My replacement JCustom headpeice arrived on Thursday from the good folks at HeadlessUSA. They were incredibly helpful with the few questions I had, and for a couple of reasons I’d recommend buying from them via phone rather than ebay like I did. While I’m not crazy about the extra length this will add to the guitar, the quality easily makes up for it. So far it’s easily been worth the money.
The existing route on the neck was pretty close for the new headpeice, but the main cut needed to be a little bit deeper and the end of the neck shortened just a bit.
My trusty old file and rasp worked perfectly.
Action shot!
New improved route
……with stain
The headpiece fits much better now, and fortunately the original screw holes lined up no drilling was necessary. The bottom of the neck isn’t perfectly flush, but it’s close enough.
What a difference I can tell w/ just a single string on the guitar!!!! This headpiece allows the strings to be pulled tighter than the last one. This makes it much easier to physically turn the tuning keys and tune the instrument. Also, the string makes perfect contact with the zero fret and the open string is now at the correct pitch. It was trivial to intonate the string as well. I’m very pleased with the results of this upgrade!