Neck pitch . . . a negative question

[Skoorb]

Recently I had some extra time on my hands and actually got to do a little set up and experimenting on one of my Strats. Normally I am working on somebody elses guitars so I actually enjoyed the change. Anyway, this particular guitar has always been somewhat special in tone - loud but bassy, and the E, B and G don´t seem to cause the wood to resonante like the E, A and D. When I first got the guitar, it looked visually to have weird geometry in the neck department. Both the location of the relief and sighting the neck showed this - but I never measured it to prove to myself, until the other day. As it turns out, the neck pocket has a negative pitch to the tune of 1/32 in. over the length of the pocket. Needless to say, when I shimmed it, the tone changed radically. Night and day. But, the amount that I needed to shim it puts two strings out of height adjustment range since they are basically "on stilts" on their height adjustment screws. So, what I am curious about is this : Does anybody have any opinions regarding maximum (or even minimum) height for the bridge saddles on a Strat ?? I know I can just get the taller height screws and solve the problem - but I approach electric repairs with an acoustic attitude and in the acoustic world, if the the neck angle is too shallow/deep then it gets a reset. Obviously, with a Strat, I can just angle the neck pocket by re-routing or removing wood some other way. And what about negative pitch on the neck in general ?? I left an intentional amount of negative pitch because I did not want to lose all of the original tone that the instrument had while it was too negative. Thanks for all help and wisdom.

[Teleologist]

What kind of saddles??? I'm more familiar with messing around with Teles than Strats.

On Vintage Teles, too little neck pitch results in not enough string pressure on the saddles and non-twangy wimpy tone. A general rule I've heard(and which seems to work well) is there should be some 'air' between the bottom of the E strings and the side/top edge of the vintage bridge when viewed from the side.

On modern Teles with the pressed steel saddles(Amer Stds. etc), too little neck pitch can result in the saddles having so little downforce they almost float and can sometimes rattle. They'll move easily from side to side and sometimes make sitar-like sounds. The cause is often someone taking all the adjustment out of the microtilt in the belief that better contact between neck and the bottom of the neck pocket will result in better tone.

It seems that some of Fender's so-called California-series guitars used a Mexican neck on an American body(or vice-versa) and have really lousy geometry. Some folks on another Tele board have shimmed some of these with quarters(!) and gotten much better tone. A more permanent fix was to re-angle the bottom of the neck pocket with a router.

George Fullerton claims that solid contact between the rear of the neck and the back of the neck pocket is far more important for tone than a perfect fit on the bottom(and is also why CBS's tilt necks have problems but G&Ls don't) and/or tightening the bejesus out of the neck bolts. Plenty of old great sounding old Teles have neck shims and fail the Guitar Player business card test so maybe he's right. In any case, I 'fixed' one weird sounding MIJ Strat by cleaning out the rear of the pocket, filing down some protruding pickguard material, and seating the neck against the back of the pocket by loosening and re-tightening the neck bolts with string tension on it.

[Skoorb]

The saddles are typical stamped steel vintage Strat saddles. What is interesting is the fact that the guitar is resonant no matter how the neck is adjusted. The resonance just changes dependant on the neck angle. Teleologist - I agree with you regarding the neck pocket sides completely. I have setup or own guitars that have horrible neck pockets that sound ungodly - plain and simple. Just like on an acoustic, I think there is a lot variation to be had in the tone of a (good) instrument based on just the neck angle and how it interacts with the bridge height.

[Teleologist]

With vintage Strat saddles, the string hits the front edge of the hole behind the raised part anyway, so having them higher probably wouldn't make that much difference. I have a Custom Shop '58 RI Strat where if the trem were blocked(it's floating), the middle 2 saddles would be right at the end of their travel.

I don't know what the neck pitch actually is, but with relief @ .010"and string height at 5/64ths @ 12th fret, unfretted the strings are almost perfectly parallel with the body. The low E is 15/32nds off the body from the neck pocket all the way to the bridge(12/32nds measured to the top of a 3-ply pickguard). This one has no shims, but does have a pretty beefy neck.

It's a really good sounding Strat - resonant with no hot or dead spots anywhere up and down the neck. No stratitis and A on the low E string(5th fret) rings out loud and clear. Whoever put it together, knew something ..... :)