Hi All:

I'm in the process of building a partscaster and found a body I liked. After taking some measurements, it seems the neck pocket on this body has been sanded down about so instead of measuring 5/8" the heel to pocket distance measures about 11/16". I suppose I could add a shim when I attach the neck, but is that recommended? Is there anything else I could do to build up the area that was sanded? Or shold I return the body and find a new one? Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

I've built a few teles, and I think that as long as the angle of the pocket is still good, you should be OK.
The pickups and bridge all adjust for height, and usually are able to go a bit lower if necessary.
Very rarely do you see a bridge that is adjusted down as far as it can go.

Absolutely. A 1/16th of an inch aint gonna make that much difference as long as the plane of the pocket floor is parallel to the body top.

Show us a Tele Gord?

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Many thanks for your replies, gentlemen!

Curious, in the light of a conversation about neck pocket depth we've just been having on another thread.

I'm wondering how that sanding was done? It is very hard to accurately sand the bottom of a neck pocket because getting into the corners is so difficult. I made myself a tiny makeshift orbital sander for exactly that job by sticking a small circle of P80 sandpaper to the head of an old electric toothbrush. It works OK for fine finishing but it would take a heck of a time to remove even 1/16" that way.

ascan, would you care to show us a photo of that neck pocket, just so's we can estimate what might or might not have been done to it, please? If the floor of that pocket has been lowered it was far more likely done with a router than by sanding - but we'd need to see to be sure.

In the world of guitar ultra-geekdom this is more interesting than is probably healthy!

Cheers - C

Ascan, is it by chance a Warmoth body? You may have a body with the '720' neck pocket modification.

ORC

Ceri:

I am not sure how the sanding was done. I have not put a level to it, but the sanded pocket looks pretty level to my naked eye.

I will try to post pics; need to check with the wife to see if the camera is working. If I can get them up, I'd very much be interested to hear any analysis you may be able to provide as I followed your strat body rebuild thread where you rebuilt the neck pocket and the pick up routing, etc to end up with your beautiful light blue (? you had a specific name for the color, which I can't recall right now) strat.

Orcrist:

I purchased the body off ebay from a large seller of fender components famous for dismantling whole guitars. It was listed as a 57 RI strat body and I have no reason to doubt its authenticity. Just did not read the description very well before bidding, as it clearly mentioned the neck was sanded down.

Hi ascan: wow, that's very kind on several levels. Thank you! (That one started out as a "trash body" and turned into what I simply called "the pale blue Strat". How nice of you to remember!)

I shall look forward to your photos with great interest. For those of us on the learner slopes of building this stuff is always fascinating.

Best to you - C

Ceri:

Here is my maiden voyage at posting pics on this forum, hope it works. Thanks for taking a look at the pics of the neck pocket in question and rendering your opinion. I'm not the best photographer, but it this shows it pretty well.




All the best,
Ascan

The pocket floor looks fine.
. What you have there looks like poor routing looking at this picture.


Pretty sure my 57 Vintage Hotrod has similar. I initialy thought the sanding work done to the rounded corners on your guitar may be to lose mouse ears, or clean off excess paint.

Here's my Hotrods pocket very very similar, except for a worse picture



The scrappy wood on your neck pocket is in the same position as the router overplunge mark on my pocket. It must be the insertion point for whey they carve the pocket.
Note the lack of mouse ears on both guitars. I'll get it apart in the morning and have a measure. All the 57's are probably all cut on the same machine because of the unique body contours. Wouldn't suprise me if the pocket depth is the same on both.

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Hi guys: this is where I am going to very politely and respectfully disagree with my highly esteemed colleague, Mr Nicholas Ninja. I think this is a simple case of a bit of extra routing having been done after the body was finished and painted to improve neck fit, precisely to add mouse ears, rather than remove them.

Without a doubt we can see that the floor of the pocket has been lowered and the marks show clearly that it was done with a router. The absence of paint in the corners of the sides of the pocket show that material has been removed here too, while the middle of the end wall of the pocket has been left untouched - so that the neck will still intonate properly with the bridge:



For those as don't know, taking material out of the corners of the pocket like that produces the feature known as "mouse ears", because it gives a shape that vaguely resembles Mickey Mouse's ears. To see it particularly clearly, here is the pocket on my 2005 MIA Strat:



Privately, I think of that as a bit of a building compromise, because especially in these days of CNC routing machines it should be entirely easy to make a neck pocket that perfectly fits the neck heel. And yet an awful lot of modern Strats are routinely made with this feature as standard: you can see on mine that it was done after the red was applied, but before the clear coat.

It is also perfectly common to find it done on vintage instruments, often a bit more clumsily.

Like Nick, I think what has happened here is that someone has decided that the neck doesn't fit the pocket snuggly enough and has run a router into the corners to allow the heel to move up to the bridge end of the pocket further. Unlike on my Strat this might have been done since the guitar left the factory, because there they have routers set up ready to the right depth for the job. The guy who did yours, ascan, has set his router cutter a touch too low (something you sometimes only find out once it is running, if you're not careful) and found himself removing material from the floor of the pocket too. So to keep things tidy he has then gone on to route out the whole of the floor by another 16th of an inch or so to level it all up, and in so doing removed the paint and date stamps normally found there.

That's what I think anyhow.

Thank you for the photos, by the way. Much appreciated.

Cheers - C

A valid point, I have to agree with, Ceri.

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Ooooh on further investigation, what do we find????

SHOCKING NEW DISCOVERY ROCKS THE WORLD OF STRAT NECK POCKETS

I can see it now, all over the front page of the Sun.

So what did I find








Got milk? Yeah and need to clear the worktop. Also I have a neck pocket depth of 16mm bang on, center of the line. A difference because of the thin skin finish? I doubt it, heres why.



Look at the rear wall left hand side. Exactly the same router onto painted surface marks that Ascan's body has.
What has happened here???
I suspect the body and neckpocket shapes go through one machine that also routes a SSS cavity patern.
The guitars get a preliminary few coats of paint.
Then the neckpocket gets it's final shaping. Probably just to better seat the neck.
Outlandish I know, but I can't thing of any other way to explain that router into painted surface mark.

There you go the master of bloody useless photo's strikes again.

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Niki, thank you for the photos of your 57.

Ceri & Niki, thanks both for your thoughts, much appreciated. It sounds like the bottom line is I shouldn't need to abandon this body for my partscaster build, right?

As Gord first said mate, a triffling 1/16th of an inch shouldn't make any difference, it's well within the scope of the saddle height screws to cover. Your guitar is a mil and a half deeper, mine is a mil shallower.

Don't sweat it mate, full steam ahead. If in the very unlikely future you do get a problem, it's in no way unsolvable.

Show us the guitar when it's done eh?

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