Issues With Swapping Guitar Necks | Guitar Tech Tips | Ep. 77 | Thomann

Can I simply swap a bolt-on neck? Can I mix brands? Will a strat neck fit on a tele?
I've heard these questions a lot and it's time to talk about it.
Enjoy Guitar Tech Tips!

Guitar Tech Tips Playlist with all the episodes:

Interesting bits and pieces:
0:00 Introduction
0:42 Why would you even swap the neck?
1:01 Stick to the same brand
1:23 What if you mix brands?
1:54 Expect these issues
5:11 Time for a test ride!
5:48 Death Metal Outtakes

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[ahtech]

This was a very well edited/paced video. You covered so much in such a small window of time, and none of it was wasted. This should help me a lot in my first neck swapping project!

[bryanb.]

A tuner replacement video would be a cool idea. You need a good tapered reamer and possibly some drill templates for adding kluson locking tuners.

[williamtggordon]

I bought a maple 'Tele neck from a Chinese company. It fitted perfectly ! I had to bore the 4 screw holes in it & I was careful to measure it exactly. The playability was excellent. It takes 2 people to do this job.
I was well pleased with the result.

[the.Aruarian]

Got linked this vid after asking the Thomann guitar department about a potential neck swap of a Fender MiM neck onto a Squier Telecaster body. Decided to roll the dice anyway, and boy did I luck out. The Fender Roasted Maple Telecaster neck (22 frets) fits perfectly in the pocket of my Squier Cabronita Thinline Tele. Now to take care of that unfiled nut, right now the action is about that of a slide guitar.

[allenwebster]

Hes right folks pay close attention to what he said, I have a kramer striker I bought a neck from Amazon once because my original neck was unplayable, when I got the new neck I had to sand measure sand measure and sand again and again while checking the fit between sandings, even if the neck is just 2mm off from fitting if you sand one side of the neck more than the other it wont go in the neck pocket properly it will be cock eyed so to speak which now you have a string spacing issue, you have to do all these things and then double check your work it may take a few mins to a few hrs to get this right, the thing that's important is take your time and check the fit and make sure it goes in the neck pocket right if it's off by 1mm the more it will off near the 3rd 4th even 1st fret at those frets it could be off triple that number, it's a very tedious thing to do I've been through it but by taking my time I got my new neck to work it took more than a few hrs roughly 2 days and it was good, word of advice if you dont need to change the neck on your guitar dont because its alot of work, great video

[frantisca]

Hey Kris, you are right about pointing out the difficulties and problems that might occur while swapping necks. My main Tele has had 6 neck changes until I've found the right one. I can't play thin necks and I dont like baseball bat-types either. From my experience, I'd say you can't go wrong if you choose either Fender originals, or mainstream brands like Warmoth or Musikraft. Beware with Asian made bodies, as the specs are different from the US made and will need adaptation for most. Other than that, it's a bit of a lottery. I am very happy with a neck I purchased in UK from NorthWest guitars, to mount on an homage Blackguard of the Jeff Beck Esquire/Tele I have assembled recently. Maple semi-satin finish, just the right depth and profile for my hand: vintage nitro tint, 12 '' radius, medium jumbo frets, C .83 / .92 profile, (similar to Custom Shop CS-1 dimensions), 42.8mm bone nut, top trussrod adjustment, which avoids disassembling the neck each time. VERY comfy ! The choice of woods, fret type, carve are very important: try a lot before you order. Cheers Kris !

[jimcamp]

As I recently shimmed a Squier Bullet SSS HT. It originally had a piece of paper taped at the butt of the neck pocket. The material of the shim really doesn't matter. I used the backing of a hardwood flooring sample made of plastic. And I put that on top of the taped piece of paper. No change in sustain. It makes sense to have as much contact of the heel & neck pocket and the harder the material for a transfer of vibration the better. I think you could spread aluminum foil or even copper shielding tape and it would be hard enough to transfer vibrations for sustain, probably better than wood on wood contact, metal is harder than wood. The plastic shim was flat, as the neck pocket & neck angle were fine from the tape shim that was already installed by Squier. 10-12 seconds of sustain is overkill and even the cheapest guitar gets that, shimmed or not. My guitar is Baltic Blue, used black plastic because it closely matched the body color. I thought about using wood, but it would not match the tinted gloss polyurethane of the maple of the neck. It's visible, but you have to make an effort to see it. Plays infinitely better from a perspective of action height. sustain, that's debatable whether there is any difference. Tone, I think it's actually better, raising the fretboard at the heel required raising the pickups. But my saddles are properly leveled when they were slammed before to the bridge plate. Who knows if that's even the original neck ? It was 14 years old when I bought it.

[reverendjetstream]

That outro!!! 🤟 Was not expecting that 😀

[gandalfilgrigio]

when people say "it's a bolt on so you can replace the neck if it breaks" make it seem so easy, like it just a matter of screwing 4 screws, while it's almost as hard as gluing a broken neck if you can't find a perfect fit

[TomSJazzBass]

Fender sells their replacement necks with these ma-hoooo-sive nuts.

I'm not too shabby when it comes to guitar setup but this is one nut I don't want to bust 😉

So I took it to a shop when I replaced the neck on my Tele recently

[clique]

I watch your videos everyday and always appreciate your killer playing at the end!

[edwinstovall]

I had occasion to try a neck swap earlier this year. Thanks to you, I now know that I did the right thing to stop the instant I realized I was having problems. Had I continued, I would certainly have damaged something. As it was, I was concerned that I had. Everything seems fine, though. I was right to abort because I have none of the tools needed to do this job right. Thank you for the confirmation.

[valueofnothing]

I put American necks on Classic Vibe bodies, and an Affinity neck on a CV body. The neck pockets were a bit different so I had to get some block saddles to get a bit more height, but otherwise good.

[jamesmarkham]

I had a body with an angled neck pocket. So I routed it straight and filled it in with some scrap wood. The new neck fits great and the vibration transference is unreal! I really lucked out

Great lesson, my friend!! Cheers! 🤘🏻🤘🏻🤘🏻

[streck]

Good to know! I was toying with the idea to replace a vintage style neck on a Mexican Jazzmaster with a modern Fender US neck. Thought this would be a piece of cake, but I should probably do more research first.

[denis_kleshchev]

Oh, I used to have a schecter with replaced neck. And it was impossible to set it's scale length. It was 650mm in the shortest 6th string saddle position. The bridge sits with an angle, so 6th string was almost unplayable, 5 - badly playable and others were ok. Never gonna get an used guitar with replaced neck again

[markusboos]

Vielen Dank, ich habe mir das Video nach der Hälfte meiner Reparatur angesehen und bin genau auf diese Probleme gestoßen wollte auch den Hals nicht berühren und habe dann den kompletten Schuh aus gehobelt mit einem Stecheisen, und sehe hier, dass ich alles richtig gemacht habe, und werde Ihre weiteren Tipps beherzigen. Ich hoffe, Sie können das übersetzen und ich freue mich, dass sie dieses Video gemacht haben. Vielen Dank

[tommywallberg]

Really interesting info ! Which radius and neck shape you prefer on a Fender Stratocaster?

[POLLOTROM]

I have a Washburn N2 with broken neck. I searched for Identical replacement and I found a neck from the same model but different year. The fretboard is higher so I had to rise the Floyd post and now it looks too high (the floyd rose). this video helped me to understand what is going on.