Charvel neck pocket angle issue

N

nigelpkay

Active member
Recently acquired a body from a guitar I’ve been looking a long time for. A Charvel Wild Card 3 from 2010 in matte black with a single direct mount humbucker.
I had a Charvel neck (also from a USA Pro Mod) that I could use with it, but it doesn’t fit in the pocket correctly and the angle is off.
Do they carve these neck pockets different for top-mounted floyds with a direct mount pickup? (Since it seems to need a little more clearance?) I don’t have the original neck, but I’m doubting they would have shaved the neck to make it fit properly would they?
I can’t shim the neck the other way to even it up or else it will make the bridge even higher.
What can I do here, do I need someone to shave down the pocket to cut the angle a bit?

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I’ve had a lot of usa charvels from 2010.
The neck pocket is angled for top mount floyds.
Looking at your pic the action looks ok.
What’s the issue? The pickup is too high?
 
Looks like that body has a flat mount, non-recessed Floyd. I thought it was common to have the pocket angled to slope up towards the bridge. Otherwise, it's difficult to get the action low because the Floyd sits up a bit high and can't be lowered into the body like with a recessed route.
 
Lee at GMW can easily fix this. He did a friends guitar and used a CNC machine to shave a tiny bit out. Neck aligns perfectly now.
 
tpruitt said:
I’ve had a lot of usa charvels from 2010.
The neck pocket is angled for top mount floyds.
Looking at your pic the action looks ok.
What’s the issue? The pickup is too high?
Click to expand...
If you look closely, my fretboard is not level and pointing upwards towards the end so I’m having some notes fret out. Neck is close to straight. It’s true with the direct mount pickup and top mounted Floyd that it needs a greater angle, but I think it’s too much.
I’m also thinking of adding a pickup ring instead so I can lower the pickup but have to figure out the neck angle issue first.
 
cardinal said:
Looks like that body has a flat mount, non-recessed Floyd. I thought it was common to have the pocket angled to slope up towards the bridge. Otherwise, it's difficult to get the action low because the Floyd sits up a bit high and can't be lowered into the body like with a recessed route.
Click to expand...
Yeah I’m kind of bummed about it because I really like the look of the guitar but didn’t realize a top mount Floyd + direct mount pickup was going to cause that problem. I can only think that the neck that originally came with the guitar was shaved slightly because the angle just seems a little too much because the neck I put on it is at an odd angle and angles up to much causing fretted out notes. The bridge seems already high on the posts as is.
 
nigelpkay said:
If you look closely, my fretboard is not level and pointing upwards towards the end so I’m having some notes fret out. Neck is close to straight. It’s true with the direct mount pickup and top mounted Floyd that it needs a greater angle, but I think it’s too much.
I’m also thinking of adding a pickup ring instead so I can lower the pickup but have to figure out the neck angle issue first.
Click to expand...
Hmmm ok.
So you can either raise the Floyd off the body. Or you could add a paper shim to the front of the neck pocket.

A pickup ring isn’t going to lower a pickup if it’s already hitting the bottom of the cavity.
 

Try a playing card.push it under the neck at the front of the neck pocket. Push it about an eighth of an inch in. Tighten down the neck and check the action. You may be able to lower the Floyd if its high too.
You just got to keep adding or making the shim thinner until you get the action right and the Floyd rose to sit flat.
 
I have always understood an angled neck pocket to be the standard for a top mount / non-recessed Floyd. By way of example only (I know this is a Charvel) Warmoth offers a standard neck pocket that provides clearance between the fingerboard and body for the thickness of a pickguard, an ‘angled neck pocket’ for top mount Floyd, and what they call the 720 mod for recessed Floyds. With the 720 mod, the bottom of the fretboard is flush with the top of the body.

Any good repair shop / luthier can drop the neck pocket depth in mm increments. The only issue you can run into as others have mentioned is having the action uncomfortably high even with the top mounted Floyd all the way down flush with the body. I had this going on with one of my guitars and ended up buying 4 more ‘low’ saddles from Floyd to swap out the medium and high saddles on the A/B and D/G strings. Then I used those ultra thin metal Floyd Saddle Shims from Stew Mac: starting with all 6 ‘Low’ saddles from Floyd I used one shim under the A and B saddles and 2 shims under the D and G saddles to get a decent radius while getting the strings as low as possible relative to the Floyd base plate.
 
Thanks everyone for your thoughts. As a comparison I found this same guitar on Reverb just now with its original neck and you can see the neck seems to be sitting normally in the pocket compared to mine and the bridge seems a normal height. I do have a newer Mexico Charvel neck I can try on it just to compare to see if maybe the issue is my rosewood neck.
 

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nigelpkay said:
Thanks everyone for your thoughts. As a comparison I found this same guitar on Reverb just now with its original neck and you can see the neck seems to be sitting normally in the pocket compared to mine and the bridge seems a normal height. I do have a newer Mexico Charvel neck I can try on it just to compare to see if maybe the issue is my rosewood neck.
Click to expand...
All top mount Charvels have angled neck pocket. Your problem isn’t the angle. It’s in your setup. I think your too focus led on the angle and. The angle looks correct. Set it up like you would if it’s flat. You will like have to raise the bridge a little
 
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