results of the 'shimming experiment'

[shreder75]

welp, my buddy and I did two things before we got to recording my band's demo....put in some duncan pups in my axis and shimmed the neck...I haven't gotten my hands on it yet cause he wired it wrong at first and kept it over the weekend...I'll be gettin' it back today..but I can give you my thoughts on what I did witness while he was doing it...

we used a credit card...shimmed it about a millimeter or so....this raised the bridge DRASTICALLY..to the point where we also put washers on the pup saddles to get them close enough to the strings for my liking...amazing that a millimeter shim had to raise the bridge about a quarter of an inch or so..no lie,...but I did play it to test out the action while I was there....and it worked wonders...action was perfect when I left it with him...

the bridge looked a little funky after shimming it, but it's a small price to pay to actaully get playable action...

am I happy that it wasn't set up properly when I bought it? nope...ya pay 1400 for something and you think it would be set up well enough....but **** happens as they say...but there was really nothing else that could be done as far as I know..what can you do when the bridge only goes so low? welp, ya gotta raise the angle on the neck..simple as that...

anywho..more thoughts when i get it back today and play it through my tube amp...

 

[hbucker]

It's a geometry thing. When you shim the neck, the top of the neck pocket becomes a fulcrum. If you raise the base of the neck by the thickness of a credit card, you're actually lowering the nut by several times that amount. This is proven by the amount you state that you had to raise your bridge and shim the saddles with washers to compensate for the much lower nut.

If you were the guy who posted here a week or so ago about shimming, I and several others made the comment that a credit card would be too thick for this purpose even if the material is fine. A very, very thin shim is all that is needed for the operation you conducted on your Axis. If you'd used the proper thickness, you wouldn't have needed to do anything to your bridge. I did this to my EVH and the bridge never needed adjusting and the action on the upper frets was improved.

Now I'm going to piss you off. Not intentionally, but I'm assuming I will... For somebody who miswired their pickups and set their Axis up as you described, telling Music Man that they didn't set the guitar up right from the factory seems laughable.
Not that you aren't entitled to do anything you want to your own guitar. But even though I've shimmed my EVH neck I would take the factory setup any day over what you've described here.

Hope it works out for you. No hard feelings. If you're happy with it that's all that matters and I can go pound sand. I just find the attitude a bit much under the circumstances.

peace

 

[shreder75]

miswired the pups wrong at first because the schematic on the seymour duncan site was wrong...

there was a plastic shim in there to begin with...and truth be told, the credit card wasn't even noticeably thicker than the shim that was already in there...

so tell me...since you obviously know more about it than I do...what exactly did you use to shim your neck so you didn't have to do anything to the bridge?

I looked back and did see that there was couple people saying that a CC was too thick..that thread was so old that I didn't even remember it, much less realize there was two pages to it...

anyway, I talked to my buddy and he agrees that there should be a way to make it come down some...

as far as the pups being raised with some washers..he still had to raise the pole peices anyway so they can probably stay in there when the bridge is eventually lowered and everything's set up better...

as an aside, in the future..when dealing with someone that's got less experience with something and mentions the results of something they're doing on their own for the first time...if you don't agree with what they're doing or have done, try to stay away from words such as 'laughable'..could really hurt someone's feelings...kind of like it did mine...

 

[hbucker]

If I misread your attitude in your original post, I do apologize. It just sounded to me as though you 1. Weren’t sure of what you were doing. 2. At the same time you were stating (in essence) that you know more about this stuff than Music Man does. Seems like a strange combo for an attitude. That’s how I arrived at “laughable”.

That’s the treachery of posting on the net. You can’t read people’s expressions or sense their tone. My post was not intended to be offensive. Just frank. Please know that I mean no insult with my frankness.

Because of the “geometry thing” I mentioned before, it takes only a very very very small change in thickness to achieve a desired result.

The thickness of the shim that came with my EVH was comparable to the thinnest of guitar picks. Nowhere near the thickness of a credit card. I used foil shielding tape as my new shim. It gave me the ability to increase the thickness one layer at a time until the neck was where I wanted it without having to move the bridge at all. It takes trial and error but after about 5 tries, I got it right.

In fact, you could probably take the original shim, put a layer or two of shielding foil on it and be done with it.

Patience is the key. The more you do this stuff, the more you learn and the better you get at knowing exactly what to do.

