Setting up an Ibanez part 3: Neck Shimming

First of all, allow me to explain what a shim is. A shim is a piece of something (usually cardboard) that is used to elevate the angle of your guitar neck, so that the upper frets are angled slightly higher. This allows you to adjust your bridge's height higher while keeping the action on the fretboard low.

After straightening the neck and balancing the spring of the floating bridge of my friend's Ibanez, I realized that the action of the guitar is still ridiculously high. Somewhere around 2mm on the 12th fret. The worst part is, the trem posts have been screwed down to it's maximum. Meaning, I can't lower the trem posts anymore. So the only option that is left in this case, is to shim the neck at the neck pocket.

I proceed to cut a piece of cardboard (I used a name card) at about 1.5 cm, remove the neck from the neck pocket and placed it towards the very end of the neck pocket as shown in the picture. If you are using a piece of cardboard as a shim, please keep in mind that there is no real need for you to make the holes for the screw. Since the screws are already sharp, you can actually screw through the cardboard pretty easily.

Proceed to string up the guitar after re-attaching the neck back to the neck pocket. Make sure all 4 screws are tighten. We don't want the neck shifting around in the neck pocket after you have strung up the guitar. Some of the tuning instability can be attributed to this. After that, proceed to adjust the action of your guitar again and make sure that the neck is still straight and the spring of the bridge is balanced. Test every note on the neck and make sure that no notes are chocking or buzzing. Especially around the upper fret area. Notice in the picture on the super low action I was able to set for my friend. There weren't any buzzing or whatsoever. The guitar now plays like a dream. At least a shredder's dream.

Action!

The Action of the guitar is probably one of those terms as a player, especially a beginner would have heard of when first encountering a guitar technician. What exactly is the Action of the Guitar? It is the amount of space between the string and the frets of the guitar. Why is the Action of the Guitar particularly important? It is because, the Action of the Guitar determines how comfortable it is to play the guitar. Although there are many different kinds of action available that each individual players prefer, I personally like very low action on my guitars, usually measuring 1mm at the 12th fret(This is only for electric guitars).

What are the advantages of having low actions. The lower the action, the less pressure required for you to fret the notes. Meaning it's a lot easier for you to play. However, for players who center around the first 3 frets of the guitar, the action probably wouldn't make that much of a difference.

What are the disadvantage of having low action then? Well, the string get robbed of it's vibration property therefore giving you less crystal clear tone. What is then a good action to have? According to Rich Harris from Ibanezrules.com, he usually sets his guitars at 1.5mm measured at the 12th fret. That is adequate enough for easy playing and giving enough space for the string to vibrate.

My personal preference is 1mm however, what is yours?