differences between CS 60' & 66' stratocaster's necks ?

[electricskychurch]

i am wondering what are the differences between the 60' and 66' custom shop stratocaster's necks and body contour ?

are they the same necks except the headstock ?

[electricskychurch]

so, nobody to give some infos about that ?

in fact i' d be interested to have some comments about custom shop stratocaster necks as i plan to buy one.

[electricskychurch]

i went in a shop today to try some guitars briefly but couldn't plug them as they were closing in the next 30 minutes and there was some people in the shop .
i tried an Eric Johnson strat quickly but the neck didn't feel comfortable for me; too big , especialy with the 12 radius that felt weird for me on a strat.

i also tried some time machine stratocaster relic reissues (they had nearly only relics and a few closet classics !) , a 60' , 66' maple neck , 57' (i think it was rosewood capped if i remember well , with huge frets, that felt too high !!) and a 62' .
the 60' seemed to have a slightly smaller neck than the 66' but as the 66' was a maple neck /fretboard, it was not that easy to compare quickly.
the 57' was not that big but the frets were really weird and tall !
the 62' and the 60' seemed to be the necks i prefered and if i remember well they both sounded great (unplugged) and were not really different .
the two other sounded nice as well, a pitty i had not the time to plug them but i'll go back there.
they all seemed to sound differently and i can,'t say they were all correctly setup (but i suppose it moves with time, temperature changes and shipments...) though i think that for some guitars of that price, knowing they sell very few here in France compared to the lower grade models, they could spend some time to setup those guitars in the shops , to make them sound the best they can, to give the customers the desire to buy them.
they don't have that many of them ( so it wouldn 't be a that big of a deal to setup a few ones that really need to but i'm not sure they really know how to do it well !) and usualy have one only of the same model in the shop (sometimes 2 or 3 for the ones that sells the most i suppose) and for example (for Gibson guitars as that's what i've been looking for the most until now but it's the same for Fender guitars ) they usualy have only 1xSG standard custom shop ri , one SG custom ri with 3 pu's or 2 , one SG special ri (if ever they have one) , 2 or 3x 59' (sometimes with one signature model), one or two 58' les paul , one 57 les paul custom (sometimes one 54 custom as well or reverse) ...etc
an there might be only 3 to 4 shops in paris where they have that many custom shop models, two other ones where they sometimes have a few used gibson custom shop ,few to very few new ones and several other nice brands of guitars (with a few vintage ones) but few models for each of them.

there is also a shop selling only high end vintage guitars .
one day i looked at a really nice original 50's les paul or something like that and came in to ask for the price .
i was about 28 years old and was working in the same street in a pro audio shop , as it's about a couple of streets in Pigalles , Paris 9th district , where there are most of the music shops (except for clasical instruments and brass instruments that are somewhere else, not that far , at the frontieer between the 9th and 17th district).
so , i came in and asked for the price of that great vintage guitar and the guy told me " no need to ask, you don't have the money to afford it !!! "
that's what i call a fucking prick and if ever i am wealthy enough to afford one some day, i will go in his shop with a new one i would havbe bought somewhere else and remind him about that scene ! LOL

recently, i have been searching for a Gretsch G6128T 1962 double cut duo jet and couldn't find even one for sale !

[shakti]

FWIW, the '60 neck has a slab rosewood board, and the '66 (when in rosewood) has a laminated/veneer board. I don't know how much of a difference that makes, though. My '60 Relic has a pretty slim neck, slimmer than I prefer them, but I like the guitar overall so much that I don't really mind. Never tried a '65 or '66.

The big difference though is the pickups. The '65/'66 greybottom pickups sound quite different from the ones in the '60.

[electricskychurch]

yes , i knew the 66 is a what is called a venner (it's not in reality, it's a block of wood that is hollowed out, that's what a guy from Fender was saying in a Fender book ) and the 60' a slab board but they don't give any detail about the necks on teh Fender website ! it would be too easy ! LOL
yes, i suppose the pickups are different but once again impossible to find any specifications for any of them (i didn't find at least !).
before i went to this shop yesterday and tried the 60' cs strat relic neck i was remembering the CS 60' strat NOS i had tried a few years ago had a smaller neck !
so i was surprised this 60' relic had a bigger neck than what i remembered.

i have bought a used 2006' candy apple red 66' strat in excellent shape as well as some Genuine Fender parts on the web to build a strat (but haven't received anything yet).
i found an Eric johnson body with a few dings for not too expensive , as well as Eric Johnson pu's and a mint american vintage reissue 62' strat neck as i don't like the 12 radius of the EJ .
it should be a pretty cool guitar (i hope at least ) !
i bought the lightest (3lbs 10) EJ body i found (two tone sunburst) that was also having the nicest wood grain of the ones i saw recently.
after i looked on the web , it seems 3lbs 10 is a perfect strat weight ; i hope it will sound good.
i hesitate to buy a custom shop neck as well, maybe a maple one if i can find one with C shape or another Rosewood one but the two i saw had much clearer rosewood cap than the american vintage ri i found (and will they really make my guitar sound better than the vintage ri ? maybe they would have a better fee!) !

i also tried an original 66' startocaster a few days ago that sounded beautiful with great creamy and complex mids.
it had more or less the same type of neck than the CS 66' strat relic i tried, maybe a bit bigger.

[electricskychurch]

i have tried the custom shop stratocaster 66 NOS i bought second hand and it sounds nice.
the neck pickup sounds a bit harsher than the original 63 and 66 i tried recently but still sounds good.
the middle and neck pu's sound very nice and this guitar sounds much better than the mark knopfler strat i sold recently (tested with several pu's, see other posts).
i haven't installed a 5 position switch but was already happy with th 3 positions whereas i was always playing with the out of phase positions on the knopfler .
i haven't tried the EJ strat cause despite the fact i paid all the parts i bougt to mount it the 12th of dec, the guys at warpdrivemusic.com didn't tell they hadn't the tuners i won from them on ebay , in stock !
so only those damn tuners are missing.
i already had a problem with warpdrivemusic for some pu's bought on ebay as well and they had wrote the wrong address or something like that and the pu's had been sent back to USA (it was a whole mess to get them and took so much time ! ) !

[electricskychurch]

i could really compare the 66 and 60 time machine stratocaster necks and the 66' is bigger than the 60' neck profile !
i don't understand why they specify early 60's c pofile for both on Fender website whereas they don't have the same neck profile !
the 66' has a bigger deeper neck profile (sort of a D neck profile ) that makes the neck even stiffer and seems to generate more high end (not high mids) .
i would say the CS60 has more of an oval neck profile what might be closer to the real 66' strat neck i tried but a bit smaller (the original 63' had more of a C profile with maybe less width at the nutwidth and maybe a bit deeper as some 67 SG gibson necks maybe ).
anyway, it seems the 66' has been discontinued as it has been removed from Fender website !
i'm surprised to see it seems there are fewer models now compared to a few years back.
and the only real new ones seem to be all these dealer special ones that seem to be mostly some hybrid vintage modern designs with 9,5 or 10" radius (not for me at least for the moment ! LOL) !!!
the pu's are quiet different as well obviously as the CS 60' are Formvar with slightly higher resistence (5,3k to 5,6k for the 66' and about 6K for the CS 60' but have'nt measured these CS 60 yet myself ) and the 66' are Enamel winding insulation what make them more transparent, with flatter mids and more of a Jimi hendrix type of tone than the thick bluesy SRV tone that should have the CS60 pu's (couldn't really compare them loud through my amps yet) , what is closer to the 63' strat i tried (the original 66 strat was sounding closer to those Formvar early 60's strat tone interestingly but was a hardtail model)