anyone know what the micro tilt adjust does on 70s strats?

_________________
mad

You can shim the neck with it.

Just like on the current Am Standards.

_________________
Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

shim?

_________________
mad

He means you can change the heel angle by small degrees. Like putting a paper or light emory or shaved piece of something between the heel and the body cavity where the neck fits into.

The 70's Tilt-o-matic, bullet truss rod, 3 bolt neck Strats were a nightmare to adjust. They'd come into the shop 5 at a time sometimes. I've done as many as 23 a week back then. All horribly configured as far as neck angle, and they just would NOT stop drifting. I kept asking " Fender... what the hell are you guys doing? You had a fine instrument in the Stratocaster from 1954 on...and then someone had a genius moment with this ridiculous neck, and I'm left adjusting and fixing them."

The Fender Strat was simple. Primitive almost, but it worked. It was never broken. It was loved by all who played it. Then some bean counters from CBS got together with some Pseudo-Engineers, tried to save some $$ and invented this hellish neck, along with reducing the quality of all the Fender instruments by cutting corners, reducing labor, installing cheaper parts, and finally getting them made off-shore.

FMIC is now in control and wants to be proud again, and I applaud that , but the Strat is still the most "screwed around with" guitar I've ever known.
All this with an instrument that never needed any screwing around with!

The three bolt, tilt-o-matic neck was so roundly booed and despised by players and technicians, that it was mercifully discontinued.

I'm pretty sure that the 3-bolt Micro Tilt thing was invented by Leo Fender. Of course, he didn't have a lot of say into the implementation. He continued using it on his own post-Fender guitars.

_________________
Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

Yes, it was a Leo patent and was meant to allow to change the angle of the neck in order to ease the action on high frets.

It works...just like it should, and people with floyd Roses cna use it to set their tremolo floating in order to pull it, impossible to do if the neck does not have any angle.

Leo did own the patent for the Tilt-o-matic neck. CBS was the one who employed it, and maybe some of the concepts sounded fine, but the reality is that they ended up in shops across the globe for constant adjustments in stunning numbers. They were summarily discontinued.

As if to prove some fine point, Leo carried it forward in later years, but his last company, G&L, now uses 4 bolt necks, has made the bullet virtually disappear, and certainly you never hear the words Tilt-o-matic used by anyone anymore.

However there are two innovations that Leo came up with that have some even more interesting thought to them. One is the Dual Fulcrum Vibrato used by some G&L's, and the other is a two truss-rod system that uses a flat rod along with a round one, I believe. This is a very stable system, but a bit harder to work with. Reminds me a lot of working with old 4001 Rickenbacker basses with the two rods. Always kind of an adventure!

I never had any problems with it on my '70s Strats. Probably because I never used it to shim the necks!

_________________
Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

By not shimming the necks maybe you did the right thing! The other part of what I believe is that people just screwed around too much with the whole assembly.

The idea wasn't terrible. It just wasn't properly thought through. When I was a kid and bought my New Strats...in 1977...they were of course, 3-bolt necks. I was just learning guitar and I already knew the 3-bolt necks were hated. I couldn't afford an older pre-CBS (and Lefty) Strat. So I got new.

The necks are certainly not as stable as the 4-bolts. But, after all these years, they're fine. And the guitars (which I still own) are great.

And I suspect that there was an odd plus to having 3-bolt necks back when I was young and stupid. I dropped the guitar a few times a year back then (no, I wasn't ALWAYS drunk). The fix? Pick the guitar back up, hold the headstock and the upper bout and just yank the neck back into allignment. (When you find yourself near a screwdriver, tighten.)

I now have straplocks. Also, I have newer, 4-bolt siblings for the two old guys.

Love,
Todd

_________________
Up is louder!

My viewpoint comes from me being a former Fender Dealer, and a repairman, or tech as they say now. Problem for dealers back then was that it became more frustrating for all parties, and less money was made on that particular sale by the dealer network. If you have to keep supporting a particular sale, then you invest too much manpower , man-hours and efforts and shop supplies etc into that instrument, and it becomes a nightmare. We screamed bloody murder at Fender, and they finally axed it. It was more than just the guitar that was at fault; it was the dollars that it didn't generate. Gibsons could, at that time, be sold for full pop, and every Strat sold had to be discounted. You can have any opinion of that era guitar that you like to have, but the big picture wasn't pretty, I'm telling ya!

It was to the guitar tech's at Manny's in New York that I talked back in the late '70's.

As a Lefty, my options were limited but I really wanted Jimi's guitar. The guys selling me a guitar tried to talk me into getting a Righty guitar ("trust me, you'll thank us some day"). Then they tried to talk me into something other than a Fender. It was because they hated the necks so much. I was a bratty kid and got what I wanted. I'm perfectly happy with my choice but I remember experiences like that.

Certainly, your experience is informative because of your unique position as a tech back then. Thank you.

Love,
Todd

_________________
Up is louder!

"Then they tried to talk me into something other than a Fender. It was because they hated the necks so much. I was a bratty kid and got what I wanted. "

Todd, thank you. I respect your honesty in telling the story of the techs at Manny's. Great old shop BTW! You'll find a lot of guys go with the " it's got to be good cause I have one" line of reasoning, and you didn't take that path. Good on you

Cheers, Pete

I still live near Manny's. I think it's owned by Sam Ash now but, you know, it's Manny's. My mom bought me a clarinet there in the late '60's so...I've been going there for about 40 years!

As for buying that 3-bolt Strat, well, I'm too old to worry if I'm RIGHT. Know what I mean?
Thank you.

Love,
Todd

_________________
Up is louder!

Naww...don't worry about anything like that. Life is short.