CBS neck short

[victor]

Hello out there! I bought a neck online for my Squire Strat. It is an old CBS Squire neck I think it said and it fits the screw pattern but it's a little loose and there is a sizeable gap in front of the neck where it meets the body. I guess I could shim the front or fill the holes and move it up and redrill but I guess I need to measure and make sure it will intonate correctly before I do all of that. Any suggestions? Thanks

 

[victor]

Well, upon further evaluation, I bolted the neck on (with the gap in front), and it intonated fine but upon removing it I saw the reason that the gap is there. The screw holes are angled. I'm going to fill them with 1/8th inch dowels and re-drill the holes on my drill press. It will move the neck back up and there is plenty of room to move the saddles up if necessary. Looks like it might need a shim under it, can't get the action low enough without buzz.

 

[victor]

So I drilled out the holes to 1/8th inch and used 3/16th dowels that I put in my drill and held a piece of sandpaper around them and turned them down to fit snuggly into the holes and filled them using medium ca glue to hold them and taking off the tops with a sharp chisel then sanding the neck down on top of them. I held the neck where it needed to be and marked each one with a 1/8th inch bit since it fit just right through the body to keep my mark on center then took the neck to my drill press and drilled them out to 1/8th inch. Neck fits great now! Then I had a high fret that I had to tap down. I put that neck on a strat body that I had a Warmoth neck on that I had ordered with a 1 7/8th nut width. I put that on Reverb and nobody wanted a strat with a 1 7/8th neck so I ordered that neck from an outfit in Arizona just to put on there to sell. I now have the wide neck on Reverb to sell separately. I think that it may be too wide. I have a Warmoth neck that I put on another strat that has a 13/4th nut width that I like which brings me to this question... Could I put a 1 3/4th nut on a 1 7/8th neck so I could get my strings closer together? Do you think the extra space on each end would matter that much?