[lowmanjason]

Hi all. I got a question about scale length and the number of frets on a guitar...

I got a hold of an old S body that was from when they had 22 frets. I can't seem to find a neck for it. If I put a 24 fret neck with the same scale length would it work or would it never be in tune?

Thanks,
JL

 

[Rich]

It would never intonate, you'll need a 25.5" scale 22 fret neck.

 

[madasahatter]

Swapping the 22 fret neck for a 24 fret of the same scale length most likely will not work without modification. Those 2 extra frets add about an inch to the neck which would effectively change the scale length. It would move the nut about an inch further from the bridge. To compensate you would have to either modify the neck or the neck pocket. That probably wouldn't work well anyway because either modification would end up interfering with the neck pickup cavity. Modifying the neck you would either cut into the truss rod or the fingerboard would hang over the neck pickup. Modifying the neck pocket would cut into the neck pickup route.

You're pretty much stuck with looking for a 22 fret neck. If you set on an S neck that one may be hard to come by. A couple of other options; You can look for a 22 fret Gio neck, those are usually floating around relatively cheap. Or you can look at Warmoth and get one of their necks, but their stuff is a bit expensive. One last option if you're up for it is look at the generic 22 fret guitar necks. They're pretty good with not having warps or twists, but you would end up needing to do fretwork on them.

 

[lowmanjason]

Thanks all, just to be clear, it IS a 25.5 inch scale body but at the time the S bodies came with a 22 fret 25.5 inch scale necks. I did wonder about where the fretboard met the the top of the neck pickup area as well. That would probably be a deal breaker anyway

 

[corey j grieve]

You can if it's a square heel 540S and you use a square heel RG neck,however the 23/24 frets will be sitting over the neck pick up cavity. You also need to remove a little wood from the body to allow that part of the fretboard to sit flush. I have done this before and there is enough room for a single coil neck p/up but i didn't like the look. In the end i decided to turn it into a 23 fret 540S and cut off the 24th fret. This meant the fret board sat perfectly below the humbucker bobbin at the neck and looked mostly stock to the untrained eye. I also removed wood from beneath the frets to allow it to fit any square heel Sabre body without modification. It works,but with the scarcity of square heel necks it will be frowned upon. I probably have some pic's or can dig up the guitar if your still considering it, but if your referring to an AANJ S body/neck... no cannot be done.

 

[JsXLine6]

Do you want 24 frets? Or do you just want a neck to use the s body? Because the 540s 540r and 540p from the 80's and early 90's had a rounded heal like a fender strat. If it is a fender style pocket you could get a custom neck made for it from warmoth or another manufacturer.

The attached image is one of my 540R's the neck is not an ibanez neck... I have another custom neck to be delivered here any day now... They are from bestguitarparts.com. If you don't mind not having an ibanez headstock... it's a great solution. I also have a js100 with a warmoth neck (essentially a 540r body). That's the black one. The warmoth neck just needed the frets polished a bit and the mounting holes drilled. It is maple, rosewood fingerboard, stainless frets and moon glow inlays for the fun of it.

The Best guitar parts necks need some finishing, but they are killer when they are done. The one that should be arriving soon is for my 91 540r LTD. I can't get past the shark tooth inlays of the stock neck... The ultra neck is nice and all, but I just can't deal with those inlays haha. The new neck has all the options you could want! Roasted maple shaft wood, rosewood fingerboard, graphite reenforced truss rod, 14" radius... And stainless frets! All for $360. I know some people love that ibanez headstock.