Hi Guys, I need to shim my guitar a little on the neck side, but my guitar has AANJ neck joint, and because that is curved on the edge side of the neck joint, this is the first time I need to shim in the neck side, because, all my other guitars always needed a little shim on the body side, so I never experience with this.
I dont know ho to place correctly the shim, also dont know what shape will have!
Please if anybody have this similar problem I will appreciate your help!

thanks!

http://www.ehow.com/video_2375083_ho...neck-shim.html

thanks for the video, but it doesnt help me because that guitar doesnt have AANJ neck Joint...
I know how to shim a neck, my problem is shimming a neck on the headstock side, on a guitar that has AANJ ...

Look at the treble side of the neck pocket. These are basically nut shims cut down and held in place with scotch tape.

The propper way to shim a neck would be to cut a angled sliver of maple so that it completely covers the floor of the entire neck pocket. Just placing a tiny piece of "whatever" between the body and neck, (could) cause a hump in the heel end of the neck over time.

Strong emphasis on the word 'could'.

My RG550 is over 20 years old and it has had a paper shim on the bridge side of the pocket since the day I got her and set her up.

No problems at all.

And even though I no longer do tech work on guitars, one friend of mine still has me clean and set up his #1 Strat from time to time, and that has a business card 'sliver' as a shim on the neck side of the pocket... and that's been there for the past 25 years. I put that one in, but it was actually a replacement because I removed the neck to do a thorough cleaning of the fretboard, and I have no idea how many years that shim was in there. (It was just easier to have the neck off the body).

On the rare occasion I have to scrub the board now, I don't bother taking it off, afraid I'll screw up the shim, plus the guitar is almost 50 years old so I'm leery about pulling bolts that I don't absolutely have to. I'll leave that to an insured tech.

If memory serves; many Ibanez guitars came with paper shims in place to correct the neck angle. Rich would be able to tell you for sure, but when I was working on guitars as a side job I saw a lot of guitars with paper shims, and never noticed any problems caused by said shims.

Not saying it can't happen, just pointing out that it's extremely unlikely.

YMMV

I love these overkill "luthier" solutions.

Ibanez has always used paper shims, in fact they had Ibanez printed on them for years.

Try cutting an angled sliver of maple the thickness of 2 sheets of paper

I'm actually kind of confused what sort of shim he's looking for? Is he trying to shim the neck up or is he trying to pin the neck? I took it as the latter. The shim I posted above was actually done by Rich at some point in the guitar's life, in order to pin the neck and set string alignment with the fretboard.

I have a different guitar that needed the entire neck shimmed up by a significant amount. I made this shim out of 1/16" basswood that I bought at a hobby shop. You can see the original paper shim with Ibanez printed on it. I left that in place, since it would affect the neck angle.

He wants to reduce neck angle by shimming the headstock end of the pocket.

Put it close to the screw holes to reduce the stress on the neck. Keep it perfectly parallel to the frets to keep everything square.

But why? The shim almost always goes on the bridge side. What problem are you trying to solve?

thanks for the replys guys, my problem is that I want to lower a little bit the action, but I get fret buzz on the 14-18 frets, so when I look in detail, I see that the same action at fret 12 is almost the same at fret 24 (there is no neck angle).
The solution I see here is the one "Takin a ride" did, a small shim of basswood, the problem is I dont know how to cut it in angle! to be able to raise a little the headstock side of the neck pocket.

Apart of this, I think the guitar comes with a very deep neck pocket, because the tremolo is resting very deep in the body (its leveled, but it is very deep) maybe I have 1/2 turn on the studs before It reach the bottom..

thanks!

Shimming the headstock side isn't going to help you get lower action, or eliminate fret-buzz... plus; if you feel the bridge is already too low in the body shimming the headstock side of the pocket is going to cause the bridge to go even lower into the body.

If you're experiencing excessive fret buzz in the upper register it's most likely too much relief on the neck.

Go to Rich's tech site at www.ibanezrules.com for a great tutorial on setting up the action, including adjusting the truss-rod.

If after doing a thorough setup you still feel the bridge is too low in the body, you'll want to shim the bridge side of the pocket. This will angle the neck back a bit, so you'll have to raise the bridge to maintain the same action.

Again, if you shim the headstock side of the pocket it will raise the action, will not solve the upper fret buzz and you'll actually have to lower the bridge even more into the body to achieve the action that you want.

You have too much relief: tighten the truss rod a bit and raise the bridge.

A shim on the neck side is the last thing you need, you would end up either bottoming out the bridge or raising the action.

Beat ya to it by a whole four minutes. J/K

thanks guys, but Im a little confuse now, because on this thread I see that all of you agree that shiming the headstock side of the neck pocket will make my bridge go lower and raise my action ... but in the mandatory modifications section (http://www.jemsite.com/articles-menu...ons/#neckangle)
it says this:
" Bridge sits too low into the body when trying to get good action - increase the neck angle by shimming the headstock side of the neck joint. This allows you to raise the bridge and lower the action simultaneously. Reattach the neck and raise the bridge to test "
So what is the correct information???