Hi is there anybody out there that has or is building a TB4 BASS GUITAR? I am particularly having problems with fitting the neck! On mock building the neck would not fit so I had to do a bit of sanding to the sides of the neck pocket. Having done that I got a better fit and still reasonably tight. On fitting the neck and screwing it down I've got a huge gap between the foot of the fret board and the body! Is that normal or is there any way I can fix this problem? Thanks guys.
It helps if you start a build diary and post pictures there. As it is, it's hard to tell if its normal or not. But bolt-on necks do sit higher from the body than set necks. Bolt on necks generally run parallel to the body, so need some height in order for teh strings to clear the pickups and match the bridge saddle height. On a set-neck, the neck is angled to achieve this height.
Do the screws pass through the body without having to use any tools? From the description it almost sounds like they don't and that is where the gap could come from.
I may have misunderstood and as Sidewinder says, is the gap between the bottom of the neck heel and the top of the pocket?
If so, it sounds like the neck wasn't sitting fully flush against the pocket when you started screwing it on. The screws had then reached the end of their travel through the body before the neck was pulled down tight.
As Sidewinder says, it's very likely that the same sized drill was used to drill the body and neck mounting holes. It makes sure things line up, but for the joint to work well like that, the neck really needs to be clamped firmly to the body when fitting the screws. It's much better (and easier) to enlarge the four body holes (not the neck ones) so that the screws now are now a tight push fit through the holes and don't require screwing through. This ensures that the screws can pull the neck right down to the body nice and tightly.
If you leave any gap between the neck and body when screwing using the same sized holes, then the screws will always come up tight against the body and not turn any further before they've pulled the neck right down. So drilling the body holes out to just the outside diameter of the the screw makes sure that this doesn't happen. Don't make the hole any bigger than this, otherwise the screws and the neck can then move around. So same size or just very slightly under. The tighter the fit without having to actually screw the screw in, the better.
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