Neck!

My mighty mite neck arrived today, just as promised!  It looks great, but ... in order to install the tuners I have, I have to somehow drill 6 sets of 2 holds to accommodate the pins at the back of the the tuners.  Yikes.  To do this "right", I'd have to buy a jig from stewmac for $36, and I don't want to do that. And to make matters worse, I need a #38 drill bit, which seems to be a weird size.

Also, there are no holes in the back of the next to attach it to the body.  This is getting scary.  I had wanted to avoid anything having to do with woodworking in this project.   And any time I ask about it on one of the guitar forums (fora?), someone invariably says "Don't try this without a drill press".  Rats.  It also seems as though I could really do some damage to the neck if I do it wrong.  OTOH, I really don't want to take it in to a shop and have someone do it for me.

Perhaps the me of the past was fooling the me of  now (if so, curse you, me of the past) into thinking this would be easier than it really will be, in an attempt to get me to go through with the project.  I realized there's a definite sequence I need to follow.  In order to install the neck, I need to put it in place and put strings (or fishing line) in the two E strings in order to get it positioned right.  To do that I obviously need the tuning pegs and bridge in place.

The Bridge Doesn't Fit!


To be precise, it bumps up against the side of the pickguard, which I think was installed a little off.  I removed the pickguard, and filed off some of the bridge part with a Dremel Moto-Tool, then trimmed a bit with an x-acto knife.  This made me freel incredibly cool, and after that the bridge didn't hit the pickguard any more.

Then I noticed that the holes didn't line up quite right, though the spacing was ok.  So I dremeled off a bit of the wood on one side of the hole and now it fits perfectly.  I feel even better about myself now, and the bridge is in.  Huge progress.

Installing the Tuners

I put some painter's tape on the back of the neck near the two "E" tuners.  I was going to press the tuners into the back of the tape to create an imprint for drilling holes. But I was horribly foiled when I found that the tuners I had been saving for 15 years were evidently not from my old strat, because there were 3 left and 3 right tuners!  I am quite sure that I got these back from Sadowsky when they installed Sperzels on my strat, so I guess they gave me the wrong old set?  OK, it's most likely my error, but I can't see how, since I have only one electric that doesn't have 6 inline, and that came with Sperzels.  Hmm, maybe I had tuners replaced on an acoustic once?

So I have to buy some tuners, and as a corollary, I have to wait for them.  I found a guy on ebay selling Sperzel staggered tuners that will fit for a pretty decent price and have emailed him, etc, etc.