plinky

I think that's just the camera. Looks like a big old air gap between the neck & pocket to me. Neck also looks horribly out of alignment with the body. Without looking at it up close, I'd be willing to bet a good setup would make it playable. A Guitar Center jockey could probably get you in the ballpark. If you're not up to paying for a setup, Dan Erlewine's guitar repair book is great for stuff like this if you're willing to sit down & learn, & that guitar is a perfect learning tool.

I wouldn't take a heat gun to that 5 piece body for too long, if at all. It will soften the glue & the body pieces will start to separate. Ask me how I know. If you wanted a wood grain finish on top, research here & all over the web & try putting a veneer top on it, then you could get a neat transparent stain on the top, or whatever you want. Since the round over on an Ibanez RG is very small it's a lot easier to install a veneer than say a Strat with a 1/2 in round over. It would look a lot better with a 2-piece veneer (or one) than seeing that 5-piece laminated body.

A good book to have. Will help tremendously with just about everything on a kit build. http://www.amazon.com/The-Guitar-Player-Repair-Guide/dp/0879309210

Welcome to the forum! I like to put the kit guitars together first & iron out any playability issues (neck alignment, uneven frets, electronic gremlins, etc) before I start making it look pretty.

That second one is sweet! Flames are pretty wicked too.

Have actually made some progress, albeit slowly. With work occupying most of my time, I'm lucky to get anything done on my weekends off. I kept trying to plan out these massive to do lists of what I wanted to accomplish, only to accomplish none of them. So I started taking baby steps to get this thing done, and it seems to be paying off a bit. Sanded all the sides of the body, and then took a french curve and outlined the neck heel, then sanded it down as well. Was going to route the neck pocket last weekend, but the weather postponed that. I did a test run for the neck pocket on some scrap, but I learned that double-sided tape is no match for the Texas heat. It was melting the adhesive, then the neck pocket template was shifting, which ruined my test route. Ended up making another set of body/neck templates using the body as a master: Marked the location of the pickups, then wood screwed the templates to the body, then trim routed them to shape. Did a test run on some more scrap - successful! Crossed my fingers and took the plunge: Had a spare neck lying around. Looks good so far.

Wow. Has it been this long since I started this thread? Funny how time flies. Well, the finger healed up just fine, I was able to play my band's final gig, and even did a small reunion the following year. Have built some pre-made part guitars since the last post and even a SLOClone, but now it's time to get this thing done. Started from scratch on this today. Threw my old templates in the trash and went with some I bought online. Not the best, but I can make them work. It will be an Ibanez RG style body (I was told this was an alder blank, but I couldn't tell you), hopefully with an AANJ (bolt on). I have some flame maple for a top, but I might just save that for another guitar, depending on how well this one goes. It will have a 22 fret maple neck/fretboard. It will be a rear routed body (most likely). Electronics & hardware are sketchy at the moment. The current thought is make it similar to the current Guthrie Govan model (HSH, recessed strat trem), but I still keep thinking about an HSS config and putting a Floyd Rose on it. Save that for a later post. Apartment dwellers tend to complain about any noise, so I had to do this in my sister's garage. Need to tell her to invest in some dust collection equipment. ;D

Looks like something you should demo at a GBGC meeting. I have a couple maple fretboard blanks if you care to. I see a two parter - slotting, then radiusing. ;D

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.

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).

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.

Most excellent.

Only thing I'd advise on the next one is mask off the neck pocket. Otherwise, nice job.

Would've lightened it up considerably if you installed a Floyd. Nice work man.

If there was any way you could do digi-camo that would be the bomb.