Again, no hard feelings. Keep working on it and it will be the way you want it eventually. And remember that any time you perform an operation like this, if it throws some other part of the guitar way out of whack, what you’re doing is probably either wrong or too just much and needs to be scaled back.

God bless you and good luck.

 

[SteveB]

find out the procedure..

Just a caveat to all who order new instruments through a dealer.

When I was waiting for my Petrucci to arrive at my local dealer, in casual conversation I asked what they would do once it arrived. (i.e. would they call me right away, etc.)

I'm glad I asked, because they told me that they would open the guitar and inspect it for damage, and then perform a setup on it.

I asked them to not open it until I was present, and told them that I didn't want them touching the setup. They were happy to oblige, and my Pet came from the factory with a great setup.

If I hadn't inquired, the local tech may have tweaked the factory setup to something that I might not have liked as much.

So, the moral of the story is.. always find out what's gonna happen to your baby before it arrives, and then open your mouth before things are too late.

If my local shop (which is highly reputable, by the way) gives new guitars a setup as part of the process, maybe you fellas ought to find out about your own dealer.

 

[shreder75]

If I misread your attitude in your original post, I do apologize. It just sounded to me as though you 1. Weren’t sure of what you were doing. 2. At the same time you were stating (in essence) that you know more about this stuff than Music Man does. Seems like a strange combo for an attitude. That’s how I arrived at “laughable”.

That’s the treachery of posting on the net. You can’t read people’s expressions or sense their tone. My post was not intended to be offensive. Just frank. Please know that I mean no insult with my frankness.

Because of the “geometry thing” I mentioned before, it takes only a very very very small change in thickness to achieve a desired result.

The thickness of the shim that came with my EVH was comparable to the thinnest of guitar picks. Nowhere near the thickness of a credit card. I used foil shielding tape as my new shim. It gave me the ability to increase the thickness one layer at a time until the neck was where I wanted it without having to move the bridge at all. It takes trial and error but after about 5 tries, I got it right.

In fact, you could probably take the original shim, put a layer or two of shielding foil on it and be done with it.

Patience is the key. The more you do this stuff, the more you learn and the better you get at knowing exactly what to do.

Again, no hard feelings. Keep working on it and it will be the way you want it eventually. And remember that any time you perform an operation like this, if it throws some other part of the guitar way out of whack, what you’re doing is probably either wrong or too just much and needs to be scaled back.

God bless you and good luck.

it's ok..you were right, in a way...admittedly, I'm not experienced with this type of stuff....yeah,I've been playing for about 15 years, but never had an action problem on any of my axes...fender, ibanez, esp...just a quick turn of the bridge and it was fixed...

this type of non floating floyd is an entirely different animal...now, I didn't say that EBMM doesn't know what they're doing..which it's easy enough to interpret what I said as implying that...I just thought for a new and expensive guitar, we as customers, shouldn't have to take off the neck to lower the action..I know they have certain set tolerances...I just thought that with the nature of the non floating bridge that can only go so low, that it should ship with action that's too low..be easier to raise the bridge a bit than shim the neck...

but it's all water under the bridge now..lol..sorry if I seemingly came down on you too hard..like you said, things can have a different effect via the net than talking to someone one on one =)

anywho, talked to the guy who did it and he's gonna re do it for me...he's good like that...=)

 

[shreder75]

Just a caveat to all who order new instruments through a dealer.

When I was waiting for my Petrucci to arrive at my local dealer, in casual conversation I asked what they would do once it arrived. (i.e. would they call me right away, etc.)

I'm glad I asked, because they told me that they would open the guitar and inspect it for damage, and then perform a setup on it.

I asked them to not open it until I was present, and told them that I didn't want them touching the setup. They were happy to oblige, and my Pet came from the factory with a great setup.

If I hadn't inquired, the local tech may have tweaked the factory setup to something that I might not have liked as much.

So, the moral of the story is.. always find out what's gonna happen to your baby before it arrives, and then open your mouth before things are too late.

