I think Fender Neck Angles are Slightly off, anyone else notice this??

I've seen a shim used to tilt the neck up slightly (not down like most shims) that made this problem quite a bit better, as long as the bridge had room to also bring the strings down to keep the action playable. Without it all the strings buzz from about the 5th fret up unless the action is set too high. Basically it makes the ski jump 'up-slope' flatter, ie closer to parallel with the body. Can be combined with putting in some fret fall-away. If the alternative is a re-fret or new neck then it can be a 'last ditch' option.

 

+1000

the op thinks he has reinvented the wheel but he definitely hasn't

 

Why are people going on about the neck and body angle difference? Here's my exaggerated diagram,




On both diagrams cover up the body. What do you have left? A neck, nut, saddle and string. Do they look any different other than one has been rotated? No, they're the same and you apply that to any neck shape you want even if it's a ski jump or twisted at the end of the day the strings that form a straight line are fixed to one point on the neck at the nut and the saddles then adjust the angle made between the neck and string. The shape and orientation of that body can be whatever, it's there for the player to have something to hold onto and make some kind of rigid connection between the bridge and the neck and plays no part in playability other than it's ergonomics.

A shim is something that is designed to correct a sloppy neck and neck pocket joint so that the bridge can be used to find the optimum string height which is posible as long as the strings can be raised from unusably low to unusably high.

 

If you mean where I was talking about making the ski slope "flatter" ('closer to parallel with the body'), well a slope by definition has to be described in relation to something, otherwise it's not a slope.

 

The slope is in relation to the neck, if you take the neck off the body the problem still exists that the neck is warped, it doesn't magically go away because you don't have a body to compare it to.

 

So a slope (that could be anywhere on the neck) is "in relation to" where on the neck ? Pick any point on the neck. That could be the flat part, or it could be the part with the upslope or the downslope. Without an external reference to relate it to you're somewhat in the dark.

 

Bingo! Any part of the neck, choose the heel surface the headstock straighten out the nexk perfectly straight using the truss rod, all of these surfaces should be parallel with the direction that points from the nut to the heel. As I said if a neck is warped on a body it's still warped off the body and sticking a shim under the heel doesn't fix it.

 

...'micro tilt' is nearly always a poor choice.... it is used to lower the headstock end relative to the plane of the body top. But ot does not uniformly shim the neck pocket... it pushes a round disk about 1/3 or the width of the pocket. I have never had a guitar (of maybe 150) that needed the tilt UP rather than DOWN (bring strings closer to the fretboard on the higher frets in particular).