How critical is a tight fit at the neck pocket for bolt ons??

[MetalManiac]

My spider sense is tingling , telling me its very important. Reason I'm wondering is that an Strat body I have , which is fairly nice in terms of lightweight, and aged Alder, has a neck pocket that is a little over sized for a normal 2 & 3/16th's (is it?) Normal Strat neck, and theres some slop.
Not that it wouldn't be stable with 4 neck screws , however I suppose its reasonable to assume a tight neck pocket is preferable.
I have a couple of guitars I had to really squeeze the neck into the heel, or pocket, even making a finish fracture in one of them, and it seems like this tight fit is best for tone, all things being equal.

 

[Zerberus]

Re: How critical is a tight fit at the neck pocket for bolt ons??

Is is the make-or-break connection.

The tighter the fit, the better, ideal is (theoretically, please don´t actually try this) when you can string the guitar up and play it without bolts. Since that shouldn´t be tested, you should be able to pick up the guitar by the neck without bolts.

However, I´ve also had some really badass instruments that had more air in the neck pocket than Michael Jordan on a trampoline, so it will essentially still boil down to how good the wood was to start with

 

[Lazarus1140]

Re: How critical is a tight fit at the neck pocket for bolt ons??

However, I´ve also had some really badass instruments that had more air in the neck pocket than Michael Jordan on a trampoline, so it will essentially still boil down to how good the wood was to start with

Without minimizing the value of a tight neck joint I agree with Zerb's statement here 100%. I have a MIM Strat with the sloppiest neck joint I have ever seen, yet the guitar sounds really, really good. I'll just never know how much better it may have sounded if the pocket hadn't been routed by a defective person using a worn router bit (or was it a dull chisel?). I am not accusing Fender, by the way. I own an obviously, previously abused Strat.

 

[ImmortalSix]

Re: How critical is a tight fit at the neck pocket for bolt ons??

I figure it's important, but many of my favorite builders (incl. Ron Kirn) tell me that it's nice to have, but empirically, does not seem to affect the instrument's tone for the worse, or the better.

 

[DrNewcenstein]

Re: How critical is a tight fit at the neck pocket for bolt ons??

Meh, I still say it's more about the tightness of the bolts AND more importantly how well the heel and pocket bed match up. You can have chunks missing from the heel or the pocket bed and have the tightest fit on the sides (tight enough you don't need bolts with 13s tuned to Nashville Tuning), but those gaps in the pocket are going to kill your tone.

However, you can have just the perfectly-flat pocket bed and no sides at all with a perfectly-flat heel with only the bolts holding it down and the tone will not be noticeably different from the same setup with pocket sides, loose or tight.


I mean, look at how thin those sides are, and generally how little neck wood they actually contact - there's no way they're contributing to the tone, focusing any resonance into the body core (assuming we're talking typical Strat pockets where the sides extend beyond the cutaways - you're always going to have at least SOME side down in the corners).

 

[Vasshu the humanoid typhoon]

Re: How critical is a tight fit at the neck pocket for bolt ons??

You will loose about 10 minutes of raw sustain, and everything from 2500Khz down to 150Khz...

 

[blueman335]

Re: How critical is a tight fit at the neck pocket for bolt ons??

Is is the make-or-break connection.

The tighter the fit, the better.

+1. Otherwise you lose vibrations between the neck and body, and along with it, tone. You want the fit to be as snug as possible. Hendrix personally redid the neck fits on his Strats.

 

[ErikH]

Re: How critical is a tight fit at the neck pocket for bolt ons??

My Frankenstrat, my best sounding guitar, has space on the sides about the thickness of a medium pick or so. It sustains like mad too. I did have some shift a year ago so I took a couple picks and shoved them on the sides to make it snug, made sure the strings lined up straight and tightened it back down. This thing gets played all the time and gigged a lot so I'm not surprised I had to put a shim in there after all these years.

 

[Vasshu the humanoid typhoon]

Re: How critical is a tight fit at the neck pocket for bolt ons??

