Strat Upgrade

My Squier Strat, needs some upgrading. Please excuse the dust, it hasn't been played in a while:

Photo of my Squier Strat

New parts: maple neck, gold plated neck plate, gold plated neck anchor screws, gold plated strap buttons and gold plated string guides:

Photo of the new neck and gold plated parts

B string was playing horribly out of tune, the culprit is a broken nut:

Photo of the broken nut

Test fit the neck with the neck pocket, seems pretty good:

Photo of the neck's test fit on the body

Stripping the machine heads and string guides from the headstock:

Photo of the old neck's headstock, stripped of parts

New gold plated strap buttons:

Photo of the new gold plated strap buttons

Stripping down the bridge for cleaning:

Photo of the bridge stripped Photo of the bridge saddles Photo of the bridge cleaned

Drilling the machine head holes:

Photo of the neck clamped to the drill press table

Clamping the neck to the body before tapping:

Photo of the body ready for tapping Photo of the new neck clamped onto the body, for tapping

Neck screwed in:

Photo of the new neck screwed onto the body

Installing the string guides: Does anybody know where I can find gold plated string guide screws? I'm reusing the chrome ones and it looks a bit odd...

Photo of the string guides

Installing the machine heads: (Maybe a gold plated set in the future!)

Photo of the machine heads installation

Headstock complete:

Photo of the machine heads installed

Old strap buttons:

Photo of the old strap buttons

Strung with 9s before a setup:

Photo of the Squier Strat, with new neck and hardware, strung and ready for a setup

Next phase is to upgrade the bridge with a gold plated Gotoh!

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