The guitar now has a bolt-on neck, rather than the original set neck, which proved to be quite a challenge for me since I've never built a bolt-on neck from scratch. After a few adjustments to get the neck-body angle correct though, the guitar set-up nicely, and plays very smoothly, with at least as much, if not more sustain than it had with the mahogany neck. My concerns over removing the set neck proved simpler than anticipated, aided by a hot knife, and my trusty milling machine to clean up the neck pocket. The final neck pocket was larger than a commercially availabel replacement neck by ever-so-small an amount, so I opted for the "from scratch" option with the original fretboard....and here it is with the replacement neck:
...rear view:
