Breathing New Life Into an Old Strat

Date:2020/3/3 10:21:33 Hits:

History
Collage of Donnie Carr jamming on his Fender Stratocaster
Photo credit: Sam Stricklin

In 1987, I bought a brand-new Fender American Standard Strat in Torino Red. I was in the early stages of my professional playing career in Nashville, and subsequently, that guitar became my main working instrument for more than 20 years. Between recording, touring, and practicing (and I was crazy busy doing all three), a staggering number of hours have been logged on that instrument, especially the neck!

As one often does with a Strat, I went through a bevy of mods. I changed pickups, wiring, pots, nut, tuning keys, and saddles; installed strap locks; messed with the tremolo springs; and even installed jumbo frets. Strats are amazingly versatile, and I knew mine so well that I could conjure almost any sound I needed from it. That was the most important factor to me — it was so customized that it was my Strat; it felt and sounded like home.

Taking a Break
Around 2007, I started looking for another go-to instrument and discovered the PRS 513, and the Strat got a well-deserved break from the daily grind. When I came to work full time at Sweetwater in 2014, I put the Strat back into service but noticed that there were some limitations, mostly the intonation above the 12th fret. I also noticed that the overall playability was not as great as I remembered; it was time for yet another re-fret.

Is This the End?
Between the two previous re-frets and all the playing hours, there wasn’t enough fretboard left to properly install another set of frets. I had to seriously consider replacing the neck. Since the neck is the soul of a solidbody electric guitar, and mine was rock solid and coated in my DNA, I cautiously pondered that idea for a long time.

Early in 2019, I noticed some Fender guitars with roasted maple necks. The profile, frets, and finish felt great, plus roasting meant that they would be stable quickly. Hmm, my mental wheels were turning. At Summer NAMM that year, Fender announced roasted necks as an accessory, and I was sold — this was the key to a comeback for my Strat!

Choosing a Neck
Fender has four roasted-neck options:
12″ Radius, Flat Oval Profile, 22 Jumbo Frets with Pau Ferro Fretboard
12″ Radius, Flat Oval Profile, 22 Jumbo Frets with Maple Fretboard
9.5″ Radius, Modern “C” Profile, 21 Narrow-tall Frets with Pau Ferro Fretboard
9.5″ Radius, Modern “C” Profile, 21 Narrow-tall Frets with Maple Fretboard
Any one of those would work for me, but I decided on the 9.5″-radius version with pau ferro because it was closest to my original neck. The only difference was my original had a 22-fret neck.

I went to Sweetwater’s Music Store and had a Sales Engineer order my neck. As I was waiting, I was wondering if I would miss the 22nd fret that was so familiar. I opened the box, pulled the neck out, got a good look, and put my fretting hand on it in a simulated playing position. It felt exactly as I had expected — 21 frets it is!

The Neck Installation Process
Since I’ve put together plenty of parts-casters with varying degrees of success, I decided to try this one by myself, knowing that help was just a phone call away in Sweetwater’s Guitar Workshop. I removed the four screws to take off the old neck, and the new one perfectly fit the neck pocket on my Strat body. The holes lined up, and I used the old carpenter’s trick of inserting snapped-off toothpicks into two of the holes to ensure that the screws had a snug fit. There it was — my Strat had a new neck.

Pro Tip: There’s a specific tightening process for attaching a neck to a body. It’s easy, and it will take the headache out of putting a neck on. Through the entire process, remember to hold the neck snugly against the body in the neck pocket. Be sure to use a manual screwdriver, so you can easily monitor the tightness of the screws. Please don’t overtighten!

Secure the neck in the pocket.
Put the plate on the back of the guitar.
Put all four screws in loosely and tighten with your fingers.
With a screwdriver, tighten the screws incrementally in a series of cross patterns, starting with the bottom bass side (1), then upper treble side (2), then bottom treble side (3), and then upper bass side (4). Each pattern draws the neck evenly closer.
Repeat this pattern three times. By the third time, the bottom-bass-side screw should draw the neck in perfectly against the body, and the other three will make it totally snug.
Picture of a gap from neck of guitar to the body of the guitar

If you don’t follow the tightening sequence described above, then you may end up with a gap (see yellow arrow) from the neck not being properly seated against the body as can be seen above.

Adding New Tuners
picture of tuning keys being placed back on a Fender Strat

As a nice upgrade, I decided to try the Graph Tech Ratio locking tuners. They’re smooth and solid, plus the InvisoMatch mounting plates make it an easy installation. Worth noting: Graph Tech includes a lot of different mounting plates with the Ratio tuners. However, the pre-drilled holes on the new Fender neck are a 2-pin configuration, and that mounting plate is sold separately.

Setup
The only thing left to do was to file the nut slots to the proper height for my playing. The slots were close, but Fender wisely left plenty of height to give you the option to use whatever gauge of strings at whatever action you like. I like light-gauge strings, 0.009–0.042, on my Strat with the action sort of low. I typically pick pretty controlled and even, but I like a wide dynamic range and want to be able to smack the sixth string occasionally.

This is the one task I decided to hand over to a luthier. I considered buying a set of nut files, doing some research, and preparing for the inevitable trial-and-error process, but impatience won. I wanted to play my Strat as soon as possible!

I also got a new set of Graph Tech saddles to replace the ones I put on in about 1988–89. They had served me well, but I wanted to try the chrome saddles with high-density polymer inserts where the strings rest. I also installed Graph Tech string retainers because I found that I needed a little extra downward pressure behind the nut for the third and fourth strings. The Graph Tech string retainers provide the smoothest motion and least resistance to keep the strings from catching when bending, tuning, or using the tremolo arm.

Graph Tech has a mind-boggling number of replacement parts available for guitars, from bridge pins to saddles and nuts. They’re available through Sweetwater, even if they’re not on our website. Call your Sales Engineer if you don’t see what you want or need help deciding exactly what to get.

Once I installed the string retainers and set the saddles up, I had one of the luthiers at Sweetwater’s Guitar Shop perfect the nut height. After a few tweaks — setting the saddle height and intonation, touching up the nut slots, and adjusting the truss rod — I was satisfied with the setup. The real test was to plug it into an amp and play!

The Final Test
My hands and ears were treated to familiarity and the feeling of home. It was the instant rapport of reconnecting with an old friend, and the regular patterns are so easy. Not only had the fundamental sound of my Strat not changed, but I also inherited a few bonuses. The initial attack of each note felt more solid, and every string had a wider frequency range than I had remembered. My theory is to attribute those qualities equally to the new saddles and neck. I have my Strat back!

To make it official, I wanted to use it on a recording, and the next day, I had an overdub session. One of the guitar parts I came up with was a high-register, chimey arpeggio pattern with delay. Out came my Strat, and it performed perfectly.

The installation was simple, so most of the time that I invested in this process has been getting the guitar set up the way I like it. Any new neck will shift when you put tension on it, so patience is required to get it exactly right. It does pay off eventually! I’m still making ever-so-slight intonation and action adjustments, but I’m thrilled to be playing my Strat again.

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