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Shims: The lazy mans fix??
- Thread starter Kunekune
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Yet some use foam mutes to take away sustain
That's right, wood shims have about the same effect. If you apply enough pressure on a small wood shim it behaves pretty much like foam.
And that's why Leo's guitars had shims not made from wood, although it wasn't for a lack of wood splinters in the workshop.
LOL!
I'm glad I'm not the only one who wonders that same thing whenever any "sustain" discussion comes up.
I routinely have to roll off my volume knob because my Precision sustains wwwwaaaayyyy longer than my guitarist, and the axes he uses are no slouches (Gibson and PRS).
Hopkins
Commercial User
Leo's guitars had a sand paper shim because it was alot easier to cut a piece of sand paper, than it would be to cut a small enough piece of wood.
Your theory is absolutely incorrect, and goes against all logic. The internet is full of bad information, you are just adding to it.
Hardwood compressing? I made some engine mounts for an offshore cruising sailboat out of purpleheart that didn't compress under a 40hp engine. I'd love to see pics of these hardwood neck shims that have supposedly flattened out like they were foam.
Paper and many forms of carton are very hard to compress.
You can easily test that with some wood splinter, even maple, and a pair of pliers.
Engine mount, yes?
Take a maple piece the size of a neck shim and press really hard with pliers. That'll deform it real good. And that isn't what you want in the neck pocket.
Hopkins
Commercial User
You said, that using a wood shim will not work, and it will kill sustain just like putting a foam mute under the strings. That is absolutely false.
Hopkins
Commercial User
The pliers will put a dent, because it is a lot of force applied to a small surface area. If that same force was applied across the whole surface of the block of maple, absolutely nothing would happen to the block.
If wood was as soft and spongy as you are making it out to be, then it wouldn't be ridged enough to hold the threads of the neck screws.
Point loading a piece of wood with pliers does not simulate what that shim experiences being squeezed between neck and pocket. A wood shim may deform a little on the leading edge when you first tighten the neck but it will settle quickly and not move after that...the foam analogy is way out to lunch. Leo was infinitely practical and I'd guess the reason he used paper is that it's much faster to make precise adjustments with...fitting a wood shim takes longer.
You can use long pliers and try to compress the whole maple piece. It'll work.
Try it with high quality sandpaper. It won't.
Wood != cast iron. It has a lot of non-solid content. That's why we like it. If it's applied in big enough chunks.
Well I just business card shimmed my new ibby premium 6er. Still sounds the same. Sustain seems to be exactly as before (which is good...this 6er has some long sustain!) but it now plays a hell of a lot better...or at least more to my liking anyway.
5 points to shimlandia.
5 points to shimlandia.
I spend a good part of my current day gig obsessing over things like leverage and point loading and you're not going to get an accurate sense of the working behavior of a shim by crushing it with pliers of any sort. The distribution of load and angle of pressure are different and the leverage is enormously greater. You need to observe what happens when you actually install it in an instrument and past some initial deforming I've never seen a hard maple shim gradually compress over time.
So you say just because you don't care nobody else should?
I am not talking about gradual compression. I'm talking about taking up some of the vibrations due to (temporary) compression.
And yes (below) guitar picks can work great, but watch out that they don't indent into the body wood.
Of course I care, don't put words in my mouth.
How is any compression of a shim in a bolted on neck "temporary"? If you're as [DEL]anal[/DEL] discerning as you appear to be why are you using partial shims at all? In the few instruments I've had to shim I've either used full contact hardwood shims that cover the whole neck pocket, a full contact wedge or modded the pocket itself. Honestly the partial shims we're talking about here are a stopgap alternative to doing it right.
I don't have any bolt-on that needs a shim right now. The only one that did I re-routed the neck pocket to correct the neck angle.
The compression is that a shim not totally hard eats up some vibrations as they travel between body and neck. I think you don't quite calculate how much force is involved in that 4-bolt mount and how little flexibility you need in a shim to eat up some vibrations.
Ok, I see we're getting lost and sidetracked in semantics here. "Temporary" meant nothing to me. What you're actually talking about is dynamic loading. But since the body is wood and the neck is wood though I still fail to see how a well fit hardwood shim "eats up" vibration between neck and body. Hell, even a poorly fit hardwood one once it deforms to settle won't "eat up" vibration any more than a similar fitting paper or metal or plastic one will. What does cause poor vibratory coupling of the neck and body is air.
What this really comes down to though is that your mental image of destruction testing with pliers is not at all indicative of how a wood shim behaves installed in an instrument.
It isn't a problem if you do a full-pocket shim, which I've done on one of my basses. It requires a longer and thicker piece of material, but is well worth it because you don't lose any vibration transfer and the neck stays straight relative to the body, rather than being angled slightly.
I used a piece of brass for mine so definitely no sustain loss there, but using a piece of wood that's the same as the body wood would also work well. I wouldn't expect the tone to deteriorate over the years but anything is possible.
I used a piece of brass for mine so definitely no sustain loss there, but using a piece of wood that's the same as the body wood would also work well. I wouldn't expect the tone to deteriorate over the years but anything is possible.
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