was happy with the bass until I made a change over the holidays. I decided to sand (and then burnish) the factory gloss poly finish off the back of the neck and replace it with Tru Oil. When I removed the neck to begin sanding, a narrow piece of sandpaper fell out of the pocket.

I am not a professional luthier, but I have done all my own setups and modifications for decades and built a bass or two from parts (e.g. Warmoth). I am well aware of neck shims. This piece of sandpaper was (maybe) 1/4 inch wide, as long as the neck width where it meets the pocket, and one end was slightly folded over on top of itself.

I had never seen sandpaper used as a shim, especially this small and thin. So I threw it away, completed the sanding and oiling, then put it all back together. That's when the problems started. To summarize: since then, I cannot get the bass properly setup - no matter what/how I try. A quick (but not complete list):
  • Different materials for a shim (wood, metal, paper)
  • Different size shims (width, thickness, length etc.)
  • Different locations within the neck pocket (G&L LB-100 has 6 screws holding the neck in place) and shims that fill the neck pocket vs. strips
Depending on the above, the bridge saddles are either too high or cannot be lowered enough to get the correct string height because they hit the bottom of the bridge cavity. When I am able to get it close, I'm getting a lot of clank and string noise. I cannot get the intonation set. Every string is sharp to some degree no matter how far I move each saddle away from the nut.

To be fair, every guitar maker has imperfections and quality issues on some level. And one instrument does not represent the quality of all of them. But... the level of frustration I'm having has pushed me to now look for another P bass, not made by G&L. I feel like I got a lemon, and not only is it past warranty, I've modified it. Argh...!!
Click to expand...
Had this happen to me. I use automotive feeler gauges for shims. A 10 thousands of an inch will give you about a 1/32 decrease in string height at the end of the fingerboard... U can snap them with pliers and they won't compress!!
 
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#34
My favorite was a Fender I took apart; the factory shim was an offcut from a sheet of thin picks, tort. Clearly, the tone was in the tort. I was exceedingly careful to put it back precisely where I'd found it, because yes, you don't mess with the shim. Nearly every FSO I've encountered, guitar or bass, has at some point in its life been shimmed.

OP, Occam's Razor pretty clearly suggests that the problem here is a disassembly/reassembly that altered the instrument the factory put out, which played great in the factory's configuration. I can't see how that's the factory's fault. Just the opposite, in fact. It's not a slam on you, so don't get your feathers ruffled, but surely if you take a step back that becomes as obvious to you as it is to the rest of us.

I'm not sure what other variable you think might have had such an effect than you pulling the instrument apart.
 
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#37
Let's see Paul Allen's neck shim...

1000018340.gif
 
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#38
If the bass still works, don't worry about it. Most basses are built by humans.

I've never removed the neck of my 2010 Precision V or my Dimension DLX 5 (2014) but I do take a scotch brite pad to the back of the necks of each to dull 'em down. It helps playability.

I did change the PG on my Precision. Nuthin' under it but the CNC hole.
 
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