Strat neck replacement

[victor]

So I sold the neck off of my player strat and the pickguard and got a Warmoth fat neck with 1 7/8ths nut width. Also got a 1 pickup pickguard and put a Seth Lover humbucker in. Everything works great but it seems like it's hard to play the neck like Barre chording and all compared to my Jazzmaster which has the same neck but a standard thin profile compared to the fat neck on this one and the frets on the JM are narrow tall and these are vintage small. But my question is when I put this neck on all went well but I had to drill out each side of the pickup cavity to allow the brackets to go low enough to get my clearance from the top of the pickup. The action is set on the low side but with just a little clearance to go lower. Should I shim the neck and bring everything up? I guess that wouldn't make the neck play any different? Maybe I should just leave it as is. I had to take very little off of the nut when I filed the slots to bring the strings within tolerance so maybe it's just the fat neck?

 

[victor]

Another pic

 

[ragamuffin]

Normally you don't use a bracket when installing a humbucker in a pickguard; you install it directly into the pickguard

 

[JohnnyHardtail]

I don’t see how shimming the neck would be an improvement. It could just be the combination of wide fretboard and vintage frets that makes it feel different.

 

[victor]

True on both accounts. But the humbucker comes with brackets mounted to it. (It has a chrome cover on it) so I kinda had to use them. If I didn't have to go so doggone low with the pickup the brackets would have been fine. But yeah, since my action and pickup clearance is ok, I guess changing things would be useless.

 

[ragamuffin]

True on both accounts. But the humbucker comes with brackets mounted to it. (It has a chrome cover on it) so I kinda had to use them..

You can't unscrew the brackets? Thats unusual

 

[NedRyerson]

Pickup rings are typically separate from pickups, regardless of whether they're covered or not.

 

[Don O]

You can't unscrew the brackets? Thats unusual

I think he’s talking about the actual metal legs (brackets), not the pup rings.

 

[Strat Avenger]

I'll never understand why anyone uses long-legged pickups in the 21st century.

 

[electric__steve]

Is the fretboard extension resting on the pickguard? You definitely don’t want that to happen. You could consider shimming the neck or else getting shorter screws for the saddles as it looks a bit uncomfortable to rest your hand on the bridge. But that doesn’t have anything to do with action. If you want to lower the saddles further you may need to shim the neck as the saddles don’t have much adjustment range left.

Are you sure that the nut slots are scut low enough? Is the action and relief the same as your other guitar? Are you using the same type and gauge of strings?

If nothing else, give yourself some time to get used to the feel of the new neck. The thicker neck might need a subtly different grip, and you’ve got to build up some muscle memory and learn the new neck.