I have a question regarding neck shimming I hope that some of you can answer.
I have gotten my Saga guitar set up really well but I wonder if I could tweak it a little more to lower the action. I am running Ernie Ball Regular Slinky 10's. The truss rod adjustment has been set and the lowest I can get the string height is 6/64. The intonation is perfect. I have Schaller tuners on it and have set the tremolo to lie flat. It stays in tune and it feels good to me and has no buzz.
I am wondering if I shim the body side of the neck I could probably get the string height lower.
Is this the right way? and how much should I shim? And what do I use as a shim material.
Thanks everyone.
Shimming commonly used to lower action or simply change the neck angle for comfort or aesthetic reasons. It sounds like the right solution for your situation. However, it's pretty much a "try it and see" exercise -- even as far as the choice of materials. Most commonly used are sandpaper, paper, metal window screening and wood. According to Dan Erlewine, a wedge-shaped piece of wood (full shim) is best, as this would maintain good neck-body joint contact. But most of us have no way of making such a perfectly shaped "wedge" that is only a few hundreths of an inch at its thickest and graduates smoothly to nothing. If you have a drum sander, you can probably make one. Alternatively, a strip of wood or other dense/hard material may be placed at one end (body in your case) to tilt the neck one way or the other. Sometimes sandpaper or metal screening are used to increase neck-body grip and prevent a loose joint.
A hybrid method to increase neck-body contact is to use several strips of material in graduated thicknesses to create a "stepped wedge". For this it is important to control the thickness of each strip and place each correctly in the neck pocket. Using paper or sandpaper for this is ideal, since controlled thicknesses are easily created by layering.
Very little shimming is required to achieve tilt. Three sheets of 22 lb bond paper or a couple thicknesses of 400 grit wet/dry sandpaper may be all you need for the thickest shim strip. You'll have to try it to see.
I recommend buying a copy of one of these books if you will be doing a lot of work on your guitars:
I prefer the first overall, but the second is more specific to electrics.
-Greg
-=tension & release=-
