How to Assemble an S-Style Guitar: Body, Neck and Setup

There is a persistent myth that assembling a guitar from a finished body and neck is "just screwing parts together". It isn't — but the difficulty is not where beginners expect it.

The hard, slow, skill-heavy work has already been done for you. Somebody flattened and finished the body, routed the cavities, cut and radiused the fingerboard, levelled and crowned 22 frets, and slotted the nut. What remains is roughly eight hours of careful, methodical work in which about six measurements decide whether you end up with a guitar that plays like a good instrument or one that fights you on every bend.

This guide walks through all of it: what to buy, what to check before you assemble anything, the order of operations, the wiring, and the measurements that matter. It is written around the specifications of Music Buddies S-Style bodies and S-Style necks, but the method applies to any Fender-compatible body and neck.

Read this before you order. Ninety per cent of failed assembly builds fail at the shopping stage, not the workbench — mismatched tuner hole sizes, a bridge that doesn't match the body's drilled holes, a pickguard with the wrong screw count. Part 2 exists to stop that happening. Read it before you spend anything.

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Part 1 — What you are starting from

1.1 What the body already gives you

Music Buddies S-Style bodies are solid alder, typically 2.0–2.4 kg, finished in either nitrocellulose gloss or polyurethane gloss. Crucially:

• Cavities are already routed — SSS pickup routs, control cavity, tremolo cavity and spring cavity, jack bore.
• Bridge holes and neck holes are already drilled.
• The neck pocket is cut to Fender-compatible dimensions.

That last point removes the single most error-prone operation in a scratch build. It also means you inherit whatever the body was designed around — so your job shifts from cutting to verifying.

1.2 What the neck already gives you

Music Buddies S-Style necks are one-piece roasted maple with either a rosewood or a maple fingerboard. The specifications you need to write down before ordering anything else:

Roasted maple is worth a word. Torrefaction drives moisture out of the timber and makes it markedly more dimensionally stable than untreated maple — it moves less with humidity, which is exactly what you want in a neck. It also darkens the wood and usually comes in a satin or bare finish that feels fast under the hand.

A double-acting truss rod adjustable at the headstock is a genuine convenience. Vintage Fender necks adjust at the heel, meaning you unbolt the neck, adjust, rebolt, retune, and repeat. You will not have to do that.

1.3 Honest expectations

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Part 2 — The compatibility checklist (read before ordering)

Work through this list and write the answers down. Every item is a real incompatibility that catches people.

2.1 Does the tremolo match the body's drilled holes?

Your body already has bridge holes drilled. A six-screw vintage-style tremolo and a two-post modern tremolo are not interchangeable in the same body without new holes.

Check: count the bridge holes in your body. Six small holes in an arc = vintage six-screw. Two larger holes = two-post. Six holes in a straight line with no cavity = hardtail.

Then match to a bridge from Strat tremolo bridges, confirming the screw-hole span and the string spacing before you buy.

2.2 Do the tuners match the peg holes?

Music Buddies necks are drilled 10 mm, which is the modern standard. Most modern sealed tuners fit directly.

• Modern sealed tuners, 10 mm post housing → fit directly.
• Vintage-style tuners with 6 mm posts → need conversion bushings to adapt a 6 mm post to a 10 mm hole.
• Vintage split-shaft tuners sized for 8.7 mm (11/32") holes → will be loose in a 10 mm hole. Avoid, or use bushings.

Also check the mounting method. Tuners from tuning machines come as either 2-pin (two locating pins press into small holes in the headstock face) or 45-degree single screw. These require different headstock drilling. If your headstock is undrilled for mounting, single-screw tuners are more forgiving because you drill the pilot where the tuner actually sits.

Do not force a tuner bushing into a hole that is too small. Pressing a bushing into an undersized hole in a headstock is one of the few genuinely unrecoverable mistakes in guitar assembly. Measure the hole, measure the bushing, and if the fit is tight, ream the hole — do not hammer the bushing.

