Lemons (warning: G&L rant)

[JKos]

Shims… Let me tell you a little story ‘bout shims. In a previous job, I was involved in Quality Assurance/Quality Control of some very expensive aerospace hardware. Stuff that launched stuff into space. This stuff was machined on the best machines of the best materials. Guess what was used during assembly of certain hardware… shims. Guess what was used during alignment of certain hardware… shims.

So thinking that mass produced wood items should never need a shim is a bit silly at some level. Even if you machine a piece of wood to exacting tolerances, that piece of wood will change.

Something that I don’t think has been mentioned is variance in the finishes both in the neck pocket and neck heel. That will cause some neck angle variance, as well.

 

[mcrawfordmusic]

Take it to a pro and they will set it up to play better than ever. Sometimes it's best not to mess with stuff.

 

[ADHD librarian]

I wouldn't hesitate to buy any G&L, minus a placentia series.

In Alabama a placentia is legally considered made in the USA

 

[MynameisMe]

Beware of leo’s magic sandpaper! Lol

He's ruined the bass MOJO! It's only good for firewood now.

 

[jd56hawk]

I've never tried a Tribute so I don't know where that bar is but my experience purchasing LB-100s between 2016 and 2022 throws cold water on the notion that USA-made G&Ls are consistently even good. And I'm a guy who wants it to be true.

Two BTOs and one CS. All three delivered to the dealer with significant issues, all three returned to Fullerton for a painfully long unscrewing with poor communication and waves of half-truths and broken promises along the way.

Can you tell I'm still getting over it?

Yeah, I'm thrice burned and biased. Never again. OP, I don't care what you did, it's G&L's fault.

Two for two quality L2000s.
Only thing it needed was a set of proper strings.
I don't blame G&L for that, though.

 

[Iridescentone]

In Alabama a placentia is legally considered made in the USA

Once upon a time, a guy threw a boomerang at a cloud, from the porch of his glass house. As the blunt weapon hurtled skyward, the guy lost sight of it. Guess what happened a few seconds later....

 

[JeezyMcNuggles]

This is valuable information, I have a US LB-100 that I love and was looking into getting an L-2500. But as the prices of the US models has skyrocketed I was considering a Tribute. Normally I only hear the good things.

Oh, there could be a whole category on here with the amount of "tribute problem" threads in the last couple years.

 

[JeezyMcNuggles]

What happens to cause that? In what way does the neck change in order for that to happen? I’m just interested, not questioning the truth of it.

Bad neck pocket, bad cut on the neck itself, or high frets at the heel end.

If it doesn't need a shim to start with, it won't need one later unless it's abused, or starts warping to where the truss rod can't correct it.

Speaking of the truss rod, these tributes use a dual action truss rod. You can break the rod forever by loosening it too much. Just as you can break your neck by tightening it too much. Just food for thought.

 

[Inertialsky]

Misleading thread title is misleading.

 

[Turnaround]

There are two significant things that happens when you mill a piece of wood. The first is that it loses trapped moisture. As wood dries, especially if it is kiln-dried, the surface of the wood “case hardens”. What happens is that as the surface dries it is less able to pass moisture that is furter inside the wood - it gets trapped in there. When you mill into the wood it is able to release some of that trapoed moisture. And when wood loses moisture it changes dimensionally -it shrinks. But some moisture is still trapped inside. It will eventually migrate to the surface and evaporate, but that process can take years, and during that time dimensions will change. If the wood is well seasoned it won’t change much, but it will change.
The second thing that can happen is that as you cut away wood you may be cutting away internal stresses. Consider that as the tree grows it is subjected to a number of stresses. It may face a prevailing westerly wind, or it may grow on a slant. To counteract these stresses the wood forms its own reinforcement. When you cut down the tree it no longer faces those forces, but the internal structure still contains the countering structure. Those structutes continue to exert internal forces, and just like trapped moisture, the will gradually work themselves out until the wood is in a balanced condition again. In the process of “relaxing” the wood will bend. When you cut into the board you are changing the internal stresses, removing some and leaving others. Again the balancing process can take years.

 

[smtp4me]

Quoted for the people still bitching about poor manufacturing of their $400 bass. Mass producing basses means there are a pile of bodies made and a pile of necks made. They then have to mated up and made to work together. They are both made of wood. It's not like machining metal. Wood is going to expand, contract, move a bit in every direction after it is milled. Shims are the most cost-effective way to make a bolt-on necked bass, so everyone does it. There have been posts in other shim threads where someone reports thier Fender Custom Shop bass had a shim.

Even if a bass leaves the factory without a shim, there's a fair chance it may need one a year or two down the road. That was the case with my MIM Jazz. It's an easy fix that can be done in less time than it takes to read this thread.

I have owned 12 basses in 45 years. None required a shim until this one, even years down the road (40 years for the oldest). So my experience does not match yours.

