Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi everyone
I am new to the forum and joined in the hope that I could get some answers along the way in my endeavours to be able to do some of the work on my guitars myself. I am a long time player who has always left his guitars in the hands of professionals for setups and adjustments but my goto guy is moving interstate soon.
I am a lefty and I think as a consequence of that I have never fooled around with guitars as I guess a lot of right handed players do, as I don't find too many good guitars and when I do I don't want to wreck them..
Anyway I would like to do some of the work myself and eventually be able to do a refret.
I do play a lot and when I showed the guy in my local music shop my workhorse 335 he told me it was in terrible condition with the frets being too low and the nut has worn down too deep. I was actually asking his opinion on the back of the guitar neck as all the finish has come off and looks like bare wood (or close enough). I have had probably two fret jobs and a crown on that guitar in the 15 years I have owned it, always on the advice of my repairman, but I need to take more notice and more care of it myself it seems.

I also started to notice on my acoustic that I gig and rehearse with regularly, that the capo started to buzz in the middle of the neck and I got the action raised at the saddle which solved the problem but my hand now gets tired playing in the middle of the neck and I am thinking maybe I should have got new frets instead. That guitar is nearly 2 years old..

So that is my story and motivation behind wanting to learn a bit more.

So to build my confidence I am doing some work on an old strat copy I have.
I put on a new Gotoh bridge first and had to plug the holes in the guitar as the screws didn't line up well. That went great and my next attempt is to replace the neck with a cheap Fender neck I bought on Ebay.

Once again the scews don't match the new neck and this is my first question.
I would rather use the existing holes in the new neck as the ones drilled into the body and old neck seem way off line and the screw holes in the old neck seem dangerously close to the edge of the wood. So I don't want to use these holes for the new neck..
Is my best bet to plug both the old body and the new neck and drill all new holes or is there a way to just plug the body and work out how to match the existing holes in the new neck which look very neatly drilled with the new holes I will be drilling in the body.
I am reluctant to just measure the distance as I am not sure that I will get it right - Is that the right way to do it or could I somehow attach something to the new neck that would leave an impression when I test fit that would let me know where to drill? It seems like a nice neck and rather than screw it up I thought I should ask for some advice online.

Phew long post sorry, I'll keep it brief next time.

Hi there, I'm a new member too (this is my second post), and I know this site is full of guys with lots of skills, but maybe I could be of assistance.

Find some dowel that is either the perfect match for the holes in the body, or that is slightly too big. Drill the holes out to match the dowel size in this case. Glue the dowel in, and then trim and sand flat. Once the holes in the pocket are filled and sanded flat, liberally apply some chalk dust (eg stringline dust) on the neck and place the neck into the pocket (don't slide). When you lift it back up, hopefully you'll have a nice layer of chalk dust with spots missing for the holes. If the chalk idea doesn't work (and why would it, I just made it up), maybe try a small amount of paint instead. Then it's just a matter of getting the body under a drill press to ensure your holes all come out the same on the underside of the body.

Alternatively, take a rubbing of the holes on the neck (paper and graphite pencil). Cut the rubbing out and place it correctly into the pocket, then drill through where the holes are. That actually makes more sense.

You might want to wait for some answers from the experts though!

Thanks for the good advice!
I think I could manage that but I unfortunately do not have a drill press and was going to drill by hand.
Is this asking for trouble?

Just occurred to me, instead of redrilling and putting in dowels, you could always just put tape over the holes inside the pocket, and then fill the holes with a good epoxy. Titebond Epoxy, for example.

When it dries, just sand it flat at both ends.

If you're going to go to all the trouble of filling/sanding and preparing the neck pocket, you'll probably want to make sure the bolt holes are all straight as arrows. Not just straight, but parallel with each other. All it will take is for one hole to angle 2mm one way, and another to angle 2mm the other, and you've suddenly got a 1/2cm disparity between the hole positions, and no amount of wrangling is going to get those bolts in at the same time.

If you need to do a bit more work, rent a drill press. If it's just for this one off thing, find someone that has one, or maybe talk to your local hardware guys about getting them to drill the holes for you.

I've been thinking about this some more.

Firstly, what's the scale length of the replacement neck? It will need to be identical to the old one, or you won't be able to tune up, because the bridge will be in the wrong spot relative to the nut.

Next, are there inserts in the neck for the bolts to thread into, or are they just empty holes in the wood? I'm guessing you won't have any threaded inserts in the neck if it's a cheapy off ebay. In this case, probably the easiest thing to do would be to fill the holes in both the neck and body with hardwood dowels (not sure the epoxy filler would be enough on it's own, I'm sure the experts would know..). Once all holes are filled and sanded, place the neck in the pocket, clamp it down in place (careful of the fretboard!), and put on high and low E strings as guides.

Then you have two options, I guess:
1) You can either drill straight through the body and into the neck to the correct depth. Make sure you've got your drill bit set to the correct height. You don't want the drill to pop out the other side of the fretboard, that would not be fun.

2) Drill through the body enough to make an impressions or guide hole on the neck. Then you can remove the neck and complete the holes with it off the body. Again, be wary of the depth.


This might be a bit more forgiving if all you have access to is a hand drill, but you'll still need to be as straight as you can possibly be.

Also, do you have a metal neck plate that goes onto the body for the bolts? If so, you'd want to make sure that's in the correct position prior to drilling.

Thanks mate got plenty to consider now..
The new neck does have one less fret than the original neck but from what I can see and my research I should be ok as the 22 fret neck fretboards jut out at the end and overlap onto the scratch plate so I think the scale length should be the same. I read something about perhaps having to shim a new neck but I have no idea how to determine that at this stage.
I guess if the action can't be lowered to the right height I will have to shim the neck up?
There are no inserts in the neck but it really looks like a nice neck.
I like a flatter radius and jumbo frets with a thicker profile at the back so the neck I went for is a Kenny Wayne Shepherd one.
Made in Mexico but it really does feel nice.
Also I am left handed so the neck will be a reversed head stock in a left handed body. I have played upside down Strats before so the tuning is familiar but I don't know if that is also an issue with regards to the hole placement.
I am thinking at this stage I like your idea of plugging all the holes and drilling from scratch.
Seems much less room for error and the best solution.