Seems I have a slight neck alignment problem, a little more than just a simple truss rod adjustment! Anyway I did a bit of Googling and came across an idea called 'shims', which are basically splints (usually strips of credit cards, best use for them!) which prop up the neck. From what I gather they're predominately placed underneath the neck either at the front or the back to adjust the height of the strings (well the height of the neck in correspondence to the strings really) not at the sides to push the neck in one certain direction.
After many, many, many failed attempts I got to this stage:
The irony here is that there are no shims in place here! At this point I decided to remove the plate at the back for some reason and lo and behold we have my most successful attempt.
Unfortunately I didn't stop there. I tried to replace the plate thinking there must be a way that I could have both a correctly aligned neck and be able to keep my plate in place. Didn't have much success and I also bust my 1st string in the process so now I can't even tell how both E strings line up on the neck.
I think at this stage I'm either going to have to remove the plate once again and then see how it copes with 6 strings worth of tension or I take it to someone that actually knows what they're doing.
If I do go down the repair route I think it will be a few weeks as I can't afford to have it professionally repaired just yet (plus there may be no worth in it). In the meantime I've put back the bridge tone and volume controls (which was a lengthy and awkward experience in the end using string to form a noose!), jack (as best I can seeing as it's bent out of shape) and pickup switch. I've also for now put back the crappy knobs which I'll eventually replace.
For now I've hit a point in the project where I'm going to have to spend money (which of course leads to which decisions do I make). Do I remove the plate, restring it and hope for the best? I would probably get my new humbucker sorted first too so I don't have to mess around removing strings then adding them again.
Or do I just call it quits now and take it to a professional. This of course means spending a decent amount of money (I'm guessing at least £30 as that's the cost of a setup) but if I did this I'd prob want the guitar to not have wires hanging out which of course means replacing the humbucker now or sticking with what I have and putting the controls back in place (also purchasing a new tone knob too as I had to cut the last one out!).
As I said earlier because there's now money involved any progress on this project is now going to be slow.
No comments:
Post a Comment