Struggling With 11S (Or A Japanese Squier)

[plinky]

So I have a couple of 80s MIJ Squiers from a friend of mine. One is all original, the other has a replacement body (don't know what brand...haven't looked into it). He's had them lying around and couldn't get them to play right, so he lent them to me to tinker around with and make 'em all better. His concerns were high action and fretting out in the upper frets. He wanted them strung with 11-48 Power Slinkys, tuned standard.

Started on the all original one. A quick check on both guitars with a radius gauge showed 7 1/4" radius, so not a whole lot I could do for the fretting out short of a re-radius/refret, but the action was pretty high. The necks looked bowed on both, but checking both showed the relief was fine. Following a straight edge on the fretboard put the line right about the base of the string saddles. I was able to shim the neck out and get the neck angle back to where it ended up just about the top of the string saddle, where I believe it should be.

I strung it up with his requested string gauge, and tuned up. The intonation and action set up just fine. It played great, but there was some buzzing on the open high E & B strings. Further investigation found the nut slots were too low. Popped the nut out of the slot and saw it was cracked & glued back together, so I decided to make a new one.

Fast forward to last weekend. Had to work that day. Knew it would be slow, so I brought the guitar along with everything I needed to make the nut & finish setting up the guitar. It was dead at work, so I spent most of the day on the guitar. Restrung the guitar and started to tune up to finalize the nut slot height when I saw the neck was almost back at the original angle, with the line starting to point back towards the bottom of the string saddles. Took the neck off and found an imprint of my shim in the neck pocket (a .060" pick).

Now, I've set up a million strats, but until recently I've never strung up with anything past a 10-46 set of strings, so this is my first time with this gauge set. Would this be considered normal with a strat strung up with 11s? Would it be safe to say that the body wood composition can't handle the tension of 11s tuned standard? I don't know what wood the body is made of, but it's not alder or ash, and it's definitely softer than those because I've shimmed necks like that before and never saw an imprint in the neck pocket like that. Would making a wood shim that filled the void between the neck & pocket hold up better against the tension of these strings? Haven't had any luck surfing the web for answers, so thought I'd post here.

[guitar2005]

Some guitars were never meant to be strung with heavy gauge strings. The 1st that comes to mind is the Ibanez Jem.

In saying that, a strat should be able to be strung with 10-46 with ease. The fact that there is an imprint of the shim in the body could be due to a soft piece of wood for the body or too small a shim.

I would try to increase the size of the shim if you really need one and try to swell the wood back up where there is an imprint. Once the wood has somewhat come back to its original state, put a bit of shellac sealer, thinned down so it really gets into the wood. That should help in hardening the wood a little. I guess you could also use a wood hardener.

[plinky]

That's what I was thinking. I've never seen a strat (any guitar for that matter) that didn't take 10s. But with 11s it appears to be a different can of worms, at least in this case. I only asked because I have seen strats that handle 11s with no problems. Guess I also need to see what the other body is made of because it's doing the same thing (neck is pulled up too).

[Tim37]

I have found sand paper works great for shimming necks jus fold it to desired thickness.

[dpm99]

Didn't SRV use 13s on his strat? My tele is strung with 11s, and it does fine. I don't know why a typical strat would be any different.

[SwedishLuthier]

Is it possible to make a shim the same size as the neck pocket? A very thin wedge? that should take care of the problem.

[plinky]

DPM - a normal stray would probably hold up, but the body wood on this one is a little on the soft side. I do plan on making a better neck pocket shim after I try to take the pick impression out like someone suggested earlier.