The fact that it needs a shim is not the issue - it is the fact that the neck/neck pocket geometry is so far off spec that the bass is completely unplayable without one. Bridge saddles are designed to have adjustable height in order to compensate for variance. In this case, the saddles cannot be lowered enough to correct for the variance.

And honestly, an instrument should not have such an egregious defect regardless of price. Considering I owned 11 basses with no shim, and of varying price, I don't think producing a bass with a proper neck/neck pocket should be some kind of magical unicorn.

I'll probably end up taking it to a reputable local luthier or tech.

 

[gln1955]

If it doesn't need a shim to start with, it won't need one later unless it's abused, or starts warping to where the truss rod can't correct it.

Just not true. My Jazz slowly changed to the point that about four years later the saddles bottomed out and it needed a shim. Never abused in any way.

 

[JeezyMcNuggles]

Just not true. My Jazz slowly changed to the point that about four years later the saddles bottomed out and it needed a shim. Never abused in any way.

Well, it's been the case for me. And every bass I've owned. Even my 25 year old Ibanez gsr200 hasn't needed one. TI bought that bass for 65 bucks when I was 13

The one tribute jb I bought new, that had a sandpaper shim in it, was un playable when I took it out. So, in my experience, it is true. Your experience varies, I guess

 

[JeezyMcNuggles]

I have owned 12 basses in 45 years. None required a shim until this one, even years down the road (40 years for the oldest). So my experience does not match yours.

The fact that it needs a shim is not the issue - it is the fact that the neck/neck pocket geometry is so far off spec that the bass is completely unplayable without one. Bridge saddles are designed to have adjustable height in order to compensate for variance. In this case, the saddles cannot be lowered enough to correct for the variance.

And honestly, an instrument should not have such an egregious defect regardless of price. Considering I owned 11 basses with no shim, and of varying price, I don't think producing a bass with a proper neck/neck pocket should be some kind of magical unicorn.

I'll probably end up taking it to a reputable local luthier or tech.

Word.

Your experience seems to match mine to the T

 

[JeezyMcNuggles]

I have owned 12 basses in 45 years. None required a shim until this one, even years down the road (40 years for the oldest). So my experience does not match yours.

The fact that it needs a shim is not the issue - it is the fact that the neck/neck pocket geometry is so far off spec that the bass is completely unplayable without one. Bridge saddles are designed to have adjustable height in order to compensate for variance. In this case, the saddles cannot be lowered enough to correct for the variance.

And honestly, an instrument should not have such an egregious defect regardless of price. Considering I owned 11 basses with no shim, and of varying price, I don't think producing a bass with a proper neck/neck pocket should be some kind of magical unicorn.

I'll probably end up taking it to a reputable local luthier or tech.

I'd just return it, and buy something else. That's what I did. Returned it and got a Squire contemporary HH. Replaced the electronics and threw a set of Big Splits in it. That bass was dope. Played like dream, and sounded mean as hell.

Ended up selling it for the price new to someone who thought the same.

 

[Geri O]

One of the many topics where half of us believe in shims, half of us don’t, half of us have seen shims in every bass that crossed our paths, half of us never heard of or saw shims ever being used in any bass we came across nail we read about them here.

Seven pages later, still here.

Yes, I’ll show myself out now….

 

[Eli Brockway]

I'm still stuck somewhere between the reality of manufacturing these and many other things, the duct tape on a bike analogy, the washer on the axle counter analogy, and the idea that twelve instruments over a nearly half-century span is apparently considered a representative sample.

Entertaining read for a Tuesday night, at least.

 

[DaveParker39]

The duct tape analogy is wildly inaccurate.

Ultimately, you have two options

1) Take it to a luthier/tech, tell them what happened. You'll either get back a playable bass (I'm fairly confident that would be the outcome) or, less likely, you would get a call saying something got unfixably messed up during the neck removal/tru-oil debacle (doubtful).
2) Do nothing

1 seems like the right call given that you liked the bass.

Either way, it's not a lemon because it worked fine before you altered it, and the part you removed is an industry standard part for setting up a bolt-on bass. If your luthier/tech finds a bigger problem, then maybe it is a lemon. As of right now that's not sounding likely.

 

[tr4252]

As has already been explained, wood does mysterious things at times. It's well within CNC capability to produce tolerances to +.0000"/-.0005". cutting wood to such tight tolerances would be a waste of time since it expands and contracts a lot more than that. I'd guess a reasonable tolerance of +/-.010" would be about as precise as you could want to machine it. That would be an overall variation of .020", a difference that would sometimes require shimming provided the instrument was otherwise salvageable. To expedite production most manufacturers would probably run on the high side of the spec limits.

For an amateur, patience and forethought would be recommended. And asking questions on a forum or going to see a tech are also good ideas.

Tom

 

[TomB]

Also, I've had a hard time adjusting intonation when the pickups were too close to the strings. That can cause some weirdness when playing at the 12th fret or higher.

…particularly with MFD pickups (though not the case on a stock LB100).