Ok, onward!
Biggest to do with this kinda thing is the neck to body connection when the parts come from different makers. Right off the bat, first thing to do is fit the two together and see what ya got.
In this case, they’re close but not nearly good enough. We have fit issues at lower bout to neck and front of neck to neck pocket. I look it over carefully, mark what needs to go with pencil, and then very slowly and carefully make the needed adjustments. This one took some wood removal from the front face of the neck and some re-contouring of the neck block where it hits the lower bout. I use a stainless steel micro whatever – The plastic handled thing has a blade like a high-end sureform, it works great on Maple. Then smoothed with a chisel, then sandpaper 80 grit through 220. I fit things a bunch of times of course, carefully taking neck off each time.
When I’m done, I check the orientation all around, first as to center of body, then to vertical alignment. Fenders and clones don’t have a neck relief angle like a Les Paul does, so the important thing is that the neck and fretboard are even height and dead perpendicular to the body, as well as confirming fret scale against the neck and the whole shebang. It took about an hour and change, but it ended up right on, so I drilled neck screw holes in to the neck blank and then carefully screwed ‘em in with the neck plate. That’s when I realized I forgot black neck screws, so until I get ‘em, I used nickel…
I think it's lookin' pretty skookum!
E
