Replacing a neck on a vintage strat

ICBM

bbill335 said:

@ICBM have you ever come across a 70s strat (or other model) with alignment issues due to an oversized neck pocket? Is shimming the sides enough of a fix in that situation? 

Yes! So many it's hard to remember. It's actually standard . They did it on purpose to make manufacturing tolerances less critical. That really illustrates the ethos at CBS-Fender, unfortunately...

There are several ways to fix it. You can either shim the sides of the neck pocket, or glue in wood veneers if you want to do a really nice job, either right up to the top and touch in the finish so they look like part of the body, or just make them less tall so they don't show.

Or for a quicker but very effective fix, you can glue some sandpaper to the floor of the pocket, which will bite into the surface of the neck and lock it into place when it's tightened down. Or easiest of all, simply drive two panel pins into the pocket floor so just the heads stick up, which again will bite into the neck and lock it into place - obviously that does leave marks if you ever remove it though, as well as the pin holes in the body, but they're small and I doubt anyone would really care too much.

I've done all these at one time or another depending on how bad it is and the condition of the guitar. If you're going to use the pin method, make sure it's properly aligned before you tighten it down .

But whatever you do, don't do the reason for my condemnation of your original suggestion and fit it with a four-bolt plate. I've seen this done a couple of times, and it not only makes a total mess of the body, it doesn't even fix the issue because if the pocket fit is loose it will still move.