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Hi,

Starting to put my 335 kit from Stewmac together. First step is to glue on the neck. As I dry fit it up, it appears that the bushings are off some. The pickup slots seem well centered on the body, so I used a straight edge off of them. You can see in the below picture that they are shifted toward the bass side, maybe 1/16". I realize that 1/16" at the bridge is only 1/32" at the 12th. But still, should I be concerned about this?

What you should do is clamp the neck into the pocket exactly how it will be glued in. Lay two long straightedges on each side of the neck and establish your center line (and bushings) from them. While you are at it, with the neck in the pocket also check the height of the fret plane at the bridge - I like to set necks such that the fret plane just touches the tops of the saddles at their very lowest adjustment. A good way to do that with a ToM is to put little wood blocks that are the thickness of the bushing and adjusting wheels at the ends of the bridge.

Getting the neck geometry correct is the most important part of building any guitar. Unfortunately some of these PacRim kits are not great in that respect.





You might find out that you need to open the pocket slightly and shift then neck a hair to get it centered. When I build a set neck guitar I do the neck pocket first, then the bridge relative to that, but you don't have that option.

No - it's close enough and side by side variance can be countered by the side-by-side angle that you attach the neck AND getting unnotched saddles for your bridge and notching them where they need to be for this guitar.

Many builders and repair people do not install the bridge centered left to right either, intentionally so that the bass and treble strings are not the same distance from the neck edge for playability. Many like the high e inset more and the bass string closer to the edge of the neck for thumb overs.

Nice looking kit, ya going to put Throbaks on her and get that authentic PAF tone?

There are a few places with the utmost precision is prudent in building a guitar to capture the scale correctly. This in not one of them but neck angle (set back and set forward) and break angles can be.

This is a good point. Maybe it's intentional, having more clearance on the high e and less on the bass.

Exactly Ryan that's what we do too, intentionally position the bridge for more room for the high e without it slipping off the neck and easier access to the low e for thumb over players.

If they did do this intentionally this shows a pretty high level of understanding of how people actually need and want their guitars set-up, pretty cool.