Is there a market for a strat style neck with specific specs you cannot get now?

[Slobrain]

It would be sort of like the Mighty Mite neck but better built with better features. One being a taller fret wire and a thinner neck contour geared for the shred guys wanting a better replacement neck than the ones on Ebay.

Mighty Mite had the right idea but seems too many people complain on the build quality and these are also limited to fretboard radius and neck thickness standard that Mighty Mite set up. I'm not trying to knock Mighty Mite, they do have a good product, but I feel they could improve given the right changes.

My idea would be a more thinner D shape back with a taller fretwire at maybe Crown height of .062 and width or either .110 or .118 crown height the fretboard radius minimum would be 12, 14 or 16 like the Jackson necks.

Like I said this would be geared for the guy wanting to replace his MIM strat neck with something better. It would be hard to compete with Warmoth as they make great products as do USA Custom guitar but I feel sometimes there is a market there for this kind of neck that I am not seeing being sold at a reasonable cost.

What do you all think?

Thanks

Slobrain

[jrfrond]

Good necks cost money. When I need a neck done right and to spec, these are the people I use. Not the cheapest, but super quality and problem free: https://www.musikraft.com/product-info.php?pid69.html

[Slobrain]

Thanks for the info John,

I had been kind of tossing around the idea of having a guitar neck maker here in the USA making around 12 necks to sell on EBay. I wanted to see if I could get a business going in the aftermarket guitar parts biz sort of like the same thing many are doing with the MM necks and other on EBay. Accept the necks I would sell would be custom style similar to maybe a San Dimas strat neck with the flatter radius and taller frets. It’s just an idea right now. I have contacted Jescar about getting the cost of custom fretwire made. I recently tried some of their wire and was impressed with it.

One neck in particular I know would sell well would be the EVH knockoff necks. I think when guys are building these EVH copies they miss the dimensions of the neck and that is one key to a great playing EVH copy. Originally I think the original EVH white/ black stripe strat might have had a thin, wide D shaped neck with probably a 12 or 16 inch radius with jumbo Gibson frets. Eddie mentioned back in the day that he liked the feel of a classical guitar neck and looking at close up pictures of that original neck it looks wide, thin with big frets.

I guess I'll try to see if I can do this cost effective and see how it works out...

Cheers

[John_H]

Have you ever thought of making your own necks? You seem like a skilled guy.

I've made necks, but never a one piece until now. I'm going to attempt a prototype this weekend. The layout, and cut for the truss rod will be the most complicated part, but I'm confident I have it pretty well thought out. Wish me luck...

[Slobrain]

Hey John,

I have worked on guitars for many years buy not doing refretting, just started that last year because I wanted to push my self further in my guitar repair knowledge. As for building a neck I would leave that to someone with a skill in that department. I'm sort of a jack of all trades, master at none...LOL....

I have been thinking about trying to get necks built at a lower cost and the featues I do not see on Ebay or from certain guitar parts suppliers.

Its sort of like trying to get a cost effective EVH copy neck at the Mighty Mite sale price on Ebay, I never see that ever... Maybe I need to contact Mighty Mite and see why they do not offer other neck profiles besides the same generic stuff I see for sale on Ebay all the time. maybe its a patent issue or getting a CNC machine program that can do this.

I did see at the Fender factory they use neck teplates of the guitar legends guitar necks to make copy necks but I never seen a Eddie Van Halen original CBS style Charvel neck template there...

Makes me wonder who did the neck profiles for Lee Jackson or Wayne Charvel? Heck, I wonder if Wayne or Lee ever read posts here??? I know some from some big companies read post here. Maybe the owner of Mighty Mite?

Cheers

[John_H]

Hey John,

I have worked on guitars for many years buy not doing refretting, just started that last year because I wanted to push my self further in my guitar repair knowledge. As for building a neck I would leave that to someone with a skill in that department. I'm sort of a jack of all trades, master at none...LOL....

I was in the same boat, but that never stops me from trying. However, somewhere along the line I might have gotten a double dose of the DIY gene.

I have been thinking about trying to get necks built at a lower cost and the featues I do not see on Ebay or from certain guitar parts suppliers.

Its sort of like trying to get a cost effective EVH copy neck at the Mighty Mite sale price on Ebay, I never see that ever... Maybe I need to contact Mighty Mite and see why they do not offer other neck profiles besides the same generic stuff I see for sale on Ebay all the time. maybe its a patent issue or getting a CNC machine program that can do this.

I did see at the Fender factory they use neck teplates of the guitar legends guitar necks to make copy necks but I never seen a Eddie Van Halen original CBS style Charvel neck template there...

The reason that you can't get other profiles from companies like MM is because people are generally happy buying the crap that they're slinging. They have machines that spit those necks out faster than you can count them. They're not in the custom guitar business. Don't count on things to change.

I don't know for sure, but I'd be willing to bet that EVH modifies his necks to suit himself.

Makes me wonder who did the neck profiles for Lee Jackson or Wayne Charvel..

Cheers

I imagine they did their own.

Keep up the nice work.

[Slobrain]

Hey John,

I know what you mean about the DIY stuff,

In the late 80's I started building fx pedals then slowly went into modding amps, then in 96 I was talking to a guy that worked at a local music store and he remarked you couldn't make a fender sound like a Marshall so I went home and gutted a late 60's Fender Bassman head and built a Marshall master volume circuit into that Bassman head. It came out sounding better than some of the real Marshall Master volume heads I had owned before. The Modded Bassman then later became a test bed for other amps including a Ampeg 501 which is basically a Marshall master volume circuit modded to hi gain with an extra gain stage, than one got real super close to the original EVH sound from the first album.

Later on in 1998 few guys on the original Ampage started passing around the Soldano SLO 100 circuit schem and I built that into the Bassman amp and it was a great sounding amp. Not to long after I built that someone wanted to buy it from me and I sold it. Then when Ted Weber started building some chassis that looked almost identical to the SLO chassis I built 4 SLO clone amps, 2-50 watters and 2-100 watters and then sold those to different guitarist I knew.
All the while still building custom strats and modding guitars too. Recessing Floyd rose trems and all kinds of other mods

I guess it’s in my blood....

[J M Fahey]

I say give it a try.
Not *that* big an investment, and if you can't sell them for what they are worth, you will sell anyway, at least at or close to cost so you aren't *really* risking that much.
*I* would try