2.3 Does the pickguard match the routing and the fret count?

• SSS body needs an SSS pickguard; HSH body needs an HSH pickguard. Obvious, and still a common error.
• Screw count: modern pickguards are 11-hole, vintage-style are 8-hole. The body's pickguard screw holes — if pre-drilled — dictate which you need. If they are not drilled, either works and you drill to suit.
• 22 frets: your neck's fingerboard extends slightly further over the body than a 21-fret neck. Most modern 11-hole pickguards accommodate this, but check the cutaway at the neck end. If it fouls, a few minutes with a fine file on the pickguard — never on the neck — solves it.

Browse pickguards, or skip the wiring entirely with a pre-wired pickguard.

2.4 Wire it yourself, or buy it done?

If you go loose, you need: pots (250 kΩ audio for single coils), a capacitor (0.022 µF or 0.047 µF), a 5-way switch, an output jack and a jack plate.

2.5 The small parts people forget

Every one of these will stop your build dead if it is missing on assembly day:

• Neck plate and four neck bolts
• Screws and fasteners — pickguard screws, pickup screws, jack plate screws
• Strap buttons
• String tree — a flat Fender headstock needs one, usually two
• Tremolo springs and spring claw (often, but not always, supplied with the bridge)
• Pickup mounting springs or surgical tubing
• Knobs, switch tip, pickup covers
• A set of strings

2.6 The buying order that saves you money

1. Body first. It fixes your routing, bridge type and colour.
2. Neck second, matched to the body's pocket. Choose your radius and fret wire here — these are the decisions you cannot change later.
3. Bridge third, matched to the body's drilled holes.
4. Tuners fourth, matched to the neck's 10 mm peg holes and your chosen mounting style.
5. Electronics and small parts last, matched to the pickguard and routing.

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Part 3 — Tools required

Far shorter than a scratch build. Nothing here is exotic.

3.1 Essential

• Screwdrivers: PH1 and PH2, plus small flatheads. Good ones — a cam-out on a chrome screw head is permanent and visible.
• Digital caliper, 150 mm — for verifying hole sizes and measuring string height.
• Steel rule, 600 mm, with mm and 1/64" graduations — must span nut to bridge in one reading.
• Machinist's rule graduated from the very end — for action and pickup heights. A rule with dead length at the end cannot measure action.
• Feeler gauge set, 0.05–1.0 mm — relief is a 0.25 mm measurement.
• Radius gauges matching your fingerboard (9.5", or 7.25"/12").
• Truss rod wrench for your neck's rod.
• Hex keys for bridge saddles and the tremolo arm.
• Nut drivers, 10 mm and 7 mm, for pot and jack nuts.
• Cordless drill with a 2 mm bit for pilot holes.
• String winder and side cutters.
• Tuner — a strobe app or a good clip-on.
• Soldering iron, 30–60 W, temperature-controlled, plus 60/40 rosin-core solder. Only if you are wiring from loose parts.
• Multimeter — for checking your work before it is sealed inside the guitar.

3.2 Strongly recommended

• Neck rest / body cradle, or a folded towel. You will lay a finished body on your bench many times.
• Masking tape — to protect the finish around every screw you drive.
• Nut lubricant (graphite from a pencil works) — for the nut slots.
• Microfibre cloths and a guitar polish suitable for your finish type.
• Small parts tray or magnetic dish.

3.3 Not needed, despite what you may read

You do not need fret files, a fret levelling beam, nut files, a router, or a drill press. If you find yourself wanting them, something is wrong with your parts match rather than your technique — stop and diagnose before you start removing material.

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Part 4 — The measurements that decide whether it plays

Six checks. Do them before final assembly, while parts can still be swapped.

4.1 The neck pocket fit

Drop the neck heel into the pocket with no bolts.

• It should sit down fully with light hand pressure and lift out without tools.
• There should be no visible gap at the sides. A 0.05 mm feeler gauge should not slide in alongside the heel.
• The heel end should meet the pocket's back wall.

