Neck pocket gaps?

robgilmo

Is this normal from a mex strat?


https://i.imgur.com/Dm7FclD.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/I3QS8Ko.jpg

To my untrained eye it looks a little much?

FelineGuitars

on a 70s strat that would be quite good

hi res blow ups do make things look worse than they are 

ICBM

Yes, normal.

If it bothers you, you can shim the sides of the pocket to make it tighter.

Neil

ICBM said:

Yes, normal.

If it bothers you, you can shim the sides of the pocket to make it tighter.

A gap as big as that, normal?

Do you mean normal as in a Mex Standard which is obviously the lowest end model? 

p90fool

Well it's better than one that's too tight. 

StormshadowGuitars

Its pretty good for a Fender to be fair, had plenty in for repair with a neck like a sausage in a wheelie bin, Even new USA models, although 70's ones tend to be the worst.

guitarfishbay

The neck is held in place by the screws front to back.  Unless you're really unhappy from an aesthetic point of view then it probably doesn't affect the tone or usability of the guitar.  And you can always shim if necessary

ESBlonde

Back in the 70s when we might Pogo about the stage with a strat that had a sloppy neck socket it was inconvenient, but you quickly got into the habit of trapping the body under your arm and push/pulling the neck back straight so you were in tune. These days I'm more sedentry and that same guitar and micro tilt neck never goes out of tune because the joint moved, in fact it is pretty stable in tuning full stop.

Lebarque

guitarfishbay said:

The neck is held in place by the screws front to back.  Unless you're really unhappy from an aesthetic point of view then it probably doesn't affect the tone or usability of the guitar.  And you can always shim if necessary

Rightly or wrongly, I have always believed that a nice, tight neck pocket is desirable to maximise resonance and make it more like a set neck. 

guitarfishbay

Lebarque said:

guitarfishbay said:

The neck is held in place by the screws front to back.  Unless you're really unhappy from an aesthetic point of view then it probably doesn't affect the tone or usability of the guitar.  And you can always shim if necessary

Rightly or wrongly, I have always believed that a nice, tight neck pocket is desirable to maximise resonance and make it more like a set neck. 

The loudest and most resonant Fenders I’ve played and owned have had a gap.

My belief is that the rigidity of the neck, it being screwed tight correctly, and the resonances of the neck and body working together is a far greater factor than some bits of wood passively touching the sides of some other bits of wood.

Re: tightness - If there is any gap, even a hair’s width, it’s essentially the same as a large gap, as the vibrations can’t ‘jump’ the air between. If you look very closely a lot of ‘tight’ necks don’t perfectly touch, they just look like they do. Unless you can lift the guitar by the neck and have the body still stay attached without any screws in then it’s not that tight really.

Neil

I dunno, I've got a couple of Fender Strats and they are both a very good fit, can't see a gap on the old US Standard.

TBH I would have thought with CNC cutting nowadays they could make a better fit on bolt on guitars without trying too hard. 

If this was Gibson they'd be getting a right tanning. 

Philly_Q

guitarfishbay said:
Re: tightness - If there is any gap, even a hair’s width, it’s essentially the same as a large gap, as the vibrations can’t ‘jump’ the air between. If you look very closely a lot of ‘tight’ necks don’t perfectly touch, they just look like they do. Unless you can lift the guitar by the neck and have the body still stay attached without any screws in then it’s not that tight really.

I was reading a review in Guitar Player the other week, I think it was a Hahn guitar - they said he always makes his guitars so that they can be picked up without the screws in place.

But I agree with you, a gap is a gap.  I think it should be tight enough to prevent significant movement, with no obvious visible gap,  but loose enough that you can fit or remove the neck without chipping bits of paint off the edges of the pocket.  Most necks which look tight, if you hold them up to a light and angle them right, you can see a hair's breadth of daylight through the gap.

Sometimes when I've tried to fit a really tight-fitting neck it's made alarming creaking noises as the screws pull it into the neck pocket - presumably because it's actually tighter at some points than others.  That suggests that once in place it's under some kind of tension - in addition to the tension from the strings - which doesn't seem like a desirable thing to me.

WezV

Philly_Q said:

guitarfishbay said:
Re: tightness - If there is any gap, even a hair’s width, it’s essentially the same as a large gap, as the vibrations can’t ‘jump’ the air between. If you look very closely a lot of ‘tight’ necks don’t perfectly touch, they just look like they do. Unless you can lift the guitar by the neck and have the body still stay attached without any screws in then it’s not that tight really.

I was reading a review in Guitar Player the other week, I think it was a Hahn guitar - they said he always makes his guitars so that they can be picked up without the screws in place.

It’s a common pic on luthier forums the world over.   It’s good to have a tight join... 

what most dont point out is they often have to be lightly sanded  after that pic.  If it’s a set neck, once you add glue it can actually get stuck halfway in if it’s too tight.  On a bolt on, you usually want to add a bit of finish which can change the perfect fit .   Or wood can just move a bit... yeah, you can crack a body if it’s too tight

the other one that used to be popular is a luthier standing on a neck to show how strong it is.   You can do this with almost any non-Gibson neck.  Certainly any fender style.


all makes for good pics though 

Philly_Q

WezV said:
the other one that used to be popular is a luthier standing on a neck to show how strong it is.   You can do this with almost any non-Gibson neck.  Certainly any fender style.

There's a clip on the Ruokangas site of him standing on a neck with a tiltback headstock, I think it's a sort of scarf joint done in their particular fashion.

To be fair he looks a bit sheepish and says he wouldn't do it again.

WezV

The is a vid of my doing it to a squier strat neck... just to prove the point.

robgilmo

I have read up on this. Some are saying fender put the gaps in deliberatly on some batches , Mexican and American to keep options open on which neck to fit afterwards, I dont know what the scaore is with this but I do know sll the body and neck blanks were cut in America. Another theory is to allow for shrinkage or swelling in the wood, this makes less sense because if the body becomes drier and shrinks the neck pocket sctually gets bigger and this problem can be observed on new guitars as well as old ones, one thing though is it doesnt seem to happen on Squiers, personally I dont think its sloppy work, a CNC machine simply doesnt have a bad day and cut a batch wrongly.

p90fool

Lebarque said:

guitarfishbay said:

The neck is held in place by the screws front to back.  Unless you're really unhappy from an aesthetic point of view then it probably doesn't affect the tone or usability of the guitar.  And you can always shim if necessary

Rightly or wrongly, I have always believed that a nice, tight neck pocket is desirable to maximise resonance and make it more like a set neck. 

I think the opposite tbh, a slightly loose pocket means that the two largest surfaces of the neck and body are bolted together properly, a tight pocket can leave the neck almost floating, with an unreliable and variable interference fit.