Lemons (warning: G&L rant)

[ShadowGroover]

As a teen, I removed the neck of my Strat for truss rod adjustment. I found a shim in the neck pocket. It was part of a cover for a book of matches advertising a local restaurant. Finding it quite funny, I kept it in place. The guitar played great, and I always appreciated the shim. This was long before learning to tilt at windmills.

 

[SteveCS]

Thank you. This is exactly my point.

A bass that can only be functional due to a piece of sandpaper in the neck pocket, was not and is not a properly made nor a properly functioning instrument. It is the equivalent of a bike held together by duct tape. Taking the neck off and disposing of the sandpaper exposed a very big underlying flaw that is difficult to correct even when another piece of paper is placed back in the same location.

With all due respect, if you put something back together with the same (or in the case of the shim, functionally equivalent) parts and it doesn't end up as it started then something has changed elsewhere. It might be that taking the finish off the neck has allowed the moisture content of the (now exposed) wood to change which in turn has caused the shape of the neck profile/curve to change. It might be that heat associated with sanding (it takes a lot to remove a poly finish) has warped the neck a little. It might be that the change of finish has made the neck more sensitive to environmental changes which might in turn impact how and where the truss rod acts along the length. It might be that time off the body with no string tension and a tightened truss rod has imparted a ski-jump in the neck. Who knows what has changed, but something has (or some things have). And it has nothing to do with what came out of the factory.

 

[smtp4me]

With all due respect, if you put something back together with the same (or in the case of the shim, functionally equivalent) parts and it doesn't end up as it started then something has changed elsewhere. It might be that taking the finish off the neck has allowed the moisture content of the (now exposed) wood to change which in turn has caused the shape of the neck profile/curve to change. It might be that heat associated with sanding (it takes a lot to remove a poly finish) has warped the neck a little. It might be that the change of finish has made the neck more sensitive to environmental changes which might in turn impact how and where the truss rod acts along the length. It might be that time off the body with no string tension and a tightened truss rod has imparted a ski-jump in the neck. Who knows what has changed, but something has (or some things have). And it has nothing to do with what came out of the factory.

I understand all the factors that can affect a wooden instrument. However I respectfully disagree about this not being a factory issue.

Without a shim, the neck sits too deep in the pocket. So deep in fact that the bridge saddles cannot be lowered enough to compensate. When the saddles are dropped as far as possible, the action is still so high as to render it unplayable. As I wrote in another post, bridge saddles are designed to have adjustable height specifically to compensate for variances. This bass is so far out of spec that the bridge cannot be made to compensate. That is and always will be a factory defect, in my opinion.

There can only be two causes (maybe a little of both)

• The neck pocket was routed too deep
• The neck heel was shaped too thin

I just don’t think that expecting a guitar to be playable without significant intervention is some kind of unrealistic goal.

 

[SteveCS]

I understand all the factors that can affect a wooden instrument. However I respectfully disagree about this not being a factory issue.

Without a shim, the neck sits too deep in the pocket. So deep in fact that the bridge saddles cannot be lowered enough to compensate. When the saddles are dropped as far as possible, the action is still so high as to render it unplayable. As I wrote in another post, bridge saddles are designed to have adjustable height specifically to compensate for variances. This bass is so far out of spec that the bridge cannot be made to compensate. That is and always will be a factory defect, in my opinion.

There can only be two causes (maybe a little of both)

• The neck pocket was routed too deep
• The neck heel was shaped too thin

I just don’t think that expecting a guitar to be playable without significant intervention is some kind of unrealistic goal.

That's fine but for the fact remains that shims are a fact of life in bolt-on necks at all price points. There is a factory one in my top end EBMM Stingray; there is one in my bargain-basement $200 Fenix; I added one to my $3000 Warwick Corvette just to create a more comfortable break angle and there is one in my mid-range SBMM Ray34. Whilst I am with you in bemusement that designers / CNC programmers seem incapable of incorporating a slight break angle into the neck heel or body rout, it seems they don't want to, and prefer to manage manufacturing tolerances using shims. But it has always been that way - I really don't see it as a fault. Hand on heart I've never been able to say that a shim has had any effect (better or worse) on how a bass sounds provided the whole thing is properly torqued up.