And rewound the pickups....
Used adamantium bridges with spacetanium saddles and pickups with magnets from Pluto!

 

[MetalManiac]

Re: How critical is a tight fit at the neck pocket for bolt ons??

[/U]

Ive heard Neptunian magnets are of higher quality.

 

[Vasshu the humanoid typhoon]

Re: How critical is a tight fit at the neck pocket for bolt ons??

Yep....

 

[Lazarus1140]

Re: How critical is a tight fit at the neck pocket for bolt ons??

Ive heard Neptunian magnets are of higher quality.

You must be referring to the ones that have been cryogenically deoxygenated.

 

[ImmortalSix]

Re: How critical is a tight fit at the neck pocket for bolt ons??

+1. Otherwise you lose vibrations between the neck and body, and along with it, tone.

Tone is not something you can lose.

Tone describes the unique character of a sound. It's like a color. There's not "more color" or "less color," there are just different colors.

 

[Varg]

Re: How critical is a tight fit at the neck pocket for bolt ons??

I dont understand how it can make ANY difference to the tone whatsoever, unless its incredibly loose. Lets say the neck is hard up against the upper horn of the guitar and you also have the four bolts holding it hard against the main body of the guitar. Only the lower horn isnt hard against it in the neck pocket area and, on a strat, thats a pretty small piece of wood anyway. How can that one little area make such a huge defining difference? Even the guys that say it does admit they have guitars that sound great with a loose neck pocket fitting :lol:

I would wonder if the OP is using some cheap ass old taiwanese body he got off ebay to even be asking this question.

 

[Lazarus1140]

Re: How critical is a tight fit at the neck pocket for bolt ons??

Tone is not something you can lose.

I disagree. Have you considered the possibility of a table saw mishap involving a player with tone in their fingers?

 

[ImmortalSix]

Re: How critical is a tight fit at the neck pocket for bolt ons??

I disagree. Have you considered the possibility of a table saw mishap involving a player with tone in their fingers?

:laughing:

 

[aleclee]

Re: How critical is a tight fit at the neck pocket for bolt ons??

Personally, I think it's overrated. While the quality of the connection between neck and body is critical, I think the side-to-side mating (resulting in tightness) is overrated. If you look at most PRS CEs (bolt-on models), they almost invariably have a gap on one side of the neck pocket big enough to easily slide a business card. On the other hand, they have a longer tenon than most LPs which gives it great contact between neck and body.

On the other hand, if absolute contact between neck and body is so critical, why don't shims ruin tone? :dunno:

 

[uOpt]

Re: How critical is a tight fit at the neck pocket for bolt ons??

Only one way to find out: take a good sounding Strat with tight neck pocket and take the router to it...

 

[guitfiddle]

Re: How critical is a tight fit at the neck pocket for bolt ons??

On the other hand, if absolute contact between neck and body is so critical, why don't shims ruin tone? :dunno:

No to even mention the tilt adjustment found on a lot of Fenders...they still have some superb tones, even though the neck is tilted away from the body

 

[MetalManiac]

Re: How critical is a tight fit at the neck pocket for bolt ons??

I dont understand how it can make ANY difference to the tone whatsoever, unless its incredibly loose. Lets say the neck is hard up against the upper horn of the guitar and you also have the four bolts holding it hard against the main body of the guitar. Only the lower horn isnt hard against it in the neck pocket area and, on a strat, thats a pretty small piece of wood anyway. How can that one little area make such a huge defining difference? Even the guys that say it does admit they have guitars that sound great with a loose neck pocket fitting :lol:

I would wonder if the OP is using some cheap ass old taiwanese body he got off ebay to even be asking this question.

No, its a old ESP Strat body. Very Lightweight , and over 20 years old.
Also, on a Strat, there is considerable contact with neck heel and upper bout; about 3 inches ( the size of your wang ). It should make considerable vibration transfer, especially considering what percentage of overall contact it is in the entire neck-body contact .

((JK about the wang man..lol)