Jazz Bass Project - Neck Not Fitting - Angle Off

I have a Classic Vibe Jazz Bass 60s body, and a Vintage Modified Fretless Jazz Neck (yeah it's got a synthetic fretboard but whatever). I tried adding the neck today but it was an extremely tight fit. I checked the string position and I can tell it's also going to install slightly angled so that the G string is nearly going off the fretboard with maybe 1/16th of an inch of space between the string and edge of fretboard. The E string would be angled towards the center of the fretboard.

Below is an image showing approximately how the E string looks. What I am thinking is I need to angle the neck left.




Anyway, clearly I have to sand something here to get this neck to fit and also angled the right way. Which item should I sand? The neck pocket or the neck? I am thinking I could sand the left side in the image above on the body, or the left side of the neck. Also, what sort of sand paper should I buy?

One other bad fit is the round base of the neck where it meets the pickguard. The pickguard and body are cut to a greater radius if that makes sense. The neck and neck heel don't match exactly in "roundness". The scale length was nearly dead on though, it will be able to be fixed by adjusting the bridge screws.

I am not sure what Fender specs are aside from width of neck/neck-pocket, though I've read that people say to check which is out of spec and fix it. I just am not sure if that's the best thing to do.

Thank you!

 

Hey thanks for your reply.

It sounds like I might need to plug and redrill the neck too then, is that correct? I've done it once on a strat project and it turned out ok.

 

Hey thanks! I appreciate your help. I ended up finishing the bass this morning after a trip to home depot. I had to sand the pocket quite a bit, but eventually it fit. I didn't have to redrill the neck which was surprising. I think the tight fit before was torquing the neck sideways a bit and bending the neck screws.

The neck still isn't perfectly dead on with the bridge but I was able to adjust the bridge saddles to get the strings to line up over the correct spot on both pickups. That also made the string run parallel with the sides of the neck. Here's a picture. It's at an angle so the strings look a bit off, but they are pretty much evenly spaced if you look at it dead on.





Thanks again!

 

Thanks everyone and Merry Christmas! I was super busy with work lately so I haven't had time to revisit the bass or this thread.

Yes, the saddles are definitely not level. I've been playing it like this and it sounds OK, however there is definitely some buzz further up on the neck. I basically angled the saddles so that the strings would fall over the right spot on the pickups.

I have been debating on moving the bridge, but I am not sure if that's best. Should I sand the hell out of the neck pocket or just redrill the bridge? I got the body for 120 bucks without a neck, so it stands to reason that it was a B-stock and didn't pass inspection. Maybe the bridge is really off? I already sanded the neck pocket quite a lot to remove at least the width of the finish out of the wood.

I didn't have to redrill the neck for it to bolt together after sanding the neck route some, so would sanding the neck route more even work without redrilling the neck? For the record I've plugged and redrilled a neck before with decent results but if I can avoid it that's great.

The pickups are slightly off center with a gap on the right in the image above. I bet I could move them a little bit to alleviate the off-level saddles but I am unsure if it would be enough to fix the problem totally and then I still have to worry about where the strings fall on the neck.

The neck heel seems to be lining up in the neck cavity well, as in I can't tell if it's got an angle if I use the body as a reference. Basically if I run my hand over the gap where the neck meets the body the neck and body seems to be pretty parallel. Of course a small angle can lead to a large difference when you're dealing with a long object.

 

Hey thanks everyone, I'll try the suggestions. I promise I won't mess with the bridge unless I try Turnaround's method (for 96tbird ).

I never knew this community was so helpful, I'll be sticking around for sure. I've been a bass player for 13-14 years but this is my first real bass project. I previously did a strat project (I also play guitar but I am a far better bass player, something to do with my hands just not feeling right on a guitar) that didn't have these issues so based on that and what I read in some other forums I naively assumed that Fender/Squier parts all play together nicely.

It's appreciated. I'll post an update soon.

 

Hey! It worked.





I flattened the saddles, then sanded the hell out of the neck pocket sides some more. I over did it actually a little bit so there's a slight gap on the right-hand side above. No big deal, you can't see it too much unless you look close. The only other thing I did is loosen the pickups a bit, push them over to the side a little, then tightened them back down. That was just a minor adjustment since they weren't center in the route anyway.

I just have one more question, I had to torque the neck a bit to the left (left in pic above) in order to get it to line up right before I tightened it down. I was just using a rubber clamp to hold it in place. I didn't redrill the neck at all. Do I have to worry about this neck working it's way back? I didn't bother re-drilling the neck.

Thanks again for your help, all of you.