Unless I'm missing something, your opening post suggests said that everything was fine until you made changes recently:

I was happy with the bass until I made a change over the holidays.

so any 'faults' with neck pocket depth or heel thickness were, presumably, present at the time. What depth of poly did you remove at the heel? Did you go back to bare wood? IME, typical shims are less than 0.25mm (10 mil) thick. A poly finish might easily be 2 or even 3 times that, so removing it and (inevitably) some wood might have really screwed with the neck joint geometry more than such apparently small numbers might suggest.

 

[smtp4me]

That's fine but for the fact remains that shims are a fact of life in bolt-on necks at all price points. There is a factory one in my top end EBMM Stingray; there is one in my bargain-basement $200 Fenix; I added one to my $3000 Warwick Corvette just to create a more comfortable break angle and there is one in my mid-range SBMM Ray34. Whilst I am with you in bemusement that designers / CNC programmers seem incapable of incorporating a slight break angle into the neck heel or body rout, it seems they don't want to, and prefer to manage manufacturing tolerances using shims. But it has always been that way - I really don't see it as a fault. Hand on heart I've never been able to say that a shim has had any effect (better or worse) on how a bass sounds provided the whole thing is properly torqued up.

Unless I'm missing something, your opening post suggests said that everything was fine until you made changes recently:



so any 'faults' with neck pocket depth or heel thickness were, presumably, present at the time. What depth of poly did you remove at the heel? Did you go back to bare wood? IME, typical shims are less than 0.25mm (10 mil) thick. A poly finish might easily be 2 or even 3 times that, so removing it and (inevitably) some wood might have really screwed with the neck joint geometry more than such apparently small numbers might suggest.

I actually did not remove any poly finish from the heel. I only removed it from the back of the neck - the area directly behind the fingerboard. No headstock, no heel.

Clearly I should not have thrown away the original sandpaper shim. At the time, I believed it was a strip/piece of scrap that was unintentionally left inside the pocket. I had never seen a shim made from sandpaper nor one that small - maybe 5mm in width, and maybe 50mm long. In my attempts thus far to find a suitable replacement shim, I have tried using a similar piece of sandpaper with similar dimensions, and in the same location (location is easy to see as the original left indents in the wood). With no success.

 

[SteveCS]

...
With no success.
...

It does sound very strange. Have you thoroughly checked the neck for warpage, ski-jumps or any other changes in geometry. And that no other foreign object has found its way into the neck jiont, and that the front screws are fully tightened with no gap along the front edge (it sounds like even with a shim the neck is tilting forwards, which would be unusual). As a side-note, do the neck screws move and turn freely in the body holes, or do they conform to a thread?

 

[el jeffe bass]

This was long before learning to tilt at windmills.

We do tend to do a fair bit of tilting on our little corner of the internet.

 

[sawzalot]

One thing that nobody has addressed is that you removed finish from the back of the neck. This lets moisture into the wood, maybe for the first time ever in the life of the bass. You can expect the neck to move and the truss rod need adjusting--did you look at that? Sorry if this was mentioned in the previous 140 posts of this thread, I have not read each and every one of them...

 

[Turnaround]

Without a shim, the neck sits too deep in the pocket. So deep in fact that the bridge saddles cannot be lowered enough to compensate. When the saddles are dropped as far as possible, the action is still so high as to render it unplayable.

It's not a question of how deep the pocket is, it's a question of the angle of the neck to the body.

 

[rjovin]

One thing that nobody has addressed is that you removed finish from the back of the neck. This lets moisture into the wood, maybe for the first time ever in the life of the bass. You can expect the neck to move and the truss rod need adjusting--did you look at that? Sorry if this was mentioned in the previous 140 posts of this thread, I have not read each and every one of them...

It has indeed been addressed and ignored.
This is clearly a manufacturer defect on a fine playing two year old now modified bass

 

[FunkHead]

I used to be anti-Shim but now I love them.

several reasons are:

I like to be able to raise the Pickups up for use a s thumb rests.
I like some room under the string for slapping
I like a tiny bit of negative neck angle.

Hell! Bring it to me & I'll give it a perfect setup and even give you some free LaBella Slapmasters.

 

[bigdaddybass12]

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.

