Do I need a neck shim?

[GarethFlatlands]

I'm fixing up an old telecaster and the action is currently too high for my liking. However, when I fret the first and last frets and check the string height at the height is around .8mm which means the neck should be reasonably straight. The higher strings aren't too bad but the lower strings seem very high from the frets, the low E (actually C#) is over 2mm from 12th fret. Lowering the string height at the bridge just causes a lot of buzzing problems on the lower strings.

It's a very cheap homebrew model I bought 2nd hand so it could be a variety of problems and I don't have the knowledge to be able to pinpoint it. Similarly, as it was £80, I don't want to spend a lot of money on it so I won't be taking it to the guy who usually sets up and repairs my guitars for me.

Any ideas? I can provide pictures if anyone thinks they might know but needs to have a look and see.

Thanks

[HowieBass]

I'd say check the nut slots first to make sure they're at the right depth before you decide to start inserting neck shims as obviously your action will be affected by the nut as well as the bridge saddles if you're measuring the string action unfretted. There's probably a thread on here about how to check for the right nut slot height (think it's something like hold the string down at the third fret and the string should just be shy of touching the first fret). But yeah, when all other adjustments have been tried then raising the whole neck a few 1/64" of an inch might be necessary. I shimmed the neck on my Curbow 5 using 2 layers of a plastic sheet I had handy (raising the neck in total by 1/16") because I couldn't get the action low enough and the G and B saddles were as low as they'd go.

[GarethFlatlands]

Looks OK from the 3rd fret test but looking at the neck side on, I'm not sure it's not warped actually. I'll take it in to my tech guy, he's a friend so he'd probably diagnose the problem for cheap and I can look at how to fix it in the new year when I've hopefully got some money. It's been sat in a case in our practice room for months untouched so I wouldn't be surprised if the neck has suffered.

Thanks for the info though, at least I know the nut seems to be alright.

[booboo]

Had to do this to a fairly expensive AVRI with good results. It gave me the room I needed for adjusting the action with height to spare either way at the bridge. Advice about the nut height is also true - from (bitter) experience the correct amount to shave the nut down by is about one file stroke before you say 'oh bu*ger I need a new nut now'! Difficult to judge and take it slow. Same with the shim - you don't need a door wedge in there, just a strip of card/plastic/wood.

[Annoying Twit]

I couldn't believe the difference when I filed the nut of my Shine bass. Massive improvement. I shimmed the neck, and that was a great improvement too. With the shim in place, I can get the action as low as the frets will allow by adjusting the truss rods and the bridge. I'm no technical expert, but I found it much easier than I thought it would be.

Edited December 15, 2013 by Annoying Twit

[steve-bbb]

if youre feeling extremley bold you could take a chisel to the body and make a recessed pocket with a snug fit for the bridge baseplate to drop it down so that it sits flush with the bodywork

[PlungerModerno]

[quote name='steve-bbb' timestamp='1387361186' post='2311003']
if youre feeling extremley bold you could take a chisel to the body and make a recessed pocket with a snug fit for the bridge baseplate to drop it down so that it sits flush with the bodywork
[/quote]

Oh dear . . .
Don't forget the safety goggles - especially if you break out the router!

Getting back to the original post - There's at least 3 related but distinct issues to get get right in order to get things just so.
1. frets - are they level and are they straight (i.e. is the neck warped).
2. relief - does it have usable relief.
3. action - does the saddle adjustment allow decent adjustability from low to medium action.

I have found 2 and 3 are the main things to get right, as long as you don't have very problematic frets you should be able to get decent action without too much fret noise. Something that I learned the value of is getting the radius even. Saves a lot of tweaking later on.

[GarethFlatlands]

The closer I look, the more it seems like the first few frets aren't level. It looks like there's a slight twist in the neck and there's definitely a more pronounced curve on the bass side of the neck.

Straightening it seems like it's beyond my abilities so I need to decide now whether to get a new neck, live with the problem or sell it on as a work in progress. I just wish I'd noticed before I'd dropped £17 on a new scratchplate and £40 on a replacement pickup! I still need a 2nd opinion though so all might not be lost.

[GarethFlatlands]

OK, I decided to stop procrastinating and just try a neck shim on the grounds that it costs nothing and takes about 15 minutes. I don't know how legit it is but I used 2 pieces of card, on the full width of the neck and one half width to make the bass side slightly higher to try and compensate for the curve.

It seems to have worked out quite well, the action on the bass side is certainly lower and apart from a little buzzing in places, it plays significantly better. There are a couple of small jobs that need doing before I re-string and set the intonation but it's looking like it's a viable backup guitar if not a favourite in it's current state.

I may post it in the guitar porn thread if it turns out alright.