If it is too tight: on a nitro-finished body, finish build-up in the pocket is the usual cause. Do not force the neck — the finish will chip and the wood can compress. Remove the neck and scrape the pocket walls lightly with a sharp chisel held flat, taking finish only.

If it is loose: a gap on one side means the neck can shift under string tension, which shows up as intonation that drifts and strings that wander off the fingerboard edge. A thin veneer shim on one side wall is a legitimate fix.

4.2 Scale length — verify, don't assume

Your body's bridge holes are pre-drilled, so you are checking rather than positioning. This is the most important check in the whole build.

1. Bolt the neck in loosely and mount the bridge.
2. Measure from the front face of the nut to the centre of the 12th fret crown. On a 25.5" scale neck this should read 323.85 mm.
3. Double it: 647.7 mm. That is your target scale length.
4. Now measure from the nut face to the high-E saddle break point. With the saddle near the middle of its travel, it should land about 1.0–1.5 mm past 647.7 mm — so roughly 648.7–649.2 mm.
5. Check the low-E saddle: it wants to sit about 2.5–3.2 mm past the scale line.

What good looks like: every saddle has adjustment room left in both directions. That is the whole point of the check.

If saddles are already at the far end of their travel before you have even intonated, the bridge is mounted too far forward or back for that neck. Stop. Contact your supplier rather than drilling new holes — a mismatch here is a parts problem, not a you problem.

4.3 String lateral alignment

Fit the outer two strings only — low E and high E — and tune them to roughly pitch.

• Each should sit 3.0–3.5 mm inside the fingerboard edge at the last fret.
• Sight down the neck from the headstock. The strings should look symmetrical over the fingerboard.

If both strings sit off to one side, the neck is rotated slightly in its pocket. Loosen the bolts, nudge the neck straight, and retighten — this is a two-minute fix and a surprisingly common one.

If the spacing is asymmetric (say 2 mm on the bass side and 5 mm on the treble), your bridge string spacing does not match your neck width. Vintage tremolos are commonly 56.4 mm (2 7/32") at the saddles; modern two-post plates are commonly 52.4 mm (2 1/16"). Measure yours.

4.4 Fingerboard height over the body

With the neck bolted and the bridge mounted, measure from the body top to the top of the fingerboard at the neck pocket.

The number itself matters less than what it implies: with the bridge at a sensible height and the saddles at mid-travel, you should be able to reach the target action of 1.6 mm at the 17th fret with adjustment left over in both directions.

If the strings are far too high with saddles fully lowered, the pocket is too shallow for that neck-and-bridge combination. A neck shim — a thin tapered shim at the heel end of the pocket — is the correct remedy and carries no stigma; Fender ships shims from the factory.

If the strings are too low with saddles fully raised, the pocket is too deep. This is rarer and harder to fix.

4.5 Neck relief

Fit and tune all six strings, then:

1. Capo the 1st fret.
2. Hold the low E down at the last fret.
3. Measure between the top of the 8th fret and the bottom of the string with a feeler gauge.

Targets, which depend on your fingerboard radius:

These are Fender's published factory figures. On a Music Buddies neck the truss rod is double-acting and adjusts at the headstock, so this is a 30-second job — quarter turns, retune, remeasure.

4.6 Nut slot height

Your nut arrives pre-slotted, but slot depth is cut for a typical string gauge, and it is worth verifying.

Capo at the 3rd fret and look at the gap between each string and the top of the 1st fret. You want 0.05–0.10 mm — just visible daylight.

• Too high → open chords in the first position sound sharp and feel stiff. Slots need deepening, which requires nut files. If you do not have them, this is a job for a tech.
• Too low → the open string buzzes against the 1st fret. Needs a shim under the nut or a new nut.

Most builders find the factory slots close enough to leave alone. Check anyway.