Yes on this. It kills me when someone is looking at a used bass or it just arrived and they show pics of the bass COMPLETELY DISASSEMBLED! If it was a bass I sent you, you just voided any return policy.

 

[yodedude2]

pardon my asking...at times in the past i've encountered issues with bolt-in necks regarding the neck screws and how highly torqued they are. have you tried adjusting the force with which the neck screws are attached? or perhaps you tighten one completely and then move on to the next one instead of torquing all of them to 'close to tight' before tightening them to full torque?

 

[smtp4me]

It has indeed been addressed and ignored.
This is clearly a manufacturer defect on a fine playing two year old now modified bass

Not ignored. There is a difference between attempting to fix an issue and only taking to a pro when that fails, vs. taking it immediately. I prefer the former, and only after I have exhausted what I am capable of.

A bass that is unplayable without a shim, is defective. It would remain defective even if never disassembled. Hard stop. Adding a shim to correct a flaw does not erase the fact that the flaw exists.

 

[SteveCS]

...
Without a shim, the neck sits too deep in the pocket. So deep in fact that the bridge saddles cannot be lowered enough to compensate.
...

It would be good to see a photo or two, just for context if nothing else. From memory a 0.01" shim adds about 0.03" height at the bridge (depending on exact location of the heel, the length of the pocket and neck/scale lengths). It would be good to know how much we are talking about...

 

[JKos]

A bass that is unplayable without a shim, is defective.

That is your opinion and an argument you are not going to win on TB. Hard stop.

 

[JenderBazzFass]

Tons of those old Fenders from the glory years came shimmed from the factory. Buy one of the StewMac ones and the problem is likely to resolve. I have done this before and it's worked out great.

 

[Geri O]

Not ignored. There is a difference between attempting to fix an issue and only taking to a pro when that fails, vs. taking it immediately. I prefer the former, and only after I have exhausted what I am capable of.

A bass that is unplayable without a shim, is defective. It would remain defective even if never disassembled. Hard stop. Adding a shim to correct a flaw does not erase the fact that the flaw exists.

Still buying that mantra, eh?

Bless yer heart….

 

[Matt-J2]

Welcome to mass produced products, where tolerance stacking is a thing and tools like shims make up for it.

Off the top of my head, depending on how it was all programmed/dimensioned, here are some things to think of (pardon the vocabulary, I'm going to mess something up for sure):
Back of bass body to face- including flatness and parallel to back
Face of body to depth of neck pocket
Bottom/back of neck heel to face of neck w/o fretboard
Back of fretboard(glue side) to face
Thickness of glue
Depth of fret cuts from face of fretboard
Thickness/height of fretwire from flat(fretboard contact) to top(string contact) (overall, and each fret itself measured independently)
Thickness of bridge plate material from face of bass to where the saddles rest
Saddle thickness
Depth of groove for strings to rest in each saddle
Nut height- from fretboard
Depth of string cuts in nut- from top edge of nut or fretboard(latter will have less stacking, premade parts may use former)

There may be others that come into play that I can't think of right away. I definitely didn't get much into neck angle and flatness and all that. And this is all added in. For this type of object, it's not all being done on one piece/operation.

So, every single dimension I list has a tolerance. Usually +X/-X but might have a zero(doubtful in wood, but maybe). Every single one of those interacts with every single other tolerance. So for simplicities' sake, if the neck pocket is within spec but at the deep end, and the neck heel-fretboard height is in spec but at the short end, you get a neck that sits low. They could search for a neck that fits just right, or add a shim. As you know, they chose shim.

In addition, this is wood, as has been harped upon by many already. As such, it may have changed from the time it was machined to the time it was attached. It may have changed again based on removing the finish, and even exposing the neck pocket. Is that enough to do as described? I don't know, but changes bring change.

For more money/time, a lot of these can be remedied at manufacture. Like fret leveling, for instance. But it doesn't happen below certain price points.

At any rate, I have no idea what's going on with OPs bass and don't care to speculate really. I just don't like this trash talk towards (mass) manufacture/design. Like most of life, it's never as simple as we think.

 

[gip111]

You didn’t know it was “defective” till you removed the neck and was playing fine before you lost the shim, correct? Put another shim in there, sand paper would do, if not enough, then put two pieces since you said it was folded. Done.