If my local shop (which is highly reputable, by the way) gives new guitars a setup as part of the process, maybe you fellas ought to find out about your own dealer.

well this one was already on the floor..but my general experience with guitar stores is that 90% of their guitars are set up like ****..lol..I wonder how they expect to sell them half the time, playing the way they do...I kenw the action on my axis was high when I tried it out, but I liked the feel of the neck and I didn't know that the bridge was as low as it could go at the time

 

[bluebullet]

wait a minute if this was a new guitar then all you needed to do was adjust the trussrod to lower the action they come from the factory set up well but the neck settles and the truss rod needs to be tightened thats all. i had the same problem when i got mine and checked the faq section at the music man site and read about adjusting the truss rod to set the action and it worked. now some people have shimmed there necks a little more but we are talking about slight tweaking and most of them will tell you that it was only a slight improvement and that the factory shim is about perfect. honestly if i were you i would put the original shim back in there and adjust the truss rod untill you get the action correct. you can get the action pretty low with the factory shim setup.

 

[shreder75]

I did that and it didn't solve the problem..the action on the upper frets was still way too high...

my buddy re shimmed the neck and it's much much better now..and the bridge sits on the body as it should...shimmed the pups for me too so they sit higher....

 

[hbucker]

I agree with you bluebullet to the extent that you want to make sure your guitar is adjusted 100% correctly before you even think about shimming. That's without question.

I can say that the action with a little prudent shimming can be noticeably better though. I say that from experience.

One of the things you run into on a neck like the EVH/Axis, is that the 10" radius means youc can't get super duper (technical term) low action without fretting out when you bend. Some height must be maintained to avoid this.

It varies from guitar to guitar but sometimes a slightly thicker shim can help a lot. Our own personal tastes can't be ruled out of the equasion either.

 

[shreder75]

action is a preferential thing..no doubt about that...

I don't like action so low that you can't fit a peice of paper between the strings and the frets...but I do like lower action..and, unless I wanted the lower frets to buzz and be unuseable, the truss rod adjustment wasn't cutting it...

the reason I let my friend to it is for a few reasons:

he's set up plenty of guitars before and they all play really well...
I didn't want to send my guitar out to EBMM in california
I didn't want to take it to guitar center and be without it for a month while they were farting around with it...and I couldn't find any techs in the area...

I wanted it fixed, but I wasn't about ready to ship it anywhere or drive two hours to have it done...

cheap and lazy? probably =)

 

[hbucker]

my buddy re shimmed the neck and it's much much better now..and the bridge sits on the body as it should...shimmed the pups for me too so they sit higher....

Glad to hear it. I think you'll be happier with it like that.

 

[bluebullet]

glad to hear that you got it worked out and you are happy with it . and thanks for keeping us posted on the results.

 

[shreder75]

no problem..haven't played it through my tube amp yet, but I'm dyi'n to...dude who did the work for me was like 'dude, that pup's hot and loud'...lol...yyyyyyyyyyyep it is

 

[bluebullet]

the bridge pickup is hot and the neck pickup is fat great for santanna type leads.

 

[shreder75]

he's got a dimarzio superdistortion in his pup..so his presets (uses a boss GT-3 through a tube amp) are set for that guitar..he plugged in my axis with the new duncan JB trembucker in it and he was like DAMN! raunchy as hell! lol...probably needds to get the gain up for his dimarzio..but I think it'll sound good through my B-52..my esp has the same duncan in it and it sounds great

 

[bluebullet]

i thought you still had the original dimarzio evh bridge pickup. i have no idea what a jb will sound like but it was the standard rock pickup in the 80's so i would imagine it will sound great.

 

[shreder75]

ah, sorry for the misunderstanding.....in addition to shimming it, I had him put in a new set oif duncans for me..a jb trembucker in the bridge and a jazz in the neck..someoen who's got a peavy wolfgang (same guitar) put those in there and posted a clip with his splawn quick rod amp..and they sounded great..so I went with them..I've had good tones with the JB in my esp lynch model so I figured I'd stick with that..love that pup....and I think it'll sound even fuller in my axis cause it's basswood whereas my ESP is alder which is brighter sounding

 

[shreder75]

welp, i played it through my tube amp last night..Man, that friggin' JB sounds good in that guitar =) different than it does in my esp, but materials and body type have everything to do with that..but the harmonics and the crunch are definetly there...

action's none to shabby..better than it was before I gave it to my buddy..not quite as low as it is on my ESP, but I think the fact that it's got low profile frets has alot to do with it as well..but it's very playable and sounds good...

takin' some gettin' used to seein' the duncans in there instead of the dimarzios..but I'll get used to it