Hey Gerry,
I just read over this thread, and I see your dilemma. The neck you posted should work just fine for your project, and it shouldn't be an issue with the Floyd either, the only thing you need to pay attention to as far as the Floyd goes, is the nut width. I think they have two different widths the last time I looked at them, so you'll want one as close to your neck as possible. It seems to have the correct dimensions for the body you are looking at.
Gotoh makes vintage retrofit locking tuners that will drop into your vintage guitars without the need for reaming. I have a set of those on my '57 RI Stratocaster. They look like OEM equipment, until you look closely.
As a matter of personal preference, I don't care for Pao Ferro. It feels dry and coarse to me, kind of like someone took an old plank of wood off the side of a dilapidated shack and made a fretboard out of it. My Bass guitar has that on it, and I hate it. It's the first and last Pao Ferro guitar I will ever own. But you might like it. I would suggest you go to a shop and try a guitar out with a neck like that and see what you think.
Here is something you'll need to consider when building a guitar, the way you are going about it. Even if all the parts come together for a good fit, especially with a new neck like this one, you'll still need to adjust neck angle with the pocket, and almost certainly, you'll need to dress the frets before it's comfortable to play. Drilling screw holes is not a big deal. as Richard mentioned, you just need to make careful measurements, and apply tape on the drill bit to make sure you don't drill too deep. (Take into consideration the neck plate and the thickness of the heel and the length of the screw to know if how deep to drill the pilot holes). Even if you order a high priced neck from a company like Warmoth for example, you'll still have to do a set up and fret dress. Warmoth also pre-drills the neck holes however, they do that to vintage Fender specs as far as the hole locations go, so will that match up with the holes on a body made by another company?
Ask yourself this question: After you put this project together and you start playing it, how often do you look at the headstock of your guitars when you play them? Do you even think about it? I don't.
Oh yes, I almost forgot, when you do go to mount your Floyd nut on the guitar, you may have to shim or file the nut slot slightly, depending on how high you want your action. With a Floyd, I've found that the action needs to be slightly higher than it would be with a vintage tremolo. It's not an uncomfortable setting but it needs to allow for the extreme pull-ups or dive bombs. Tall frets work great for that setup, but vintage frets will work too, You just might lose a little of the natural sustain with vintage frets. My Beastie looking guitar has those skinny frets, and it doesn't seem to have quite as much natural sustain as my other guitars, but that could be because of the fur I've glued to the body of it. I compensate for that with a more aggressive vibrato with my left hand.
I would guess the most tedious part of a project like this would be the fret dressing. It's tedious and takes a little time to do properly, but when it's done right, it feels great. I'm going to order the tools to do that from Stewmac, not because I'm going to build a guitar, (I might), but because the ones I have will eventually need to be treated to levelling and crowning after so many years of playing.
Enough of my ranting. I hope something I posted here is useful.
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Topic: Custom Build Stratocaster (Read 1380 times)
