In Which I Buy A Neck

I haven't been very good about writing updates.  Then again, since my readership is limited (hi Mom!) perhaps it's not so bad.

I've been thinking about wiring, shielding, necks and bridges.  The neck on this thing is just so terrible, I feel I've got to replace it right away. I removed the neck and did some measurements using the caliper I mentioned before, and my handy something-or-other tool that I bought from the Stewart MacDonald catalog.  There's a great set of pictures on the Warmoth site that shows all sorts of dimensions, for example:

So I took of the neck and checked lots of measurements.  It seems to be quite standard, so that's a relief.  I started looking around for a good neck to get. Somehow I don't feel ready to drop $300 on a really great neck, and I decided to spend just around $100. Mighty Mite started to look mighty attractive.

Mighty Mite seems to be  a wholesaler that makes a range of necks of pretty good quality in a number of different configurations.  A regular human such as I doesn't buy from them; instead their market is guitar builders.  You owe it to yourself to look at the Mighty Mite web site - trés classy, sans doute.   There's also a swell picture on their necks page,  but I was very disappointed in the body page.  No picture, and a huge missed opportunity for double entendres.

It seems that some people just buy a bunch of necks from them and re-sell them on ebay.  Since the necks are meant to be a starting point in a build, they seem not always to be well finished (e.g. frets leveled) and some people complain about them.  Also, they come stock with a crappy plastic nut.  I've seen lots of people saying "When I got it, lots of things were bad.  I did x,y,z to this neck and now it's the greatest neck in the universe".   Unfortunately, I'm still working on a,b and c, so x, y and certainly z, are beyond me.   For a while it looked as though I would end up getting something from Warmoth for this reason.

After some searching, I came across an ebay seller, CEG Hardtails, who seems to buy these necks fix them up, and resell them.   Mr. CEG Hardtails, also known as Stephen, turns out to be a nice guy and very responsive to my questions.  I was looking for an all maple neck, compound radius, with a decent nut, and he had just the thing for $135 including shipping.   It was an interesting interaction, and another example of the goodness of buying things over the internet, if one is careful.  Actually I should wait a bit to congratulate myself - as it now stands, I've paypaled $135 to him, and haven't received the neck yet.  But I do have a good feeling about the transaction, and in the end, isn't that what really matters?  

Tuners

Most necks will come with holes pre-drilled for tuning pegs.  The sizes of these holes are sometimes quoted in inches, sometimes in millimeters.  So one sees 3/4 inch, 10mm, and even something as precise as 9.98mm   Hmm, I wonder if tuners sold to fit 10mm will fit a 9.98mm neck? My Mighty Mite is listed as "3/8 inch (10mm)".  Not to be picky, but (3/8)*25.4 = 9.525, which is as equal to 9.98 as Notlob is to Bolton.  I have the tuners I took off my American Standard Strat when I had Sperzels installed, and I think they'll fit.  Ultimately I'll probably want something better, but these are probably not too bad.

Bridge

The bridge is also pretty crappy. Last night I disassembled the guitar, removing the neck and bridge.  I also popped off the pickguard to look at the pickups and wiring.  Very small pots, for one thing.  However this thing really didn't sound too bad when I plugged it in.  Also, I'm taking some time to think about wiring experiments I want to try (more to come).  Back to the bridge.  I weighed it on our postal scale and it was around 5 ounces, just about half the weight of a Fender american standard.   I can believe that replacing this thing will make a big difference.   I had said I wanted to get a Callaham bridge, but decided to start out with a Guitar Fetish "drop in" replacement.   I ordered that bridge and some other goodies, but I can't remember what - maybe some pots.

Electronics

This has been the most fun so far.  I've been reading a lot, and I'm actually starting to grok guitar wiring, at least in the sense in which someone ignorant of electricity and circuits can grok such a subject.  I've got a number of ideas of things to try, and I ordered a blender pot and a push/pull pot from Acme Guitarworks.  I'm thinking of setting up the first tone control as a "volume boost" push/pull, so that a pull sends the pickup output directly to the jack, without going through the volume pot.  The blender would be in place of the second tone control, and do the standard blending thing, i.e. mix in the bridge or neck pickup as appropriate.

At the same time, I've been reading the guitar nuts site, and in particular his article about shielding and rewiring.  It's amusing reading, and seems to make sense. However I don't know how much I want to bite off at first.  Going with his setup requires me to abandon just copying standard wiring diagrams, and will probably make it harder to communicate with others for wiring advice.  So it will likely be a later step.  Actually, if I go with noiseless pickups, like the Fender Hot Noiseless, it may be a non-issue.  I realize doing that is kind of uncool to a strat purist.  But I don't quite get it.  For example a guy like Oz Noy who plays through 8 zillion effects -- does he really need or get an authentic "strat tone"?