Charvel neck angle & Non recessed floyds

[Predator1]

Has anybody else noticed a lack of consistency in regards to neck angle on both Charvel Custom Shop guitars and the recent Pro Mods? Having owned many of both I have seen some with a lot up pull ability and some with little to none. I know that to some degree this depends on your set up but I set up all of mine pretty much the same. Is there a factory spec or degree of neck angle that they should be built at?

[MikeStrat]

I have several USA pro mods and they are all pretty much the same. All the Floyds sit off the body to allow pull up. Although I don't do that because I don't want to break a string in a live situation. I haven't played any MIJ models.

[DonP]

Getting a proper neck angle always seems to be a challenge. Gibson struggles with it too, but usually the bridge needs to be too high.

Maybe that's what manufacturer's love the recessed Floyd.

[ps43203]

It's called a ruler. You think they could afford one them new fandangled digital ruler thingamajobs. Sorry for being an ass.

[ginsambo]

Yeah I see it. My Tele Style 2 USA Pro mod has a floyd which sits way too high and an over angled neck pocket, the other two USA's are about spot on. The floyds on my two Japanese ones sit about the same, but one of them has such a shallow neck pocket, about 1/4" shallower than the others, that it let me fit whatever pups I wanted with pickup rings, the other is more like the USA's and deeper and angled and only allows weaker pickups with smaller magnets using pickup rings.

The Style 2 also look to have a load of filler around the trem cavity under the paint and the worst fitting caity covers I've ever seen. It's probably the most likely candidate to part up, but it does sound good.

I would have though an angled neck jig would be standard, but I guess not. So there is an element of hand craftery to all these guitars, although I thought varying neck pocket angles was part of the great Charvel tradition. Recessed floyd bolt on must be simpler and cheaper to produce though.

[Axewielder]

My 80's Jackson strats tended to be all over the map by the time I got them. The good news is that it is easily tuned with neck pocket shims. I have my own low-tech spec which is 1.5 step pull-up range. Some other players desire more than that, but that gets dicey with low action. I'm not even sure how to measure the actual neck angle!

[ginsambo]

That's easy. With a neck angle measurer.

I guess you set one rule on the body and another, very wide overlapping parallel edged rule on the pocket and put your protractor on the overlap angle.

I know the shallow angle would probably call for a sharp router base jig, but you would have thought they'd have some indestructable, wedged shape jigs with the template in it at cambered the right angle that aligns to the body so you can rout the angle. Or more likely they use an adjustable platform that you can set the body angle on, relative to the overhead router, maybe it moves over time with all the vibes and needs resetting or calibrating.

[The Rossness]

While all my pro mods ave no recessed floyds, I've only been able to get one of them, my purple style 2, flush with the body. If I need to do a pull up, I have a DigiTech Whammy pedal for that. But on the subject of flush floyds and neck angles, you have to check out an EBMM axis. I just got a new one and it slays!

[j2379]

most of mine have about the same amount of pull up, just shy of a full step. im guessing between an 1/8' to 3/16" off the body.

[xenophobe]

What I've noticed is that you can set your truss rod several different ways... you can set your neck flat as you can get it, and need to adjust the trem up, or you can put that vintage relief in it which would require adjusting the neck angle and bridge height.

I can't say for certain, as none of my bolt-ons have required any real truss adjustment, with the exception of one. I do know that when I set up a Jackson neck-thru, i always flatten the board and almost always have to adjust the trem height up a full turn or two sometimes.

It may just depend on when the guitar was made, as there have been modifications to the Floyd route, which would lead me to believe that they've done different angles or have used shims to accomplish what is necessary for a proper setup.

In any case, it's not hard to get 1-2mm of bridge lift or sink by placing an appropriately sized shim either at the bottom or top of the pocket.

[shreddermon]

You guys do realize that wood shrinks and expands with age and environmental factors, right? That includes the body's neck pocket and the neck's heel, thereby potentially impacting the neck angle, etc. Not to mention other factors, like set-up.

While the guitars might've been originally made and set-up to a reasonably tight tolerance, wood is an organic product that changes with time, humidity, etc. The changes usually shouldn't be too drastic, but every piece of wood is different. I've certainly had several guitars - custom shops included - where the set-up has gone south with time. For some, that process took only a few weeks, for others it took a year or two. And, with one or two, the wood "settling" eventually even required a neck shim to compensate. (Or required fret filing, due to fretboard wood "shrinkage" - unfortunately, I've seen this a fair bit with J/C's ebony here in the northeast.)

No big deal. IMHO, part of the coolness and beauty of guitars is their organic nature and how - like us - they change with time.

[ginsambo]

I don't think a wide tolerance of neck angles is anything to worry about, in fact I think it is wholesomely in the Charvel Woodshop tradition, even if they are made by fender.. But no way will a body shrinking or a neck moving with humidity or temperature affect the neck angle. Yes, it will cause laquer cracks and even flake chips around the heel on the body but no way will it affect the angle.

Some of my Charvel Pro mods have the neck pocket a 1/4" shallower than others, you can't tell me that is wood contraction. lol. The only guitar the neck angle bugs me on is the Black USA Style 2. If I was to give an opinion about that guitar, I'd say it was a factory second or something. Seriously, you can see the filler around the trem cavity cover which is about 1/2" all around so you see were it wasn't able to be feathered in through the black paint. The cavity cover fits like crap, but worst of all, because the neck pocket is so angled, the trem, when set level with the body is 1/2" off the body. Now which ever way you set up your floyd, that IMO is just way too high and puts way too much torque on the posts.

But then, in retrospect if you replace a JT6 with a floyd on a model series, the baseplate almost sits that high, so maybe it's nothing.

And yeah. I am a big fan of inconsistancy and barn door engineering, especially since these things are made of wood. It adds to the appeal IMO, so long as you get a good one eh!

Proper set up my ass though. These are production guitars. All it is, is the overhead router table tilting as the bolts that hold it at the set angle loosen with the router vibrations after umpteen bodies neck pockets have been routed on it.