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Part 5 — Step-by-step assembly

Phase 1 — Unpack, inspect, and dry-fit

1. Inspect the body and neck under good light before you assemble anything. Photograph anything that concerns you. Suppliers, Music Buddies included, offer returns — but that is far easier before you have drilled and screwed.
2. Check the neck for straightness: sight down the fingerboard from the headstock. It should be near-straight; slight relief is normal and adjustable.
3. Dry-fit the neck in the pocket (§4.1). No bolts yet.
4. Dry-fit the bridge in its drilled holes. Confirm the screw pattern matches.
5. Offer up the pickguard. Confirm the routing matches and the neck-end cutaway clears the 22-fret fingerboard.
6. Only now decide you have the right parts.

Phase 2 — Tuners

Do this before the neck goes on the body — a loose neck is far easier to handle.

1. Support the headstock on a flat, padded surface. Never let the headstock overhang unsupported while you press anything.
2. Fit the bushings. If they are a press fit, use a clamp with padded jaws and go slowly and squarely. If you need force, stop and check the hole size. Conversion bushings are the answer for a size mismatch, not brute strength.
3. Insert the tuners from the back and align all six posts. Sight along the row — misaligned posts look wrong forever.
4. Mark the mounting positions:
   • 2-pin tuners: the pins locate themselves; press gently and evenly.
   • 45° screw tuners: mark each pilot with an awl, then drill a 2 mm pilot to about 8 mm depth. Drilling a pilot in a headstock is mandatory. Roasted maple is hard and splits.
5. Drive the screws snug, not tight.

Phase 3 — String trees

A Fender-style headstock is flat and in-plane with the fingerboard, so the strings need help to break over the nut properly. That is the entire purpose of a string tree.

1. Fit strings temporarily, or use the tree position marked on the headstock if there is one.
2. Standard placement: one tree over the B and high E pair; a second, if used, over the D and G pair.
3. Pilot-drill 2 mm, fit the tree with its spacer, and check that the string clears the tree's underside without binding.

Phase 4 — Neck to body

1. Clean the pocket. Scrape out any finish build-up (§4.1).
2. Seat the neck fully by hand.
3. Fit the neck plate and start all four bolts by hand a few turns before tightening any of them.
4. Tighten in a cross pattern — one corner, then the diagonal opposite, then the remaining two — in stages.
5. Snug, not tight. The joint needs firm wood-to-wood contact; it does not need to be crushed. Over-tightening compresses the wood under the plate, dishes a nitro finish, and can strip a thread in the neck heel. If a bolt keeps turning without gaining resistance, stop — the thread is gone.

Phase 5 — Tremolo and springs

(Skip to Phase 6 if you have a hardtail body.)

1. Drop the tremolo block through the body slot and confirm it swings freely fore and aft with no contact against the cavity walls.
2. Fit the bridge plate to its six drilled holes. Drive the screws so the plate sits flat with the front edge just able to pivot. On a vintage six-screw plate, the classic method is to snug all six, then back the four inner screws off a fraction so the plate pivots on the two outer ones.
3. Fit the spring claw in the rear cavity with its two screws. Attach the ground wire to the claw — do not forget this; the claw ground is what silences the guitar when you touch the strings.
4. Fit springs. Start with three springs for .009–.042 strings, four or five for .010–.046 and above.
5. Decide on your tremolo behaviour:
   • Floating: the plate sits parallel to the body with the guitar at pitch, roughly 1.5 mm of gap at the back edge. Allows pull-up bends; makes tuning more sensitive to string breakage.
   • Decked: the claw is tightened until the plate sits flat on the body and stays there. More tuning stability, down-bends only.

Phase 6 — Jack and strap buttons

1. Fit the output jack into the jack plate and mount it to the body. Pilot-drill 2 mm.
2. Fit strap buttons with 2 mm pilots. The lower button goes into the body end; the upper into the top horn.
3. Every screw into this body gets a pilot hole and a ring of masking tape around the entry point. A slipped screwdriver on a finished body leaves a scar you will look at forever.

