The Strat that wouldn't cooperate

[58Bassman]

I just cant do the wide string spacing. The high E is always rolling off the neck. I convert everything to 2-1/16" spacing.

I have a Callaham block on the Fender bridge, installed probably at least 15 years ago. The Callaham block/arm is the only one I've had which the arm is not wobbly in. The spring in the bottom does pretty much nothing to solve a wobbly arm.

Do you change anything at the nut? The E strings on my offset Tele are very close to the edge and the high E rolls off- thinking of removing some material from the center saddle, but they're grooved, so that makes the spacing weird and not equal. The thing is, I have never played a guitar with such good intonation.

 

[schmee]

Do you change anything at the nut? The E strings on my offset Tele are very close to the edge and the high E rolls off- thinking of removing some material from the center saddle, but they're grooved, so that makes the spacing weird and not equal. The thing is, I have never played a guitar with such good intonation.

I dont change the nut usually, especially if it's good. There seems to be more results from a bridge spacing change.
Most "rolloff" seems to occur from 8th fret to maybe 15th fret. I guess because in the middle of the scale, the string bends more and more easily.
I wonder if someone makes a good bridge option that's narrower with your style saddles and screw pattern?

 

[58Bassman]

I dont change the nut usually, especially if it's good. There seems to be more results from a bridge spacing change.
Most "rolloff" seems to occur from 8th fret to maybe 15th fret. I guess because in the middle of the scale, the string bends more and more easily.
I wonder if someone makes a good bridge option that's narrower with your style saddles and screw pattern?

I could use saddles that aren't notched, but it might throw off the intonation. The strings are parallel to the edge, too- the points of contact are right and I measured the neck at the nut, but not with a caliper. It was close enough with a tape measure that it probably meets spec, but I have seen other Teles and Strats with more space between the strings and the edge of the neck.

 

[Sax-son]

A few years ago I built a partscaster Strat, using a Fender MIM Classic 50s Lacquer neck, an MJT body finished in Mary Kaye blonde, Callaham hardware kit, and a set of Fender CS 54 pickups. When I had it all screwed together, I took it to a local shop to have the nut cut and a setup.

When I picked the guitar up, the low E was almost falling off the side of the neck. Now, I can be a meek beta sometimes, and I don't like to complain. Rather than complain, I'll just never go back. So after a while I took the guitar to another shop in a nearby town, pointed out the flaws in the setup and asked for a new nut. When I picked up the guitar, the strings were still way off-center.

So after another while I drove to Memphis and took the Strat to a "guitar spa". The guy there said I had the wrong bridge on the guitar, it had a 2 7/32" bridge and he claimed I needed a 2 1/16" one. Fortunately Callaham makes a bridge with 2 1/16" string spacing that fits on a guitar drilled for 2 7/32" spacing on the pivot screws, so we got one of those and swapped it in, plus another new nut and setup.

When I picked it up, all the strings were perfectly evenly spaced across the fingerboard, with nothing falling off either edge. The guitar played well enough for them to bum-rush me out of the store as quickly as possible. When I got it home I realized the float on the bridge was all messed up, he had screwed down the pivot screws too far and the trem would barely move. When I adjusted the pivot screws properly, the float and action were way out of whack and I had to go through the whole balancing act of trying to get string tension and spring tension just right, and then adjust all the saddle heights.

I finally got it somewhat playable, and it sat on a guitar stand for a couple of years where I proceeded to ignore it and always pick up something else. One day I picked it up and decided it was unplayable to me because the strings were too close together. After a few cursory measurements, I determined that there was no reason why this guitar should require the narrow string spacing, and I ordered a Fender American Vintage trem rig.

When the new bridge arrived, first thing I noticed was that the trem arm wouldn't screw into the block. Neither would my Callaham arm. Comparing the two arms, it was clear they were different diameters, with different thread pitches, and both were the wrong one for the threads in the block. After a deep internet dive into Strat trem minutiae, I learned that there are three possible threads on a Fender Strat - 10/32, M5, or M6, depending on whether it was made in the US, Mexico, or Japan. My box had a "Made in China" sticker... I went to the hardware store and bought one nut and one bolt in each of the three sizes. I could easily thread a 10/32 nut onto the Callaham bar, and the 10/32 bolt would go right into the Callaham block. Neither the M5 nor M6 nut would thread onto the Fender bar; the M5 would go on a turn or two before it seemed like it would crossthread. And neither an M5 nor M6 bolt would screw into the trem block. I went to a local shop to see if they had a Strat trem bar that would fit the block, we went through a large box of old bars and finally found ONE that was a perfect fit. But it was short and black, very "80s Metal". Not really the right look for a '50s type Strat. I could thread the M5 nut onto the black bar just fine, even though an M5 bolt wouldn't go into the block.

