Strat neck replacement!

 This is a neck replacement project.
A friend of mine had his first electric guitar lying around and decided to give it a second chance in life. The guitar was a cheap "Academy" strat copy made in PRC and it had quite a few issues...
 Luckily, the body was made out of solid basswood (not plywood) and finished in sunburst. The hardware(tremolo, keys) and electronics were like the ones used on Squiers and their build quality was okay.

 The neck however was a real mess even when the guitar was brand new... There were dead notes all over the fretboard, buzzing notes, ghost notes and so on... The neck profile was weird and thick and the fret edges were sharp. The nut was also a mess. After trying to set the neck up a bit, we decided it would be better to replace it altogether for a new all maple neck. So, I did some research and found a maple 22 fret neck made by GEWA music Gmbh.
http://www.gewamusic.com/uk/

 The neck cost about 50euros and it was finished, polished, with a nicely cut nut and a decent fret job. It was ready to be bolted on the body! So I removed the old crappy neck, bolted the new one on the basswood body and it was a perfect fit!
 Then, I focused on the guitar electronics. I rewired its three single coil pickups, 5-way switch and 250K pots to get more tones out of the guitar. The guitar has 7 sounds available now! It has the stock 5 sounds of a strat plus 2 humbucking sounds with the pickups connected in series. The new controls are: master volume(stock), master tone(for all 3 pickups) and mid-pickup "blend in series". The wiring schematic can be found here:
 http://www.guitartechcraig.com/techwire/tech12.jpg

Once I finished the wiring, I put a fresh set of coated strings on the guitar and adjusted the new neck. Then, I adjusted the action and intonation. The playability is pretty good and the new neck has a thinner and comfortable profile. There are no dead or buzzing notes anymore! The guitar became a decent strat copy and it's a perfect practice instrument.

Here are a few pictures of the actual guitar:

-Thanos

guitardreamer.gr@gmail.com