Shimming the neck (Part 1)

Today I shimmed the neck of my H1 Tele not that it's in a dire need of one but it's my attempt to enjoy a uniformed (lower) string action along the neck of the guitar. In reality, this is nigh on impossible because the nature of the instrument is such that the lower fret register would manifest a lower action (once the strings are fretted) compared to the upper upper part. If action is uniformed throughout, there will be fret buzzing.

What in guitardom is a shim? It's a wedge inserted in the guitar body's neck pocket to raise the neck placement.

The neck of the H1 Tele is first removed. If your body's neck pocket contain some dirt/ dust, it's best removed/ swept away before proceeding. As you can see here, Fender still stamps some assembly detail in their neck pockets as it was done in the past. My H1 tele is indeed a fresh product, assembled in July this year.

Create a simple shim out of a piece of paper. The recommended thickness is one similar to that of a cigarette box. If you don't smoke & having fag boxes in the house would get you into grave trouble, use a food container box (eg: cereal box/ granola bar box/ etc) or your string pack (the one I used here) for that matter. The length of the shim should match that of the pocket (duh!) but the width need only be 2cm or lesser. The objective is to raise the tip of the neck, nothing excessive.

You need not create any holes on the shim (because as you screw the bolts back in, they would easily penetrate the paper, yes?) but I did that to ease insertions.

Righty! It's done! My H1 tele needs a fresh set of string & I'm using EHX's set of .009 this time...