Fender neck measurement variance

[Wizard of Wailing]

      I've recently gotten addicted to these YouTube videos of Greg Koch playing Custom Shop Fender Strats for a store called Wildwood Guitars.  Anyway, Wildwood also has American Standard Strats for sale with the neck measurements listed on their website.  They're all different.  One is .81-.89., another is .85-.90, etc...  These aren't huge differences, but I figured a company like Fender cranks out all 2015 American Standard Strats with exactly the same dimensions.  Does anyone know what accounts for this variance? 

 

[Cagey]

Wood expands and contracts relative to its environment, but usually not that much. Fender's wild dimensional variance has never been explained in public, at least in modern times. Since anyone who makes more than maybe a hundred guitars a year has to be using CNC machines and other automation to fit production in the time allotted, you would think their output would be pretty predictable.

But, nooooooo!!!​

Fender's parts are all over the place, dimensionally. Warmoth and some others make better Fender parts than Fender does. Ask any guitar tech who works on a steady diet of Fender guitars and they'll have all kinds of stories about what things look like disassembled or how they fit together.

 

[aarontunes]

It's easy to forget that despite CNC technology, a whole lot of finish work is still done by hand. Two necks may come off the machine exactly the same, but then one goes the Bubba "The Crusher" Sarduchi for final sanding. The other goes Rory "Light Fingers" Featherton, and the necks end up a couple hundredths of an inch different. Add to that Cagey's observations above.

Building things out of organic materials, with human hands, ain't the same as stamping out iPods. There will be some variation. It's up to every company to decided how much variation is acceptable.

 

[GilgaFrank]

To give Fender their due, quality control has improved dramatically over recent years and neck heel tolerances seem better than ever now on the US made necks. I've swapped necks round on a couple of recent model Strats and they both fitted into the neck pockets like it was made for that guitar. Your mileage may vary, especially down at the Squier Vintage Vibe end of the market.

Conversely, I put a Might Mite guitar together and that really was badly-fitting junk. Neck pocket too large, wouldn't stay straight when it was fitted. I've got my first ever Warmoth neck on order right now so we'll see how that one lines up pretty soon.

 

[Logrinn]

... but then one goes the Bubba "The Crusher" Sarduchi for final sanding. The other goes Rory "Light Fingers" Featherton ...

:icon_biggrin: :icon_biggrin: :icon_biggrin:

 

[DangerousR6]

It's easy to forget that despite CNC technology, a whole lot of finish work is still done by hand. Two necks may come off the machine exactly the same, but then one goes the Bubba "The Crusher" Sarduchi for final sanding. The other goes Rory "Light Fingers" Featherton, and the necks end up a couple hundredths of an inch different. Add to that Cagey's observations above.

Building things out of organic materials, with human hands, ain't the same as stamping out iPods. There will be some variation. It's up to every company to decided how much variation is acceptable.

Exactly, this was brought up in another thread, and as with any sort of manufacturing, construction or assembly, that's why there are tolerances...