Guitar Neck – Saga Guitar Continues

Ok, you’ve probably figured out by now that the guitar neck on this Saga guitar has caused the most problems. It’s not really the fault of the neck itself, more the fact that I decided to use a new bridge. The newer bridge sat lower than the stock bridge, as a result the strings were resting on the neck even when the bridge saddles were at their highest position (the neck was too high). So to compensate I had two choices, shim up the new bridge, or lower the guitar neck pocket. I chose to do the latter, I was a little worried about gouging or my template slipping, but it worked really well and in the end the neck fit perfectly. I don’t think I really talked about it earlier, but when I was fitting the new pick guard, it fit a little too tight around the neck. That was a simple fix, just a little filing and sandpaper.

Neck Plate

Another problem and this was the fault of the neck, was that the neck plate holes didn’t really line up with the holes drilled in the back of the guitar. These holes were drilled so that the screws that held the neck on could go through the back and into the guitar neck itself. They don’t really need to be tight in the back, rather tight in the neck, so I did what I did earlier to fill a screw hole, put glue into the hole, and plugged it with a small dowel. Then I redrilled the holes to fit. It’s a pretty easy fix and works well. If you look at the picture to the left you’ll notice the hole at the bottom left really doesn’t line up with the hole in the neck. It’s a pretty big deal that the guitar has a neck that fits correctly, so I needed to fix it. The one in the top right didn’t line up either but that might have been ok. Another problem was that the holes were too small and the screws were way too tight. I was afraid I was going to twist the heads off, or strip them I had to put so much pressure on them. They don’t need to be that tight. The pressure of the strings will help hole the neck longways, you just need the neck to sit flush and tight with the body. A coarse thread wood screw like theses will bite the wood pretty well, so they don’t need to be super tight. So for now that’s everything to do on the guitar neck, until we string it up.