Yeah, i've actually been down that mustang neck swapping rabbit hole in the past. I tried to get the folks at Stratosphere, to measure a few of the different mustang body neck pockets, and also a couple different mustang necks they had at the time, and they wouldn't for me. Would be some very valuable into to have a good chart of the differences between the pockets and necks of the various mustangs over the years....
~
I'm working on such a dimension table, for more than just Mustangs, comparing them with Squier Broncos, Musicmasters, Squier SS Jags, and the new Squier Mini-P, to see which of the Fender short scale necks and bodies lend themselves to swapping, and to what degree.
My main reasons for beginning this exercise were to try to put a neck with a wider nut width onto certain bodies, and secondarily, possibly ending up with a Maple fretboard.
Not owning most of these basses is slowing down my progress with this, but combing various threads at TB and other sites is gradually filling in the blanks, along with kind folks making measurements and posting them for me.
Obviously, some pairings are a lot more likely to bear fruit with few or no other supporting mods to the Franken-Fender in question, such as when we are looking at necks and bodies which have the same scale length and the same number of frets, where only the pocket dimensions and neck bolt positions become potential wild cards.
So far, I have been operating under the assumption of all neck pockets being equal [which they are not], and just figuring out the length factors, and on that basis alone, therefore whether, how far, and in which direction a bridge would need to be moved in order to maintain/achieve the correct scale lengths to properly intonate the various pairings.
I have noted that Mustangs, Musicmasters, and Broncos are close kin in that regard, whereas the Jag SS has the same scale but an extra fret to factor in, and the Mini-P has a shorter scale AND an extra fret.
There have been anecdotal posts from folks who say that they have successfully transplanted a certain neck onto a certain body, but most often they do not get into posting any pocket dimensions.
So since I'm posting in the Mustang thread right now, can anyone offer some wisdom as to neck pocket dimension consistency [or lack of] in neck pocket dimensions of the various Mustang models, current and past, along with numbers for some models if you know them, or if you have the model and can measure it ?
Even a single width measurement across the fretboard at the highest numbered fret would be useful in my table.
Thanks !
~
