[Ken Smith]

Originally Posted by Matthew Tucker

A larger overstand does put a greater strain on the neck joint, due to increased leverage. But it's only an increase of around 5%-8%, and unless your mortise is very shallow, I don't think you'll need any extra reinforcement, even at 40mm overstand. You could make your mortise a couple of mm deeper to add gluing surface to compensate.

Matt, I had a question on this after listening to both your opinions and Arnold's on the strength of the lower Heel. My question is as you just mentioned, does the depth of the Heel into the Block itself make up for the possible strength lost when the Heel is cut Lower 'above' the Block?

I will now post a bunch of pics and solicit your opinion on Neck Heel height above, depth in the Block and Overstand as well. Some of these pics are the Basses as I received and left them, some waiting to be restored and some have been restored with either a new Graft or just the Neck itself moved out.