So I ordered a US-style block from Fender's online store. When it arrived, it was indeed a proper 10/32 one. So I installed the new bridge on the guitar. After much fiddling I got the float where I wanted it, and got the action and intonation roughed in pretty well. The guitar is now playable! But the Callaham trem bar is all wrong, it fits the block but the bend angles put it in an uncomfortably obtrusive place, so it's a trip to GC for an American Vintage style Strat trem bar. The only one in the store was behind the counter in the guitar maintenance kiosk, and the maintenance guy was gone for the day. It took a lot of wheedling and trying to reason with GC sales droids before someone would finally get on the phone to the store manager and get permission to sell it to me. But it fits. And I finally have a working Stratocaster, although it needs a little fine-tuning on the saddle heights and probably needs yet another new nut. I could have a garage sale with all the spare Strat parts...

I think we have all had those "uncooperative" project where everything looks good on paper, but don't translate well into performance. What I have done more than a few times is to try other parts. I have swapped bridges, tuners, and necks to see what matches up better other than get frustrated by components that won't work together. You may end up with a few orphan parts, but those may end up working well on another project. There are few if any that I was eventually be able to use other than sit forever in the parts box.

 

[mtglick]

If the screw shank is still in the neck, you may be able to find a small screw extractor like the one in the photo. If you can't find anything so small, you could use a piece of 1/8" diameter tube and file some teeth into the end.

View attachment 1096859

Thanks! That already got done--I saw a writeup on that process, but decided to just pick around the shank to make some room, and slowly pushed it laterally from the top of the steel toward the middle of the neck, until it compressed the wood on that side enough to loosen, then I extracted with a very thin needle nose plier. After extraction I backfilled the cavity with some KwikWood and then filed it smooth. Doing it that way left more of the deeper wood fibers intact. Sacrificed a little more surface wood in the nut slot, but with a steel nut that's screwed down it seemed less potentially destructive than trying to exactly guess at the depth I needed with a homebrew power tool I haven't used before.

That project's basically done, actually--it's a Strat Plus partscaster with a set of Lace Blue Fire (light blue/silver/burgundy) that I committed several acts of amateur lutherie to. Ultimately what got done was plugging a hole in the body, removing and fixing the truss rod nut, and replacing a missing piece of fretboard above the nut with a rosewood veneer that was thick enough to mimic the fretboard. Still mucking with the bridge a bit--have a Hipshot Contour on it with a set of Callaham saddles. I like the combo, but the floating setup leaves something to be desired, as I'm having a hard time getting it to return to 0. Normally I'd deck it and call it a day, but the bridge studs are all the way down, and I still have about 1/8 of an inch of float if I set the bridge level. Can't decide if I want to try to cut the studs shorter so I can flat-deck the bridge, or if I want to try to figure out why it's misbehaving.

 

[thunderbyrd]

this thread is very disturbing. i'm in the process of accumulating parts for a "dream strat". i'm afraid reading this thread has jinx'ed me.

 

[David Barnett]

I forgot to post a picture:

 

[mtglick]

this thread is very disturbing. i'm in the process of accumulating parts for a "dream strat". i'm afraid reading this thread has jinx'ed me.

Don't let it spook you. I have about half a dozen "dream strats", all from different points in my build learning curve. The project I just finished started with parts from another one that, once the parts were all together, just didn't work. Originally, the same Strat Plus body had an 80's MIJ neck on it, and a set of EMG's. Was trying to get closer to a Gilmour, but that neck and this body just didn't like each other. Eventually did a full-bore 50's build for that neck, and was left looking for something for this body, so I found a bargain on a micro-tilt neck and it went together pretty well. The EMGs from the original project went onto another partscaster with much less desirable hardware, but those pickups don't really seem to care--they do their thing on just about any block of wood I put them in.

Ultimately, even if your dream doesn't quite work in one config, try another. And another. And another...

 

[Blackmore Fan]

I forgot to post a picture:

View attachment 1097510

Wow, that's a great looking Strat!

 

[Solaris moon]

Reading through your saga, I don’t know how you live to tell this tale. I might have considered ending it all at some point if it were me. I tried briefly to set up my mim strat floating, but it was clearly just a pipe dream so I cranked down the springs and decked it.

I adjust all my Strats to blocked. But I adjust the tremolo screws so that they barely touch the top plate. The bracket screws inside are adjusted so that the arm can travel with very little resistance. The balance between the two is the difficult part if you don't have the experience.

