Neck shims on Excess basses

[SweenyToddMDQ]

Hello all.

I have two 4 strings Excess basses. One is an Excess I Surfreter from 1998, and the other is a Roger Glover from 2009. Got them both second hand.

When I checked the neck pocket I saw that both basses were shimmed. One with a proper full pocket shim, and the other with a small shim on the body side (which was glued :rougefaché: ).
If I take out the shims, I cannot get anywhere near the factory string action on neither of them, even with the saddles at the lowest they can go. I ordered two blank stewmac bass shims of 0.5° to do the job properly.

My wild guess is that with the string tension and over-tightened screws, the softer alder of the body got slightly compressed through the years, needing the correction. But I am a bit surprised all the same to have this on two Vigier instruments.

Is this normal / expected, or a known issue in Excess basses? Or I just had bad luck and these were not treated properly in their previous lives?

Thank you !

[1Patrice Vigier]

My answer is short. We never put shim and never, as for now, heard about this.

[SweenyToddMDQ]

Hello Patrice,
Thank you for the reply. I wouldn’t even think of a Vigier leaving the workshop with a shim. I guess something happened to these during their previous lives.
I’ll try to find a good luthier to get them checked, because if you never heard of this before, there could be something else going on.
Happy Easter!