Kavanagh Customs

Project Guitar Help Centre: Electric Guitar Neck Pockets Explained

This page will be updated in the future to cover other manufacturer's neck pockets but for the moment we are only covering the two most common:

FENDER TELECASTER NECK POCKETS
FENDER STRATOCASTER NECK POCKETS

It's worth bearing in mind that in terms of dimensions and shape, 95% of the rest of the guitar manufacturers out there also adhere to Fender's own neck pocket dimensions. In particular Squier and any of the Japanese 'lawsuit' 1970s and 1980s Fender clones (Tokai, Grecko, etc).

 

common misconception: odd-shaped neck pockets

Firstly, to settle a lot of the concerned emails that we've received in the past asking us to look at photographs of a guitar (almost always Telecaster) body's neck pocket because they think that there's something weird or unusual about the shaping of the end of the neck pocket. Below are a couple of images to demonstrate:

The problem to some people's eyes (negating the crack in the lacquer in photo 1), is the roundedness that extends from the bottom of the neck pocket on either side but the pocket isn't as deep across the middle.

It's worth mentioning at this point that this is not uncommon, it isn't a problem and it's nothing to worry about as the scratchplate will always cover it (although, of course, you won't ever see anything like that in hand-made bodies like our own!).

Guitar neck pockets are not square in the corners - Telecaster's are squarer than Stratocaster's (which have a rounded bottom - see below) but none of them are absolutely square. To produce the correct (and consistent) radius for these corners, mass-producing guitar manufacturers use a circular router to cut each side of the neck pocket and then route out the rest of the pocket (between the two first routes), and tidy the result up. In doing this, it is very common to see where the preliminary side routes have 'over shot' by a few millimetres, which is what causes the dimples you see at either side of the neck pocket in the photographs above and commonly in manufactured Telecaster bodies.

It does, of course, make it much easier to reshape the neck pocket as well if you were to ever want to mount a Stratocaster neck into the body...!

Telecaster neck pockets

Telecaster neck pockets are dimensionally exactly the same as that of the Stratocaster neck pocket. The only difference is the 'sharpness' of the bottom corners and the flat bottom edge of the pocket (whereas the Stratocaster is more rounded - see below).

What this means is that Stratocaster and Telecaster necks are, in theory, completely interchangeable on Telecaster bodies. However, putting a Stratocaster neck into a Telecaster body will result in a small amount of open space around those two bottom corners where Stratocaster heel is shaped differently.

Stratocaster neck pockets

In comparison to the Telecaster, the Stratocaster neck pocket is dimensionally still the same, but with a more rounded bottom edge

Mounting a Telecaster neck into a Stratocaster body is, again, totally possible, but will result in an open gap along the bottom edge of the neck pocket where the heel of the Telecaster neck is straight and the neck pocket is curved.

If you really are bent on mounting one neck into another's body, it is easier to cleanly mount a Stratocaster neck into a Telecaster body than visa-versa, especially if you have the two dimples in the bottom of the neck pocket as mentioned previously. All it takes is a hand file and some elbow grease. Equally, it is easier to 'flatten' the end of a Stratocaster heel than it is to add the correct curve to the heel of a Telecaster neck to make it compatible with a Stratocaster body.

Stratocaster headstocks are much cooler anyway...!