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Getting the neck joint a good fit is absolutely essential -
especially on a bolt on neck. A slack fit will reduce the
resonance between the two components and cut short that bell like
acoustic tone even before the thing is plugged in to an amp.
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Take a look at the fit of the neck to the
left. In my case, the neck did not fit the neck pocket. In
fact I wondered how to make the neck fit at all. There was the
neck screw holes to drill, and this problem with the oversize
of the neck. Firstly, I carefully examined the neck pocket
and decided NOT to attack that with a chisel because the body
was already finished and the neck was not.
I considered many options but my answer worked out great -
although completely unorthodox guitar making. |
| What I did was to make a template
of the little bit of body that covered the neck (what you see
in the above picture) and then marked that area on to the
neck. This was about 1/4 inch by about 1 inch with a rounded
edge. I simply then VERY CAREFULLY took off just enough wood
from the neck to make it fit perfectly and very snug. |
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As you can see from the picture on the left
it turned out to be a surprisingly good job. The neck fits
tightly, which also helped in drilling the neck screw pilot
holes above. If you don't drill these then you can easily crack the
neck AND will not be able to tighten the screws enough to hold
the neck tight to the body.
Use a small drill - you can drill bigger if necessary, but
you can't drill smaller! I found after fitting the neck in
this way that the neck/body alignment (down the neck) was spot
on and needed only very small amounts of packing for the neck
rake (i.e the tilt back angle). |
| As you see the neck is also
aligned up nicely with the body. I actually fitted the neck
AFTER fitting the tremolo assembly because I had to drill the
body for the tremolo screws (they were blank). This was also a
tricky job. Be very careful not to take too much wood off
the neck/body joint otherwise the guitar will not be as
resonant.
Look at the neck picture back above and you can see where I
drilled the pilot holes for mounting on the guitar body. |
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This neck plate by the way, was custom made
for me from a supplier on ebay. It cost me around $US20.00
or £14.00 and is an exact replica of the 62 era, right down to
the serial number.
I wanted originally a fully authentic 62 strat guitar but
later decided to cut the crap and move my strat in to the 21st
century. This is one of the throw over's that I decided to
keep, along with the tuners and the tremolo all 62
specification. |
The above is a shot of the finished neck to body joint.
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