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60's Lacquer Jazzmaster Shim?

Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 6:35 am
by MissoulaGriz
thinking i may need just a bit more break angle on my jazzy to negate some of the "ghosting" that's happening behind my bridge. i'm running 10's right now and my action is pretty spot in. strings aren't jumlijng out of the bridge either. is it worth it to drop a slight shim in these? i've heard both comments that the 60's Jazzmasters have a ramped neck pocket and then some that say they don't have a ramped pocket.

thoughts?

Re: 60's Lacquer Jazzmaster Shim?

Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 6:38 am
by MissoulaGriz
Here's a shot of the current bridge height and string break angle. Does this look about right?

Image

Re: 60's Lacquer Jazzmaster Shim?

Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 8:12 am
by Larry Mal
I'm not sure if they have an angled neck pocket or what, but it wouldn't be possible to easily tell if your bridge is where it should be and if you need a shim from a photograph. There's no set place where the action is perfect on an offset, since it will depend on where your neck sits and other variables with your action.

When you say "ghosting", though, what are you referring to? If you don't like the harmonic content that comes from behind the bridge- a huge part of the Jazzmaster sound, to me- but you are otherwise happy with how the guitar plays and sounds, , then that's a case for the Buzz Stop right there. That will take the behind the bridge strings out of the sonic equation.

Re: 60's Lacquer Jazzmaster Shim?

Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 9:35 am
by Francer
I can't say whether a shim would be the change you're looking for or not, but just looking at that picture, that's a very low bridge by Jag/JM standards in my experience.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, I have a Jazzmaster with a similarly low bridge and it plays fine, so if you're happy with the set up and the strings aren't jumping out of the saddles then it could be just fine for you too, but you've certainly got some scope to experiment with a shim if you want to.

Re: 60's Lacquer Jazzmaster Shim?

Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 9:43 am
by daemon
I was wondering about the "ghosting" too. That's just kind of a Jazzmaster thing, if I understand what the OP is talking about. Both my MIJ and 60's Lacquer have it. FWIW, the bridge on the 60s is much lower than on my MIJ, but they both seem to have about the same action.

Re: 60's Lacquer Jazzmaster Shim?

Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 10:04 am
by MissoulaGriz
Thanks for the responses so far. Yeah, I'm definitely familiar with ghosting on offsets and that's one of the things that I love about them so much. I guess maybe more of what I'm trying to say is that I'm feeling that with the lack of string break over the bridge I may be getting more buzz combined with the ghosting since the tension is less. I guess the only way I'll find out is to put a shim in there and see what happens. I was also interested to see what you guys thought about my current bridge and string break angle. Sounds like it's pretty shallow to typical setups?

Re: 60's Lacquer Jazzmaster Shim?

Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 10:15 am
by daemon
I'm not sure there is a "typical setup", because there are a variety of variables. Yours doesn't look any different from mine, though, so I think it's normal for that model for the bridge to be that low. I did have some buzzing that I solved by spending a lot of time taking the saddle height screws out one at a time and applying loc-tite blue after getting it intonated.

Re: 60's Lacquer Jazzmaster Shim?

Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 10:24 am
by Francer
If you fancy a little more light reading on the subject you could also check out this thread.

Re: 60's Lacquer Jazzmaster Shim?

Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 10:31 am
by Peckhammer
You could use a shim for a number of reasons. You could move the neck slightly closer to the player, or slightly further away. You might want to raise a low bridge, or lower a high bridge. Your pickups might not raise high enough, lots of reasons. I recently built several J-style guitars. One seemed just right as it was. The other, pictured below, had the Mastery bridge practically sitting on the pickguard. The 6th string was making contact with one of the trem screws. I made a 1 degree full pocket shim. You can see the results of that in the pics below. 1 degree is too much. I have since made a 1/2 degree full pocket shim. That's a keeper. A little shim angle goes a long way due to the geometry.

One degree full pocket shim:
Image
Look how high the bridge is now. The pickups cannot be raised high enough for good adjustment.
Image

For those that want to save time and not experiment with various shim angles, there is a formula for determining which angle to use: (XZ)/W

It's probably been posted here before, but here's a link if you are interested:http://fingerlakesguitarrepair.com/fend ... eck-reset/

Re: 60's Lacquer Jazzmaster Shim?

Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 10:41 am
by MissoulaGriz
Great shots and that shim is a work of art! I've secured the saddle and bridge screws with blue loctite and they are super solid. The more responses I see here, the more I realize that I may be overthinking this one too much and I need to just chill and play it. I am going to be setting it back up for 11-49's today however as I do like the larger gauge on my offsets.

Re: 60's Lacquer Jazzmaster Shim?

Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:32 am
by mjet
If you end up wanting a shim, StewMac makes some that take the guesswork out of making your own (mentioned in one of the externally linked posts, but I'll put it here just for the OP's convenience):

http://www.stewmac.com/Materials_and_Su ... uitar.html

Re: 60's Lacquer Jazzmaster Shim?

Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 12:03 pm
by Peckhammer
SM shims are nicely done, but be aware that you'll pay $8.75 in shipping: https://reverb.com/item/2931545-stewmac ... d-set-of-3

Re: 60's Lacquer Jazzmaster Shim?

Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 3:56 pm
by Homeless Blueless
MG, you may be able to get some more tension on the strings by just tightening the spring in the tremolo unit (i.e. turn the screw to the right with a screwdriver until you get the tension that you want). It takes a bit of mucking around (you will need to retune the strings to match) but you might solve the issue this way.

I also have one of the 60's Lacquer jazzmasters and the bridge on mine is about the same height as on yours, I also use 10's.

Re: 60's Lacquer Jazzmaster Shim?

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 6:50 am
by daemon
If it helps, here's a comparison of my MIJ (left) vs. the 60s (right):

Image Image

Re: 60's Lacquer Jazzmaster Shim?

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 8:26 am
by MissoulaGriz
That is pretty close to mine. I've got some fret sprout happening on mine because of the insane dry weather and lack of humidity so I took it into my luthier yesterday to have him clean up the fret ends. He's a jazzmaster freak and set up guru. He said that the break angle isn't terrible but he typically likes to see just a tad more of a break than what he's seeing on mine. He was going to play with it a little and see what a very thin shim would do. If it doesn't do much, he said he'd leave it as is.