Phase 7 — Electronics

If you bought a pre-wired pickguard: you have two connections to make — the hot wire to the jack tip, and the ground to the jack sleeve. Skip to step 6.

If you are wiring from loose parts:

1. Shield the cavities. Copper foil tape in the control cavity and pickup routs, seams overlapping and soldered together. Not strictly required, but single-coil guitars benefit audibly.
2. Mount the three pickups to the pickguard with screws and springs or tubing. Set them low for now; you will set height properly at setup.
3. Mount the volume pot, two tone pots and the 5-way switch to the pickguard.
4. Wire it up:
   • Neck, middle and bridge pickup hot leads → their respective input poles on the 5-way switch.
   • Switch common output → volume pot input lug (lug 3).
   • Volume pot output (lug 2) → jack tip.
   • Volume pot lug 1 → ground.
   • Tone 1 wiper → capacitor → ground, fed from the neck pickup pole.
   • Tone 2 the same, fed from the bridge pickup pole. (Vintage wiring feeds it from the middle; wiring it to the bridge is more useful, because a bridge single coil is what most players actually want to soften.)
   • All pickup grounds, all three pot casings, the tremolo claw wire and the jack sleeve → one single common ground point. A star ground, not a chain of hopeful joints.
5. Cap choice: 0.022 µF gives a gentler treble roll-off; 0.047 µF is darker and more dramatic. Both are correct; it is a taste decision.
6. Test before you close it up. With the multimeter: confirm each pot reads about 250 kΩ end to end, check continuity from each pickup through the switch to the jack tip, and confirm there is no continuity between tip and sleeve with the volume up. Then plug into an amp and tap each pickup with a screwdriver to hear it.
7. Dress the wires so nothing is pinched when the pickguard seats. Fit the pickguard screws — snug only. Over-tightening cracks pickguards.

Phase 8 — Strings and first tune

1. Lubricate the nut slots with pencil graphite.
2. String up, winding neatly down the post so the string leaves the post low — this improves the break angle over the nut.
3. Tune up slowly, in stages, letting the neck take tension gradually. Come up to pitch two or three times as things settle.
4. Stretch each string gently and retune.

Phase 9 — Setup

Now do the six measurement checks in Part 4 properly, in this order: relief → bridge height → saddle radius → pickup height → intonation → nut check.

The full procedure, with all the Fender factory target tables and the reasoning behind each step, is in the complete setup guide. Setup is where a correctly assembled guitar becomes a good-playing one, and it deserves its own read.

Quick reference for the impatient:

Pickup height is measured from the pole piece to the bottom of the string with the last fret held down.

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Part 6 — Quality control checklist

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Part 7 — The mistakes that cost people money

1. Buying the bridge before checking the body's drilled hole pattern. Six-screw and two-post are not interchangeable.
2. Buying tuners without checking the 10 mm peg hole size — or worse, forcing an oversized bushing into a headstock.
3. Driving screws without pilot holes. Roasted maple and alder both split, and a split headstock or horn is a write-off.
4. Over-tightening neck bolts, dishing the finish and stripping threads.
5. Forgetting the tremolo claw ground wire. The guitar will hum, and you will have to take the whole thing apart to fix it.
6. Sealing up the electronics without a meter check. Ten minutes of testing saves two hours of disassembly.
7. Forcing a tight neck into a nitro pocket and chipping the finish around the pocket edge.
8. Assuming the pre-drilled bridge position is correct without measuring. It usually is. Verify anyway.
9. Ignoring string lateral alignment and ending up with a low E that slides off the fingerboard on bends.
10. Skipping setup, then concluding the parts were bad. Almost every "this guitar plays badly" story ends at setup.

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Part 8 — Frequently asked questions

Do I need any woodworking skills to assemble a guitar from a body and neck? No, provided your parts match. The body arrives with cavities routed and bridge and neck holes drilled, and the neck arrives fretted, levelled and with the nut installed. Your work is fitting, wiring and setup. The only cutting tool you should need is a 2 mm drill bit for pilot holes.

