Squire Strat neck replacement

[Sonic Mountain]

A little Christmas project for me.

This is a mates Squire that I've done a bit of work on. I've done a couple of setups, fret level and changed the pickguard out recently for the extra black one I had after the ST build.

For whatever reason we cannot get the truss rod to hold adjustment. I can get the neck straight and the action quite good, but it slowly returns to a big bow in the neck and shit playability over a week or so. I've even had the neck off, released all the truss rod tension, applied weight against the bow and steamed it for a day. I then left it sitting weighted for a week. It came up really well initially and we thought we had solved it.. but a month or so later it was rubbish again.

As the PBG necks are pretty reasonably priced we decided to have a go at fitting one to this guitar to hopefully solve the problem once and for all.

I've really only had a quick muck around. The new neck is pretty good. There is a slight angle on the heel, similar to what Nitroburner is dealing with in his build thread at the moment, but not as pronounced. I'm confident I can shave a mm off the low E side and keep it all square, so that will be one of the first jobs after I've measured everything.

The new neck also has a fair bit of back bow. I can't quite get it flat with the truss rod, but it's very close and I think between giving it some time to acclimatise and string tension it should be OK. It's the opposite problem to the current neck.

Anyway, quick pic, I'll update with some more details ones a bit later.

[Sonic Mountain]

Hmmm.... I've not had much luck with necks recently.

Lopsided heel - about 1mm taller on the low E side



Pretty clear angle on the heel looking side on as well....the fretboard looks like it thins out as well.





I'm starting to reassess whether I should proceed or see if I can get a replacement. I think I can fix it.....but I guess there is also the possibility of making it worse.

What are peoples thoughts? At the moment I'm thinking careful measuring and marking the level point all around the heel then carefully sanding it back flat. I think with about 1.5 mm removed it can be levelled.. but then that might be too low in the pocket.....

[FrankenWashie]

If the current neck is continuing to bow despite adjustment to the TR, then its fair to assume that:
a. there is an issue with the TR itself or,
b. there is an issue with the anchoring in the neck.

The only real way to determine which is in play would be to strip the board and extract the TR, and examine the anchoring. This could be an interesting exercise, but realistically, is a fair amount of dicking about and potentially not worth the effort for a Squire neck.

EDIT: might be time for your first neck build mate.

[Sonic Mountain]

Yeah I'm going to see if he's happy for me to pull apart the other neck so I can work out wtf is going on, both your points had occurred to me.

And also yes... seriously considering it. I'm waiting till after Christmas to do some serious tool/material shopping for a scratch build. I was really just going to jump in the deep end and do a neck through for myself.

[FrankenWashie]

Yeah I'm going to see if he's happy for me to pull apart the other neck so I can work out wtf is going on, both your points had occurred to me.

And also yes... seriously considering it. I'm waiting till after Christmas to do some serious tool/material shopping for a scratch build. I was really just going to jump in the deep end and do a neck through for myself.

If its just a rod replacement they are cheap enough depending on what style they've used. if it is something more untoward then it may just be a case of a forensic exercise. If you do it post it up as I'm sure that everyone would find it interesting.

Yeah mate have a crack, with your design and fabrication skills you'll kill it. If you follow the example of our fellow Forumite Robin, you don't really need a lot of tooling (though it does make some things easier, like routing a TRC).
It'd be really interesting to see what you come up with, just let is know when to get the popcorn hot!

[Sonic Mountain]

Hah yeah, I will do, I'll be starting a thread when I kick it off.

I could do it with the tools I have, I'm sure, but I'm planning to do a run of builds if the prototype is successful and so I want to set up my tooling and templates so I can do almost a production line style. I've been working on the groundwork for nearly a year now, looking forward to sharing.

I think it would be more an investigation than repair of the old neck, it would depend on what I find, but I'll be sure to share that as well.

[Sonic Mountain]

Moving along, I fitted the Babicz bridge we ordered for this one. I really highly recommend these things.



Also refitted and tidied up the pick guard. I did a bit of a rough job last time round, this is much neater.

Gave it a good cut and polish as well, came up a treat.

[churchie]

Nice work! And a hard earned brew I see

[JohnH]

Those bridges really do look the biz. Will have to splash out one of these days and try them for myself

[Sonic Mountain]

This particular model isn't as expensive as some of the others so not a bad place to start. They are very nice to setup with. They make a lot of claims about tone improvement, but I'm not sure I hear it. I put one on my Washburn, but also changed all the pickups so hard to do a comparison. I'll be interested to see on this one as electronic upgrades are coming later.

Adam, once again displaying some of the best customer service of any company anywhere, called yesterday, while working his butt off on Christmas eve, to let me know he would be sending a replacement neck out. I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but hopefully there are some newbie lurkers - Pitbull Guitars really do go above and beyond.

Hope that's the last time I need to do that to him!