I have a '96 Tex-Mex strat in Candy Apple Red. I decided that I'd rather have it in Black. So I bought a used '03 Deluxe Lonestar body in Black. Problem I'm having is the action is too low. I prefer my bridge to be flush with the body. However, when I replaced the neck, I cannot get enough relief in the neck to get the proper bow and raise the action. I almost have the saddles as high as they go and it still doesn't seem right. What should I do? Shim the neck? I didn't need to do that before, but I'm starting to wonder if the neck is to thick or some other issue. Any advice would be great. (Oh, and rumor about the Tex-Mex strats is they were made of USA parts, not MIM including the bodies and necks)

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"Epitaph on a blues musician’s tombstone: “I didn’t wake up this morning”" Davy Knowles


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shim it

If you shim that neck, you're going to need to raise the saddles higher. So don't do that.

Post some pictures of the neck pocket and the bridge on the new body. It's a bit of a shot in the dark but it sounds to me like the bridge is set wrong. Fender neck pockets are all around 17/18mm deep.

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No no and no

You shouldn't adjust the truss rod to change the action.

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Tune Low, Play Hard & Floor it!

You will have to shim the neck to achieve proper neck pitch angle. Or have the neck pocket trimmed to set the neck pitch. But no one does that LOL, so even Fender used shims back in the day. You have too much pitch right now, and may have to shim the neck right at the heel, not way up in the neck pocket. This is the very reason why Fender has the Micro-Tilt neck adjustment feature on the USA models So they no longer have to use shims.

As I have discovered, the bridge screws on the new body are too narrow and the neck pocket is almost 2MM higher than the old body. I knew the neck of the Tex-Mex was thicker than modern MIM strats, but this proves some old rumors about them. Also, with the bridge being slightly wider, I'm concluding the DID put MIA vintage parts in these old Tex-Mex strats as rumors indicated. I'm getting rid of the body and refinishing the one I already have. There's nothing wrong it sans a chip in the body below the pickguard.

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"Epitaph on a blues musician’s tombstone: “I didn’t wake up this morning”" Davy Knowles


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Is this really true? Truss rod is one aspect of setting the action right. Just one, but it is important.

Cheers

David

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LOL no that's not true! You have to adjust the truss rod when setting action, because action is the overall feel of the instrument when playing it. It is true that you do not use the truss rod as the sole instrument to set string height, cause that could end badly.

No you set relief to accommodate the vibrational arc of a struck string. You create the bend in the neck that gets you as straight as you want whilst providing a clear path for the vibrating string to move without hitting the fret tops.

So if you're using light strings or you hit them too hard, you go for more bow. Because the strings will vibrate on a wider arc. If you play heavy strings and hit them soft then you can get good and flat.

String height is a very secondary consideration when setting up a guitar neck. You can adjust the action of a guitar on the truss rod. But it's completely wrong and potentialy damaging to do so.

The rule of thumb being to start at the tuners and work your way down to the end of the body.
So you'd go

New strings (on the tuner)
Nut slot depth (taken from the first fret height)
Neck relief (on a real guitar with the adjuster at the heel)
Pickup height lowered (get em out the way so you know their not interfering with anything)
Saddle height
Intonation
Trem balance
Then pick up height once more. (get em right)

Never seen any other order that wasn't chasing your tail.

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No no and no

That's what I was getting at.

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Tune Low, Play Hard & Floor it!

I've set up many, many Strats. This one is puzzling me which is why I asked. I checked the neck pocket again and yes, its 2mm shallower than the other body, so the fretboard is 2mm higher off the body. Just so I wasn't going crazy, a friend let me take apart his partocaster to see how the parts line up. I found his Affinity Squier body was also 2mm deeper than this body. I put the Mighty Mite neck on there and had the same problem as my Tex-Mex neck as far as height off the body. I've almost maxed out the height on the saddles as well in attempt to raise the action. None of that works. Bottom line is the neck pocket is just too darn shallow and I'm not about to have it routed out. Back to the eBay seller it goes.

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"Epitaph on a blues musician’s tombstone: “I didn’t wake up this morning”" Davy Knowles


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Hi Steve. Really not: as Nikininja said, that will give the opposite result to the one desired in this case, just making the problem worse.

You set the relief with the trussrod, the action with the saddle height. It is just as simple as that.

Presumably DetroitBlues has the saddles as high as they will go and still does not have sufficient action. That is where the problem begins. And presumably this is the reason:

Hello DB: this is truly surprising. I have measured the neck pockets on many, many Strats including MIAs, MIMs, MIJs, MIKs and Squiers, and I have never found one that deviates from the standard dimensions. A Fender neck pocket should be 5/8" (just under 16 mm) deep and that's that. In practice you can add a few thou for the thickness of the lacquer on the front of the body, but that is not a significant difference.

I'm wondering whether this black replacement body is really a Fender? The CAR body in your photo is definitely genuine - care to show us the black one so's we can judge?

Of course, it is possible to lower the floor of the neck pocket to get it right, but I suspect you don't want the hassle of that tiresome task...

Cheers - C

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Thats bulll! You can still shim the neck and get the bridge saddles back down. Tilt the neck forward with shims if the saddles are set at max height and still cant get the strings high enough, and if the saddles are bottomed out and you need to go lower with the string height, you tilt the neck back with shims. That will get it playing without modifying the wood. Otherwise he could modify and deepen the neck pocket, or sand some material off the neck heel, or both!