New Neck Time. Relic haters stay back!

redrighthand · January 2017

Finally got round to replacing the neck on my partscaster Strat.

The original build thread for the strat is here: http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/142/my-first-build-s-mjt-content#latest

The original neck was a musikraft v to c - a lovely neck with amazing fretwork - so much so that I'm holding onto it for the time being. However as my hands prefer bigger necks, and I wanted a dark tinted relic neck to match the MJT body, I kept an eye on MJT's eBay page and some time back picked up a heavily reliced USACG neck, with a huge boat V back (1 inch deep all the way).

I don't like many non-fender neck shapes, but the very subtly different USACG shape is really nice I think.

This was also my first ever go at cutting a nut. The neck's a bit wider than normal, but I managed to find a TUSQ nut, with guide notches pre-cut, that fitted almost perfectly. There's room on the neck to adjust the spacing but I thought I'd stick to the pre-cut spacing for now. Having bought some nut files from Thomann (not that cheap, but I figured worth the investment given how much it costs to get a pro to do one) this was fairly straightforward. As people say, it's easy to cut too deep, especially with the thinner files, so going slow is great advice.

Finally I had one of those rockabilly decals knocking around in a fitting shade of green - and it fitted just perfectly.

Overall I'm very happy. The action could be a tad lower but gets a bit buzzy - it may be that a few frets would need fettling to sort that. For now it suits me just fine.

Obligatory pics below.

http://i.imgur.com/0UAgU14.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/qn0Zg8K.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/EW2q0y7.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/DizTsUr.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Cp8GcJT.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/R6ABOyc.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/hj8B0VR.jpg