I feel you. This is how I ended up, over 20 years of hobby building, with five times more complete instruments than I have family members, and twice as many projects waiting for parts, time, inspiration, or boredom (or all four). Every time I start a project, I end up with three guitars out of it. I once bought a project guitar because it came in the case I needed for another guitar. Just having that black, short trem bar would send me hunting for a trem that it fits, for a guitar that I probably don't have--would probably end up finding a way to put an early 80's superstrat together just to use it (which, btw, are fun builds--there's still NOS, period-correct aftermarket stuff out there). Partly, it's a waste-not, want-not mentality, but also a little bit of hoarder. These are not mutually incompatible, but both are incompatible with suburban home sizes.

Agreed, but every time I buy a tool to finish a project, I end up scouring the internet looking for more parts the tool will help me fix, which just contributes to the first problem. I just finished doing my first US Strat truss rod nut replacement, for a neck that I bought to replace a neck that I took off a project that'd I'd built, but I wanted that neck for a different guitar. The new neck had a stripped nut, and I bought the Stewmac gripper wrench, but it didn't really help much--actually ended up using a long Torx bit to get the old nut off, which broke one of the LSR nut screws (because, like an idiot, once I got the truss rod nut moving I forgot to take the LSR off). So I bought a new LSR nut, just for one of the screws. And now I have most of a spare LSR nut setup, and this nifty gripper wrench...sigh. The struggle is real.
.

I too have had enough parts left over from other projects that when I do one somehow FOUR MORE come out it!! I think that I need to decide when passion has become obsession.

If the screw shank is still in the neck, you may be able to find a small screw extractor like the one in the photo. If you can't find anything so small, you could use a piece of 1/8" diameter tube and file some teeth into the end.

View attachment 1096859

I've made my own screw extractors before. This is the right way to go and it's a lot cheaper too. I drilled out the hole in an Allparts tremolo (zinc block as Fender has been using since the seventies) and inserted a steel plug in it. I drilled a steel bar and threaded it with 10/32 threads. I superglued the this insert inside the drilled out hole so that it would be more stable. This cured two problems in one - the thread wear and no more wobble. This made the bar more stable when using it.

I just cant do the wide string spacing. The high E is always rolling off the neck. I convert everything to 2-1/16" spacing.

I have a Callaham block on the Fender bridge, installed probably at least 15 years ago. The Callaham block/arm is the only one I've had which the arm is not wobbly in. The spring in the bottom does pretty much nothing to solve a wobbly arm.

 

[gimmeatele]

Not that it would have cured everything, but the experience you had is the reason I splurged on luthier’s tools 20 or 25 years ago. In my experience it’s rare to find a guitar tech that is much more than a glorified string changer.

Was going to say the same myself, a lot of the jobs you pay a luthier for are not so hard to do yourself.

 

[58Bassman]

Thanks! That already got done--I saw a writeup on that process, but decided to just pick around the shank to make some room, and slowly pushed it laterally from the top of the steel toward the middle of the neck, until it compressed the wood on that side enough to loosen, then I extracted with a very thin needle nose plier. After extraction I backfilled the cavity with some KwikWood and then filed it smooth. Doing it that way left more of the deeper wood fibers intact. Sacrificed a little more surface wood in the nut slot, but with a steel nut that's screwed down it seemed less potentially destructive than trying to exactly guess at the depth I needed with a homebrew power tool I haven't used before.

That project's basically done, actually--it's a Strat Plus partscaster with a set of Lace Blue Fire (light blue/silver/burgundy) that I committed several acts of amateur lutherie to. Ultimately what got done was plugging a hole in the body, removing and fixing the truss rod nut, and replacing a missing piece of fretboard above the nut with a rosewood veneer that was thick enough to mimic the fretboard. Still mucking with the bridge a bit--have a Hipshot Contour on it with a set of Callaham saddles. I like the combo, but the floating setup leaves something to be desired, as I'm having a hard time getting it to return to 0. Normally I'd deck it and call it a day, but the bridge studs are all the way down, and I still have about 1/8 of an inch of float if I set the bridge level. Can't decide if I want to try to cut the studs shorter so I can flat-deck the bridge, or if I want to try to figure out why it's misbehaving.

I haven't worked with that bridge, but I have set up a whole lot of '70s-2000 Strats with a whammy bar and I have found that it's just a balancing act between the spring tension, string tension and bridge height. On my Strat plus with the Wilkinson bridge, which also had two screws for the pivot, I only used two springs and the first thing I did when I got it home was to remove the Trem-Setter.I don't need it, don't want it, don't like it limiting where I can go with the arm and on that guitar, I could go from one extreme to the other, flip the bar to get a warble or just slight movements without tuning problems. I could raise the pitch by a third or go completely slack.

