I recently bought a Taylor GS Mini (secondhand).
It's a great little thing with a lot of oomph from the little body, easy to just leave around the house to pickup and play whenever because it's just that little bit smaller than a the typical acoustic. And because it was reasonably inexpensive, it doesn't have to live in a big protective case.
When I bought it, I thought there was a bit of buzz on the topE, but figured that would be a quick fix.
Turns out that it's not so quick, but, thanks to the bolt-on neck, it should be quite easy.
I'm guessing the previous owner had tweaked the guitar to get the action down to a reasonable level - and it was reasonable (if a little inconsistent over the length of the neck) apart from that bit of buzz.
I checked the neck and there was zero relief, and possibly even a bit of back bow. Loosened off the truss rod to get the fretboard properly flat (frets are fine - it's barely been played) and I've now got about 4mm between strings and 12th fret. Which is a bit high for my lazy fingers.
The nut is cut as low as it'll go. I could maybe shave ~0.5mm off the saddle, but no more. So neither option is going to give me what I need.
Time for a neck reset.
The guidance is to take this to "your local Taylor authorised service centre". So after watching a couple of YT videos, I went out to my workshop.
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There's one bolt that goes from inside the body into the heel, and one screw/bolt into the extension under the fretboard. Remove those (I've shown them outside-to-in rather than inside-to-out in the pic below), and the neck comes away fairly easily to reveal the shims. Quick email to Taylor CS and I've got a set of replacement shims on the way. You use matched pairs to change the neck angle - each shim is numbered based on its thickness/angle.Â
So far, the hardest bit was finding the right size Allen key to be able to loosen the screw/bolt!
When the shim-kit arrives, I should then be able to get the action down to a more finger-friendly level and make a good guitar even better.
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But more importantly, it's also making me think about a bolt-on approach for my possible acoustic build. Seems a lot easier, and it certainly works well on the GS Mini.
Online guitar making courses – guitarmaking.co.uk
I'm currently ploughing my way through watching the acoustic course videos, making the most of the torrential rainy days we're having here. You've convinced me to make a bolt on neck, when I get around to continuing my build.
You've convinced me to make a bolt on neck, when I get around to continuing my build.
Well, if it's good enough for Taylor ...
Be interesting to see how the shims work when the arrive and I fit them - how much improvement to the action I can get, and whether I end up with any ugly gaps in the neck/body join.
I shall report back in due course.
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Online guitar making courses – guitarmaking.co.uk
Be interesting to see how the shims work when the arrive
Are you not tempted to cnc your own shims?
I did think about it @robin - always an option - but as Taylor offered to send me a pack of alternative shims, I didn't need to.
I've had very good experience from Taylor Customer Service before too, impressed with them.
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Online guitar making courses – guitarmaking.co.uk
I did think about it @robin - always an option - but as Taylor offered to send me a pack of alternative shims, I didn't need to.
I've had very good experience from Taylor Customer Service before too, impressed with them.
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You could just make the shims yourself anyway and keep the Taylor supplied shims as a plan B ? That's what I would do 🙂
The guidance is to take this to "your local Taylor authorised service centre".Â
YOU are your local Koendb's authorised service center 😉
😆
Not so local Koen - unless you're planning on taking your latest wow creation on a European (and, post-Brexit, non-European) tour??
😉
If you've got a Taylor, their CS (based in Netherlands) is really impressive. When I bought my first one (12 string), the shop sent it with a gig bag that was *really* tight fitting, so I emailed Taylor CS and they just offered to send me a bigger one. FoC. Thank you Taylor CS.
This little GS-mini is a great pick-up-and-play guitar, so great that I decided to spend some time on it to get it playing as well as it should. It was a fairly cheap buy because I think the seller realised that it wasn't quite right - but it should be entirely fixable with a little time and care.
I also had a T3 in years-gone-by, which was beautifully built but the body was just too big to be playable comfortably, so I sold that one. But I was impressed by its quality.
Overall, my impression of Taylor is very positive. That probably explains why I also bough a T5z earlier this year ...
(sssshhhhh - don't tell anyone)
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Online guitar making courses – guitarmaking.co.uk
You could just make the shims yourself anyway and keep the Taylor supplied shims as a plan B ? That's what I would do 🙂
I might - just as a challenge for the CNC. From what I've seen, their shims are made to fractions of a mm, and have to be fitted as a matching pair. It'd be an interesting challenge to see how closely I could replicate a pair of genuine Taylor shims on the CNC. Â
Not least because I might well need to create some for my one-day Acoustic build.
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Online guitar making courses – guitarmaking.co.uk