The blue print below is the official fender working drawing for a Strat neck and it’s a beautiful site if nothing else. It was drawn in 1987 and is for a size D nut width which I believe is 1 7/8″ (nowadays they are slightly thinner at 1 5/8″).
It shows a pretty usefull cross section of the truss rod channel and info about the assembly of a strat neck.
I’ve just been reading a forum post where someone wanted to know if they can fit a strat neck to a tele body. This question comes up a lot so I thought I would post it here.
The answer is yes you can. They are not the same shape but they will fit together. However, fitting a tele neck to a strat body requires shaving some wood off.
Building a Strat neck is greatly aided by a great guide. One such example of someone following a step-by-step building manual is this one:-
http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/neck.htm
… in which two pieces of Maple and one piece of Wenge are turned into a beautifully crafted neck. It’s a good overview of the steps involved and all is missing are making the holes for the tuning pegs.
To prove my point, the author sites the book he used for the build as a “Godsend”. His link to the book is broken, but it’s available from Amazon here:
If you were given an old Strat Neck, what would you do with it? Well if your anything like the dude in this video you’ll use it as a trigger to a building a guitar in your basement.
The Strat neck was combined with a custom shaped body made out of a block of cherry to make a unique (& rather desirable) franken-tele-strat. Although he doesn’t say how long it took him, I would guess that shaping and sanding the body would be the most labour intensive task in the build – but if you ask me, the more time you put in, the more satisfying the rewards are when you get it right.
One of the best sources of information on replacing a Strat neck, Strat bridge, Strat pickup, or even a Strat body is www.guitarplayerscenter.com. It is one of the best blogs on electric guitars and I’m forever picking up new tricks and tips from its pages.
For example this short article has some very cool info about how to pick the right Strat neck :-
Here’s an interesting factoid taken from the text:-
“The shapes or curvature of the back of the neck includes six to nine styles, at least for a Stratocaster. Wide and deep for giant hands (SRV had giant hands), check out the “boatneck”. Or a narrow V-neck such as the Eric Clapton Strat…”
Choosing the right Strat pickup for your build is a crucial descision to get right. I found this question on Yahoo Answers from someone who was building a Strat. He asked what brand and what type of pickups to use:-
One of the best answers was this one:- “You should maybe set up the guitar wiring with some easy to disconnect plugs – buy a couple of different pickups and put the other side of the plugs onto them – that way you can plug one in and try it, then remove it, plug another one in and try it – and so on.”
Some of the most sort after Strat neck parts are the early versions, as these were made from special wood that has since been discontinued. The evolution of the Strat pickup, Strat body, & Strat bridge is an interesting story in itself, which can be found in the following article:-
Quote:-
“Musicians soon discovered that by carefully positioning the Stratocaster’s switch between settings, the signals from two pickups mixed and produced snarling nasal tones that redefined electric guitar sound. These unintended tones were reminiscent of a muted trumpet or trombone, but with the sting of downed power lines.”
