So a few weeks ago I bought a Fender Lite Ash Strat off of ebay. I put pics of it on here along side my American Special. Well the other day all of my parts for modding arrived. So I'm changing out the pickguard (which I couldnt figure out how to take off the original pickguard without removing the neck for fear of breaking the original pickguard). So I put all my new parts on, white pickup covers, knobs, switch button, and a 3 ply black pickguard, and as soon as I get the neck back on I start hearing a "cracking of wood", so at this point I'm scared to death. I turn the guitar around and the pick guard is too thick, the neck wouldnt seal off to the body all the way and the cracking I heard was the fretboard seperating from the neck. As bad as it suck that I screwed up my new guitar Im thinking about buying an american special neck off of ebay to replace it with. I hate to spend $300-$400 on a neck but I think in the long run it'll be worth it. I dont ever plan on selling this guitar, so I'm not really worried about the value of the guitar. The crack is on the underside of the fretboard right where the neck joins at the body and its about 3 inches in length, it hurt my feelings at first but the more I think about the guitar having a neck from an american special the more excited I become with that idea. What do yall think?

I'll post a pic as soon as I get a chance, It'll probably be monday though, I'm out of town for the weekend.

Well you've two options here.

Put the original scratchplate back on the guitar.

Or cut/thin down the area between the neck pickup and the neck on your new scratchplate.


Either way get the strings off the guitar till you get it sorted out. You may want to remove the neck screws and dip them in beeswax or wood glue when you have the scratchplate sorted. There is a chance you may have stripped the maple in the neck for the screw to bite into.

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No no and no

The neck holes aren't stripped, the fretboard is coming off of the neck at the top of the neck (at the 22nd fret and down about 3-5 inches.

A good luthier could fix that. Not sure how cost effective it would be though, compared to a new neck.

It could be an easy fix (a little glue and some clamps).

But that too thick new pickguard has got to go!

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

How the hell do you put enough pressure on them screws to split maple? Or is the fretboard rosewood?

Neck back on with a cordless drill perchance?

Is the anchor point of the trussrod at the 22nd fret?

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No no and no