Changing Necks

[Surfdude]

Finished a P90 build last winter and have been unhappy with the small neck. Too thin and cramps my hand. The ebay Peavey T-15 neck is a 23 3/4 scale and pretty thin. I thought it was a Gibson scale and figured that it would be easy to change out of I needed a Gibson scale (24 3/4") neck.

 

As it turns out, the Gibson scale neck would require moving the TOM bridge and stop bar tailpiece back almost 3/4 of an inch. No go on that for sure.

 

Since I use Carvin necks (25 1/2" scale) on all my other builds, I thought I would check out the measurements just for the fun of it because I didn't think that a longer neck would work at all.

 

To my surprise, it appears that it will fit (with a few minor modifications) and I will not have to move the bridge at all. Very pleased with that for sure.

 

This is the heel end. Note the difference in the fretboard overhang. I had to add a little to the actual neck itself and ad a shim (pics later).

 

Second picture shows the length difference between the two necks.

 

Neck is done. Tru-oil finish. My first time with the Tru-oil. I think I like it well enough to experiment with it again. Will post finished pictures as soon as I finish up with the intonation and set-up.

[Surfdude]

Also, a little unhappy with the Carvin neck this time. First time ordering a flamed maple neck and I accidentally hit the belt sander when sanding the heel. No problem as it was only a couple of hairs deep.

 

The problem was that when I sanded it smooth...the flame disappeared in that spot! Major disappointment for sure. The flame does not go all the way through. It's like the flame was stained on or something. Real weird.

 

Any ideas on that?

 

Surfy

[WRGKMC]

Just be sure the distance from the nut to the 12th equals the distance from the 12th to the first saddel of the bridge with play so you can adjust the others back from there. Also the height of the bridge in relation to the neck angle will change the distance too just in case you havent mounted it yet.

[Surfdude]

The neck height and neck angle gave me a little problem. Seems the strat hardtail and strat trems sit a lot close to the body than the TOM's do and there is no neck angle so I had to create one.

 

The weird part was the measurement to the twelth fret and then to the bridge still accomodated both the long and short neck.

 

Put it on tonight, strung it up and played it for a bit. D string saddle has to be moved back a hair. Other than that, it's a keeper. Neck relief is dead on perfect and I didn't have to do any truss rod adjustment at all.

 

That is the third Carvin neck that has been spot on from the factory.

 

Probably not on the level of some of the builds here but the "sofacaster" still can hold it's own. (Thanks to the GFS P90's).