How tight should neck bolts be? Snug, tightened in a cross pattern in stages. You want firm wood-to-wood contact between heel and pocket, nothing more. Over-tightening compresses the wood, dishes the finish under the neck plate, and can strip the thread in the heel. If a bolt spins without gaining resistance, the thread has gone.

Will a 22-fret neck fit a Stratocaster-style body? Yes — the heel is the same 55.6 mm Fender-compatible width, so the pocket fit is unaffected. What changes is the fingerboard overhang at the neck end. Most modern 11-hole pickguards clear a 22-fret board; if yours fouls, file the pickguard, never the neck.

Which tuners fit a 10 mm peg hole? Most modern sealed tuners are made for a 10 mm (25/64") hole and fit directly. Vintage-style tuners with 6 mm posts need conversion bushings to adapt them to a 10 mm bore. Separately, check whether the tuners mount with 2 locating pins or a single 45° screw, because those need different headstock drilling.

How many tremolo springs do I need? Three is the usual starting point for .009–.042 strings; four or five for .010–.046 and heavier. More springs means stiffer tremolo feel and more tuning stability; fewer means a lighter touch. Adjust the claw screws to balance the spring tension against the string tension.

Should I float or deck the tremolo? Floating lets you bend notes up as well as down and gives a subtler vibrato, but the whole guitar goes out of tune if a string breaks and tuning one string affects the others. Decking — tightening the claw until the plate rests on the body — trades pull-up bends for noticeably better tuning stability. Most players who are not using the trem constantly prefer it decked.

Is a pre-wired pickguard worth it? For a first build, yes. It removes around twenty solder joints and the most common failure mode in assembly builds, leaving you two connections to make at the jack. You give up some choice of pot taper and capacitor value. If you already solder confidently, wiring from loose parts costs less and gives full control.

What is neck relief and why does my guitar need any? A vibrating string moves in an arc, widest at its midpoint. A dead-straight neck puts the middle frets too close to that arc and the string buzzes. A tiny concave bow — 0.25 mm at the 8th fret on a 9.5" board — gives the string room to move without raising the action at either end. Too much relief and the middle of the neck plays high and stiff.

My neck feels tight in the pocket. Should I force it? No. On a nitro-finished body the usual cause is finish build-up on the pocket walls. Scrape the walls lightly with a sharp chisel held flat, removing finish only, until the neck seats with light hand pressure. Forcing it chips the finish and can compress the wood, which loosens the joint permanently.

How long does an assembly build take? Six to ten hours of actual work, comfortably split over two or three sessions, plus an hour or two of setup and a few days of coming back to retune as the neck settles. The main scheduling variable is lead time on made-to-order parts.

Should I assemble a Stratocaster or a Telecaster first? A T-Style is slightly simpler — no tremolo to balance, fewer solder joints, a control plate instead of a full pickguard harness. If you want the shortest path to a finished guitar, start there. See assembling a T-Style guitar.

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Part 9 — Where to go next

• The complete setup guide — the single highest-value thing you can read after assembly.
• Assembling a T-Style guitar — the same method applied to a Telecaster.
• Building a Stratocaster from scratch — if you want to make the body and neck too.

Parts referenced in this guide: S-Style bodies · S-Style necks · nitro bodies · aged and reliced · Strat tremolo bridges · Strat pickups · pickguards · pre-wired pickguards · wiring harnesses · tuning machines · tuner bushings and ferrules · neck plates · potentiometers · capacitors · pickup switches · output jacks · jack plates · strap buttons · string retainers and trees · screws and fasteners

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Sources

• Fender Support — What are factory setup specs? — relief, action and pickup-height targets.
• Fender Support — Fender Guitar Service Manuals
• StewMac — Is this bridge saddle in the right place?
• Warmoth — Guitar Neck Pocket Options