The Hub

I have searched the forums and was not able to find any discussion about 3D printing neck shims. This made me wonder if with the proper density of infill, may be a viable option. Or is this just taboo? appreciate hearing others thoughts on this

So, I’m a month and a half into this repair business and so far so good. I think I’ve got more than adequate skills to handle the physical, customers have been coming in and balancing a relationship with starting a new business is going well. But…… The scariest thing is how to handle customers and the things they love. So far, I’ve been able to test the waters on repairing fairly inexpensive, not too attached to instruments, easing my wa…

Hi Everyone, I’m working through building my first set neck electric, an LP Jr. I had some build questions… - if you’ve built these Gibson style set necks before, did you cut the neck pocket straight and angle the heel of the neck? Or did you cut the pocket at the angle and keep the bottom of the heel straight? I’m attempting to cut the pocket at an angle, and it isn’t the easiest thing to do, I’m finding out. First, I’ve had some moveme…

This is an early 80's Jester. The only identification is the label inside which appears to show the model number as ACW160, though I've only seen reference to model W160 online. There is scant information about Jester guitars online, and some of it seems inconsistent. This was most likely made in either Holland or Romania. Online information indicated that this would have a dowelled neck joint, but it clearly doesn't. This was a very di…

Finishing up a new cutaway acoustic. I thought I had it right before finishing, but now that the finish is done and the neck is bolted on, a straight edge on the frets is 3/32" over the top of the bridge. Can I work with that, or do I need to either add a shim under the bridge, or just cut a new bridge? Any advice would be greatly appreciated... Paul in Chicago

This came to me all smashed up and I rebuilt it with a new sitka top. The neck was bolted on with the fingerboard extension glued to the (original) cedar top. There is a block under the extension with the end of the truss rod running through it. The bolt heads are recessed in the neck block and in another example, I've seen there is a label over the neck block to hide the bolt heads. I don't know if the two brass shims next to the bolt…

I just had something happen that I can't understand, and I am looking for theories. I was working on an '80s Kramer. The action could not be lowered any further than about 5/64" -- as in no further downward adjustment in the Floyd Rose -- so I removed the neck in case there was a shim in there. There was not. I put the neck back on and the action was now considerably higher. So off with the neck again, and I noticed the imprint of a coi…

I have a Hoffner bass with a neck that broke loose. The main problem seems to be that that neck was loosely fit and was relying on a thick layer of glue at the bottom of the neck pocket to hold it in place, it looks like some shimming is in order. My question is about getting the neck angle correct. With the bridge thumbscrews at the bottom of their adjustment, should a straight edge on the finger board touch the top of bridge, or the to…

I have a new client with 100+ shredder type guitars. He gave me a couple of the easier ones to work on. The first is an ESP which fretted out with bends up above the 12th fret. I thought it was just the 2/64th" low action, but the last two frets seemed really high. I suspected there was a shim in the pocket, and yeah, there was. The bottom of the neck heel is deformed where the shim was. The shaded/dirty area at the bottom edge. Not den…

This is a Suzuki violin company 'Three S' OM-style guitar, circa 1970s. This particular instrument was sold in the Japanese domestic market (my customer purchased it in Japan) but I've seen others in circulation here in Australia so presumably some were exported too. Sides and back are laminated rosewood, the top is solid spruce. Although this ended up being a relatively standard reset, I feel like this is worth documenting as prior to…