My 83 Star revisited - caution: not good news

[Newc]

Ok, some may recall that black 83 Star I got from Elderly last year - the one with the string alignment issue. You may also recall (before the PMs start pouring in [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]) that I sold the neck, plate, and case, and there was some debate as to whether the body was really a Charvel.

Anyway, with the latest attempt to sell this thing, I realised I hadn't really examined the alignment issue as closely as I had thought I did, so I put a neck on it and strung it up again yesterday, and gave it a better inspection.

As these pics show:





It's not just the neck pocket holes that are off center, it's the tremolo. Whoever did the Floyd conversion put it too far to the bass side. The neck pocket holes are definitely factory, and definitely crooked, as the edge of the heel hangs off the treble side of the pocket just a smidge.
The same smidge is how crooked the strings are at the 22nd fret.

In all honesty I'm pretty sure this thing will need major surgery to be what it was supposed to be.
I'm talking cutting out and replacing the block that the Floyd posts are mounted to (since they're epoxied in), or filling in the trem route completely and going with a hardtail or Kahler or recutting for a new trem, and fill-and-redrilling the pocket holes.

[83SanDimas]

Re: My 83 Star revisited - caution: not good news

I have seen star bodies with strang neck pockets. It is the nature of the beast with so little latteral support. You can normally get the neck set correctly.

As far as the floyd, I have approched Kevin Maynard in the past regarding making me some narrow spaced floyd plates and saddles for my vintage to floyd strat head Charvels. I love stratheads and floyds but I am often annoyed with the combination as their is no room at all for error on the e strings. Consider having a base plate made and not redrilling the posts...

[Newc]

Re: My 83 Star revisited - caution: not good news

I thought about the custom baseplate/saddle idea.

Kevin, can you do Floyd saddles?

[Newc]

Re: My 83 Star revisited - maybe good news?

Ok, this really bugged me to no end, so I did something about it, and it works:

First, put a pre-drilled Warmoth neck in the pocket without bolts, and measured the scale. I had this neck on it in the previous pics, mounted in the pre-drilled holes, and noticed at the time that the neck did not go fully to the end of the pocket. So I had an idea to just drill new holes under the existing holes and see if that would work. It didn't. I tried just eyeballing new holes in the pocket, but only got 3 of them aligned - the 4th was off.
So then I got a better idea: With the neck strung and Floyded, I seated it in the pocket and put the Floyd against the posts, and made sure the strings were taut and straight. Next I clamped the neck to the body with one of those one-handed Quick Grip clamps. Next, I double-checked the E alignment (since the clamp moved the middle strings but didn't touch the outer ones) to make sure the neck was still straight, then tightened the clamp as far as it would go.
Then I drilled 2 new holes through the back of the pocket and the neck at the same time and bolted them together, then removed the clamp and drilled 2 more holes through both the body and the neck heel and put in the bolts.
It's ugly, but it works.











As you can see it's still slightly off, but at least this way I won't have to have the frets custom-dressed to fit an overly-crooked radius.

For added stability, I may put in some of those recessed bolt mounting rings like on JJs and such.