Stratocaster neck screw mod

I picked up this tip here:

http://www.callahamguitars.com/neck_screw_adj.htm

So here goes nothing, I get to take all the strings off and see what I've got under the pickguard while I'm at it.

Taking the neck off is easy as expected.

I've heard about this, apparently they wax the screws at the factory to ease assembly. You can see the excess wax here.

This I think is unusual though, haven't heard of this before. There was a spring inside the neck cavity. At first I thought that a loose spring got accidentally assembled into the guitar, but then I saw the marks on the sticker and inside the pocket

Marked in blue here is the divot from the spring inside the pocket. I guess this was intended to maintain tension on the screws? Weird. Marked in red are holes for CNC machining of the body, marked in green are the neck mounting screws.

I'm pretty pleased with what I got, there isn't a ton of over spray in the pocket. My goal is to have a wood on wood connection between the body and the neck. I'll do just a touch of sanding to smooth it out. I'm not counting on my made in Mexico mass produced guitar to one day have value as a vintage instrument, so the sticker has got to go from the bottom of the neck.

Looks like my guitar bought in 2015 was made in 2012

While I've got the strings off, might as well have a look inside. I'm pleasantly surprised. Routed for three singles, and they did a very nice job to make sure that paint was only where it needed to be. Zero shielding. But I'll take care of that myself.

Well, well, well, what do we have here? Genuine CTS 250K Audio Taper 013446 pots (of course with the famous huge blobs of solder).

Tone capacitor is meh. Reads ICMSR104K 250V S B14. I read that to mean Illinois Capacitor MSR series, 0.1uF. Quick lookup on Illinois Capacitor shows this to be a polyester metal film cap. Well...it's cheap and easy to replace.

http://www.illinoiscapacitor.com/ic_search/film_products_detail.aspx?icpartnumber=10548

Ok. Oak grigsby 5 way switch. That's nice.

What type of pickups? Well there is no bar magnet, so they aren't ceramic. AlNiCo something. What exactly? The world may never know. Unclear markings. Note plastic insulated wire throughout.

So it's a mixed bag. The pots and the switch are nice. The cap and the assembly is cheap. The pickups are AlNiCo, but unknown.

Anyways, I tried using a drill bit to open up the neck mounting screw holes in the body. I didn't really have the perfect sized drill, so I didn't make much progress. I used a trick I read, which was take the screw with an electric drill with a screwdriver attachment and run it through the holes in the body, stripping the threads out. That worked great, because the screw is still a snug fit in the body, but no longer threaded.

Obviously don't do this to the neck. You don't want to strip the screw holes in the neck.

With the stickers removed, mating surfaces sanded smooth of wood finish or paint, I screwed it all back together, replacing the screws with Callaham Guitars Neck Plate Stainless Steel Screws.

http://www.callahamguitars.com/partsstr.htm

Everything went back together very nicely, once strung up, the action was the same, everything lined up as before, intonation didn't change.

Can I hear a difference? Acoustically no. Once plugged in, maybe, but might be the placebo effect. I'll have to take a little time and re-record a couple guitar parts to compare with before the mod. The logic here is sound though. You want to clamp the neck to the body as tightly as possible without, of course, damaging the threads in the neck. You want a wood on wood connection, not a wood on lacquer on sticker through screw in wood connection. The neck plate is there as a clamp. Let the screws slide through the body to use that clamp. Anyway, lets say this is maybe a 3% improvement. If I do 10 such improvements, I'll have a 30% better guitar!