Warmoth neck for 60 Anniversary MIM Strat?

[Rax]

Hi guys.  This is my first post.  Hope this is in the right location on the forum.

I am replacing the neck on my MIM 60th Anniversary Strat.

I play clean to pretty heavy style of rock guitar.  Not over the top saturation.  (I use a pretty transparent sound, so I can hear my fingers).  I have the YJM Fury pickups in the guitar.  They work for what I need.  But the neck that is on this guitar just doesn't do it for me.

I love what I've heard about Warmoth.

I want a neck that is extremely easy to play.  Love compound necks. (Not really interested in scalloped board).  I'm not trying to be another Yngwie.  My style is much different anyway. 

I am considering the Warmoth Maple Wizard neck, with maple fretboard, Jumbo frets.  So my questions are;
Will the Warmoth neck work on the MIM Anniversary?
Will the thin Wizard neck effect the tone in a negative way?
I may want to add a Floyd Rose later down the road… anyone have experience adding the Floyd Locking nut later?

Any suggestions would be appreciated. 
Thanks for your time.
Rax

 


   

 

[MikeW]

Hi Rax. Welcome to the forum.

I've got a Warmoth Maple/Maple Wizard profile neck just like you're looking at. So, that said:
1. Yes. The Warmoth neck heel will fit in a MIM Strat pocket no problem.

2. I don't think that neck profile has anything to do with tone. It's my opinion that neck wood has far more to do with tone than the shape of the neck does. This is a hugely subjective area where everyone has an opinion and none of them are actually right. You just have to trust your ears. My ears tell me that the neck shape has no effect.

YMMV, and tone varies from piece to piece even inside the same species of wood and even across pieces cut from the same tree, yadda yadda yadda....

3. If you're dead set on having a Floyd, and you're going to have a Wizard neck profile, you're probably going to wind up ordering custom. If that's the case, just have the neck built with the Floyd shelf already on it, then just leave the locking nuts/screws off until they're needed.

My Maple/Maple has actually gone the other direction. I used to use the locking nut with the Floyd body that it was originally on, but I've got it on a body with a Wilkinson now and just leave the locking nuts off. It works like a charm and only goes out of tune when I really crank on the whammy. I did find that I had to leave the string retainer bar off to keep the strings from binding between the retainer bar and the tuners.

I would encourage you to check into the locking tuner - LSR roller nut - Wilkinson bridge. It's as stable as a Floyd, requires far less time to set up, and is way easier to restring.

One last note too, unless you're really sold on having Maple as your neck meat, I'd encourage you to check out Canary and Roasted Maple as alternatives. They don't require a finish which means they're super nice to play on, and still have the same sonic range as regular Maple does.

Good luck and keep us posted. We love to see pics of what you're working on.

 

[Rax]

Thank you Mike!  Love your suggestions too. Thanks for taking the time to help a fellow player out.
Rax