Are you using your micro tilt adjustment?

Nope.

Despite playing for a little over 10 years at this point, I'm only now getting proficient at doing my own setups. Once I find out how that thing works on my Am Std., I guarantee it'll be one more thing to obsess over. Ignorance is bliss.

 

Yes

 

I have used mine Seasonally, the way some other people use adjustments to their truss rods. If the guitar goes a little out of kilter, you can dial it back in - then in a few months you detension it until next winter.

I sure don't leave it in use for long stretches. I've seen "ridden hard, put away wet" Americans at guitar shops (almost all Strats) with humps that correspond to the location of the Tilt mechanism. One place in Orlando, on Orange Blossom, had more old, messed up Americans that had this issue, than those that did not.

 

Nope, it's just a form of neck shimming really, and for every guitar I've needed to shim.... it's on the wrong end of the neck pocket! Not to mention, it leaves the neck just resting on a screw head more or less.

 

I don't use the micro tilt on my Strat. I just haven't needed it. But I am apprehensive about it. I have one on an old Peavey Predator that after 20 years I decided to use and I think I over tightened the neck bolts because the neck split. Not a bad split, but still a bummer. Now I use a whole pocket shim from StewMac.

 

I had an 85 mij Contempory Strat with micro tilt that I adjusted it once and left it. Made the angle much nicer.

My 2010 Am St Strat has one but I've never felt the need to adjust it. Some things are better left alone imho.

 

On my CBS Fenders, no on my Tele Deluxe but yes on my Strat. I'm not sure it needs it though - it's how it was set up when I got it.

 

My new in 2006 Strat came with a business card shim in the neck pocket. I replaced it with a cut to fit piece of metal feeler gauge. I would never use a micro tilt as it may cause long-term humps in the neck.

 

No

 

My Cabronita has it, and I do use it.

 

I've never seen the need to adjust any of mine.

 

I think Ron Kirn nailed it. Fender wanted to speed up the assembly process, to make more money, and the Micro Tilt means the worker installs the neck just once. If the guitar doesn't want to set up, he or she dials in some Micro Tilt. And then, the Marketing Department tells the customer it is a feature for them (the customer) when I don't think it is. I don't think it made sense on the Leo Fender G + L products either, except he demonstrated that he, Mr. Fender, knew what he was doing and the Tilt function wasn't the real reason so many 1970s Fenders were throwaway junk (just bad manufacturing processes). Worth? Not even close to the trouble FMIC went to to design them in. For the customer, that is.

 

The Micro Tilt Adjustment would be a nice thing to have on a vintage style Jaguar or Jazzmaster which because of the shallow string break angle over the bridge, unless you use really heavy strings, the necks most times need shimming to keep lighter gauge strings from jumping around on the bridge saddles.