Hi - I have a Strat that has been a great player but always had a very thin tone, seems to lack sustain. I've swapped out pickups, tried higher gauge strings etc but nothing seems to work.

Today I took the neck off to carry out some repair work on the frets, and I found the neck pocket was really badly routed - it was flat and flush about three quarters of the way, but the last quarter (including where the two rear screw holes for the neck are) looked like it had been gouged out with a chisel - presumably to fit the neck in.

Could this be the cause of my tone troubles? If so, can I fix it?

The only real way to fix it would be to level the neckpocket floor out then make a wooden plate to build it back up again ala Ceri.
http://www.fender.com/community/forums/viewtopic.php?t=17948&highlight=

Not for the faint of heart.

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Ouch! Sadly I'm far too cack-handed to do that. Maybe a new body, or a new Strat!

If its upsetting you that much it may be worth trying a good wood filler before buying a new body. First thing i'd get the guitar off to a tech and see if its a poor adjustment mod. Sometimes if the neck has too much lean back people (myself included) will re-angle the neckpocket base. If that is the case it may just need smoothing out with sandpaper. Some pictures of the neck pocket would be nice to see if this is the case.

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Its only upsetting me if its the cause of the poor sustain and tone - if its not, I'm not bothered.

It does look like someone has tried to angle the back of the neck pocket - not sure what they were trying to do.

Pics attached

Yeah they were trying to make it so if you lay the guitar flat the headstock would be higher than it would of been originally. The way its angled sharply and not feathered in to the front of the pocket makes me think it was doing nothing to angle the neck. I'd take it to a tech, it doesnt look like a deep cut and would likely suffer being leveled off. Either by filling or sanding. Its a hard call without being able to put your hands on it.

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Thanks for your help - I guess if its all sanded level then it would need some sort of shim to build it back up to the right height.

If I was to use filler, is there any particular sort recommended for this sort of work?

Like i said take it to a repairman let them access it. The couple of millimeters difference at that part of the guitar can have miracle/disasterous consequences.

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I will also say that might be giving you poor sustain because the neck in the pocket needs to be really firm like if it was one piece of wood alltogether.......

True that, and whence you get it all buttoned up, I highly recommend one of these babies as well. I can't explain in so many words how much cooler my guitar feels and sounds with it. The weight distribution changes a hair, noticable fatter tone. I love it.

http://www.zzounds.com/item--GVTFFG

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-Kc
"Payin' dues."

Now i noticed very little difference at all with the foul finger. It got used to clamp a tremblock to the headstock then dissapeared to the bottom of the toolbox. There is a difference, ive never been able to hear it through an amp though. Its like laying the guitar on a wooden table and strumming it except 1000 times weaker.

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Do you get a lack of sustain even acoustically or just plugged in?

Ooo - my ears are burning (above)!

Jake, that is a very peculiar picture: I've never seen anything like that before (meaning the extreme angle of that cut). We can only presume that someone was trying to raise the headstock in relation to the body, as Niki suggested. And the only reason for that would be if the strings were too high above the body when they reached the bridge - which is very unusual.

Even so: that extreme wedge shaped excavation would be of no use at all unless there was also a shim at the other end of the neck pocket to tip the heel into that hole - did you find one? And to match the amazing angle of that cavity it would need to be an astonishingly big shim.

This is very odd indeed.

Anyhow: how to fix it. First, be certain that it is appropriate to change it. Make sure that with the heel of the neck sitting level on the flat part of the pocket the strings then reach the bridge at the right angle. They do? OK, then a couple of possibilities.

One would be to fill up the chiselled out space with wood. I wouldn't bother routing and then rebuilding the whole pocket, as I did in that other thread Niki kindly linked to. Instead, I'd just use chisels to dig out the angled space until you have a cavity that is square to the sides and bottom of the neck pocket. Like this:


From that point it would be pretty easy to carve a small piece of wood to fit that space and glue it in. Either shaped from solid wood or three or four small pieces of veneer glued one on top of another into a tiny section of ply.

That's the way I'd do it: if you have any experience at all with a chisel it won't be hard.

The alternative is to use a filler. In that case I'd highly recommend Milliput:

http://www.milliput.com/home.htm

This is a two part epoxy modelling putty. A pack contains two sausages of material: you cut off equal amounts of each and knead them together with your fingers until really well mixed. At this point it has the consistency of plasticine, and you can just squash it firmly into the space you need to fill. Leave for 24 hours by when it will have set to a very hard and dense finish. You can then sand it, file it, drill it - whatever. Because of it's density I'd recommend it vastly over normal wood filler for this situation where transmission of vibration is important.

Couple of words of advice. Milliput comes in several grades: I'd definitely go for the Standard, which comes in the pack with the bright red lettering. It is the easiest to work with and most appropriate for this situation. And it's the cheapest! Enter "Milliput" into Google to find a stockist near you or online.

Also, if you fill that cavity with filler try and get the surface as smooth and perfect as you possibly can before it sets. Simply because the end and corners of a neck pocket are a particularly troublesome spot to get at with sandpaper: try it and you'll see what I mean...

Best of luck - C

EDITED - for toddler's spelling mistakes. D'oh!

I agree 100% with Ceri, That chiseled out spot was doing nothing without a wedge in there . Other wise if the screws in the chiseled area were pulled tight the other two at the heel would have to have been kept loose enough as to leave a gap at the heel. It sure would be noticable.

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The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Thomas Jefferson

It's very strange, isn't it?

By the way, cvilleira, do you have any tips for sanding in the corners of the neck pocket? A Dremel is far too fast even on the lowest setting. The tiniest slip and the work is ruined.

I cooked myself up a little gizmo made from an old electric toothbrush with a tiny cushioned disc of sandpaper on the head - but it's tedious work!

Cheers - C