Theres enough room to loosen the claw some. to go higher (pitch) when we pull back our resting angle needs to be higher of the bridge, so in your case that means lower tension. lower tension is just looseing the claw a tad.
edit: make sure the outer springs are not touching the cavity sidewalls.
I think with you getting to the proper minor third; you’ll have a bit more action; getting closer to 2mm is better than 1.5mm.
Leave the shim in there; the reasons I stated don’t use a shim is because mechanical bolts have less tolerance to angle deviations; which means under tightening you’ll find more resistance while threading and risk the chance of unseating/shifting/angling the dead nuts installed in the neck.
Also a shim would undermine the advantages of full contact with mechanical pressure. I would probably be better to make a full shim for your situation so that you have 100% contact coverage in the pocket, while getting the right angle. So ask your tech to make you a proper shim with hardwood that’s the maximum size he can mange and the right angle to get you to 2.5mm.
I hope the higher action is worth it to you for all this trouble, to me it is but it may not be that important for anybody else.
Another thing I do to all my boltons to get the best possible pocket contact:
While the guitar is stung up to pitch; I loosen the neck bolt screws half a turn each; on the last bolt you will hear a creak, thats the neck digging into the neck pocket, then tighten them up. I do this ONCE everytime I take the neck off or adjust the yaw.
edit: there’s a level of OCD that may be hit by the diminishing returns theory, but hey this is also a lot of fun.
Thanks man, really appreciate it.
You were pretty adamant about the higher action as being critical for this guitar , don’t backpedal now. 
I see the benefits in going a bit higher for a guitar like this, in terms of playability with the scalloped neck and tone…
He recommended a .5 shim from stewmac
And I’m still going to try to get taller saddle screws.
You say we can pull higher but the tech said he couldn’t… I wonder why?
Thanks!!!
Yeah, the shim should do it with taller screws.
Glad you’re getting the logic behind the taller action.
He must have felt the screw might slip out or something; you can try it yourself, in-fact all these things you can do yourself, nobody can set your guitar up for you the way you want it but yourself. You really can’t do any permanent damage. Just get a Turbo Tuner for your intonation; will last forever, my longest standing pedal is an ST200; not they have a slimmer one with more options.
What are your thoughts about a brass spring claw? KGP makes some cool stuff
I feel it might be irrelevant. get the raw vintage saddles if anything. the guitar is virtually perfect with your nice bridge etc.
what picks are you using; do try the Dunlop 1.5mm Purples 
I use dunlop 1.5 maxi grip, I’ll give the ones you mentioned a try.
I’m going to forgo the raw saddles only because this Callaham bridge is SS and like a truck.
I’m going for the brass claw. The KGP version is very thick and I noticed the difference on one of Charvels in the past
The trifecta is complete
Cool axes bro; Congratulations!
is the yellow one a Satchel signature?
Now you got me thinking about brass claws, I tell ya this never ends!
Yes it’s the Satchel model.
Haha the KGP really stand out from the run of the mill brass claws, they’re very thick, and they come with brass screws and a no solder crimp.
It’s one of the upgrades I can do myself that make a difference
OOh I like the idea of a no solder crimp! That claw solder always requires a powerful solder gun. I’ll check it out.
Yeah, they’re running a special on reverb for $42
I can’t speak at all for mechanical bolts here - some guys swear by the importance on this point of vibrational contact being as strong as possible, others think you’re better off isolating the vibrational transfer from the neck to the body (Eric Johnson, I’ve read, favors nylon shims for this reason). I have no real basis for making a recommendation one way or another.
However, if you want as broad a contact point as possible, it IS possible to use full-pocket shims to simply raise the neck, rather than change its angle - if your tech is advocating for a 5mm shim, it sounds like that’s what he’s using.That might help here.
Weird problem though, I don’t think I’ve ever picked up a guitar that, off the wall, has TOO MUCH neck angle, and too little room for adjustment at the bridge (actually, as I write this, I take that back, there was a Kiesel design that when first released the bridge had to be fully maxed out to get playable action, but the company swore it wasn’t a design flaw, while quietly adjusting the angle in future builds). Usually I’ve found the reverse - my formative (hobbyist) teching experience was with late 90s and early 2000s Ibanez guitars, mostly, and almost without exception I’ve found RGs from this period play a little better with an increase in neck angle and a slightly higher bridge.
I though of the same thing but about 2mm. But then if there’s no angle on the flat shim the issue I though may just be exasperated further.
Well, you’d want to run that in conjunction with a slanted shim, it SHOULD work. Personally, not saying this is right, but I’ve never worried about the surface area of the contact between the neck and body, so I just increase the neck angling by shimming the (usually) very back of the pocket to steepen the angle and let the contact point be damned. But, like I said, there are differing schools of thought about this.
I defer to guys as my strat advisors, but I’m hesitant to shim because I feel it undermine the machine bolt process malmsteen wanted.
If I decide to go forward and raise the action further, it’ll be by taller saddle screws…
IMO, a lot of players have done a LOT of different things to Strats. Strats have changed a lot over the years, too, not sure what era Malmsteens were but I know in the 70s they were using a 3-bolt mount rather than four, and it’s possible his decision to go with machine bolts may have been driven by stripping a body at some point and needing a workaround, rather than a belief that it was intrinsically better.
In your shoes, I would do whatever gets you the best playability. I’m not sure to what extent the neck is already shimmed, but unless we’re talking something already pretty substantial, I’d just shim.