Which way does it go- flat or sharp? If it's flat, it would need more tension and vise-versa if it goes sharp. I ended up with more tension on the low strings, but that could have just been that guitar- I don't think there's a 'correct' setup for all guitars. I did basically the same thing for a Squire Strat that the guy couldn't keep tuned, nor could the shops he took it to but, having worked at a music store and being responsible for setting up so many guitars, I learned to do this pretty quickly.

 

[58Bassman]

Was going to say the same myself, a lot of the jobs you pay a luthier for are not so hard to do yourself.

Rhett Shull has a video regarding the five skills every guitar player should know and I completely agree- I still see people taking guitars in for restringing.......these aren't beginners, either.

 

[mtglick]

Which way does it go- flat or sharp? If it's flat, it would need more tension and vise-versa if it goes sharp. I ended up with more tension on the low strings, but that could have just been that guitar- I don't think there's a 'correct' setup for all guitars. I did basically the same thing for a Squire Strat that the guy couldn't keep tuned, nor could the shops he took it to but, having worked at a music store and being responsible for setting up so many guitars, I learned to do this pretty quickly.

Appreciate the assist. This one's a bit odd, as it goes both flat AND sharp--with the bridge level and 10-46 strings on, I can push it a half step flat and it will hold, or pull it about a quarter sharp and it will settle there. When it's neutrally balanced it just accepts the last position. This bridge has two pins that center on the high side stud, and I'm not 100% they're fitting correctly on the stud--the contact points look a bit wider than the groove, so there may be some friction there. The other contact point is a single bar of hardened steel, and the rest of the bridge is in free air, not rubbing anyplace else. I polished the contact points and the stud a bit, which did seem to help some, and increased the string gauge so I could add more tension to the system, but again not 100%. Normally I'd just flat-deck the trem, since I don't usually use one anyway, but the studs are about 1/8" too tall to sit the bridge completely flat to the body. Ultimately, it's just something to keep monkeying with.

 

[mtglick]

Appreciate the assist--I did setups at my local for about a year as well! This one's a bit odd, as it goes both flat AND sharp--with the bridge level and 10-46 strings on, I can push it a half step flat and it will hold, or pull it about a quarter sharp and it will settle there. When it's neutrally balanced it just accepts the last position. This bridge has two pins that center on the high side stud, and I'm not 100% they're fitting correctly on the stud--the contact points look a bit wider than the groove, so there may be some friction there. The other contact point is a single bar of hardened steel, and the rest of the bridge is in free air, not rubbing anyplace else. I polished the contact points and the stud a bit, which did seem to help some, and increased the string gauge so I could add more tension to the system, but again not 100%. Normally I'd just flat-deck the trem, since I don't usually use one anyway, but the studs are about 1/8" too tall to sit the bridge completely flat to the body. Ultimately, it's just something to keep monkeying with.

 

[58Bassman]

Appreciate the assist. This one's a bit odd, as it goes both flat AND sharp--with the bridge level and 10-46 strings on, I can push it a half step flat and it will hold, or pull it about a quarter sharp and it will settle there. When it's neutrally balanced it just accepts the last position. This bridge has two pins that center on the high side stud, and I'm not 100% they're fitting correctly on the stud--the contact points look a bit wider than the groove, so there may be some friction there. The other contact point is a single bar of hardened steel, and the rest of the bridge is in free air, not rubbing anyplace else. I polished the contact points and the stud a bit, which did seem to help some, and increased the string gauge so I could add more tension to the system, but again not 100%. Normally I'd just flat-deck the trem, since I don't usually use one anyway, but the studs are about 1/8" too tall to sit the bridge completely flat to the body. Ultimately, it's just something to keep monkeying with.

If you remove the bridge, look at the surfaces where it rests on the studs- does it look polished and smooth, or rough and possibly like it has a ridge in it? In either of the latter cases, I would contact the manufacturer- this isn't how it's supposed to work.

I called them when I was thinking about using a HipShot Type A bridge for my SD Curlee (same as what Birdsong uses) and they were very accommodating; I was able to choose the finish of the base and saddles separately- can't think of anyone else who would do that.

 

[Scooter91]

I forgot to post a picture:

View attachment 1097510

She looks so sweet and innocent...

 

[David Barnett]

She looks so sweet and innocent...

She's a femme fatale for sure, that innocent look is just an act.

 

[Lonn]

I've pieced together hundreds of Strats and Teles over they years. Very rarely do I have a problem but there's been a couple where the sum of all the good parts just added up to a dud of a guitar.