27" Baritone JZA-1

[kuanjb]

That bit behind the neck pocket carries most of the stress from the strings, certainly all the force that's not taken up by the neck screws. Exactly how much will depend on how the screw holes are drilled and how well the neck fits in the pocket etc. So I'd be wary of cutting and moving what you already have. I'd be happier cutting and sanding another bit of wood to fit in the gap. A spindle sander would make that quite an easy task, as you then only need to trace the curve of the rear of the neck pocket and the curve of the neck heel and place them your selected distance apart and sand to the lines. Epoxy glue will fill in any small gaps at the rear.

Your pickguard should then be adjusted to cover it up.

I get what you're saying. But, if you believe what they say then a glue joint is stronger than wood itself, so surely moving the wood shouldn't be an issue? And I was already looking at thinning that wood a bit to get the pickup in the "right" location. So I'd end up adding extra wood in the pocket and removing existing wood anyway. Though what the right location is is debatable. My Squier's neck PU is at 501.5mm whereas the 24th fret would be at 486mm (77.4% versus 75%).

But first check where the existing neck mounting holes will then sit on the neck heel. You don't want the rear mounting hioles too near the end of the neck or you could easily get splitting when under tension or you knock the neck.

Yep, this is one of the things I looked at when I went and modified the neck / joint / pocket. It is currently really long and the mounting holes are towards the front of the pocket rather than to the rear. Certainly a lot further forwards than is usual for a guitar. It's more similar to a bass currently. The back screws are 25mm from the end (compared to about 15mm for my Squier). So if I shortened the pocket by 6-8mm it should still be fine.



Now it did occur to me that the tension with baritone strings would be different to normal strings. But according to this chart it isn't that different: https://www.elixirstrings.com/suppor...-tuning-guitar

So I did some more measuring of the neck and frets (because the nut might even be in the wrong location, though it looks like it's not). From measuring the frets it works out to having a scale length of about 682-683mm. So roughly 26.85 inches (for those that prefer). If I work with 682 there should be enough adjustment in the bridge to account for the slight difference. If I then go with the bridge post positions from Stew Mac that's 683.7mm + 1.5-3mm. So still looking at 6-7mm out.

Here's the rough change I'm thinking, moving it 7mm. The PU outline would be based on the location of a normal Jazzmaster, i.e. poll pieces at 77.4%. If they were at the 24th fret then the PU would be almost right against the end of the neck due to the size of the JM PUs.



If I were to move the bridge posts by 7mm I'd still be cutting out the semi-circles for the screw tabs and possibly about 1 mm of the wood if I wanted it to be exactly the same as a JM. For reference here's the neck pocket and neck screw locations for a strat and JM taken from some online templates I found a while back. As you can see the screw holes are just behind the 21st fret and the wood between the neck end and PU route isn't very think.



Moving the bridge posts of course would be easier. And may even result in the pick guard sitting in a nicer location and be not so cramped. I'm still wondering how noticeable dowels would even be. A third of them would be drilled out again with the new holes and the bridge and thumb wheels would cover a bit more.