Ok - so it's in the shop now but the guitar tech there said that just putting the piece of wood between the spring block and the body would hold the trem (which I had already done) and to do the additional work would cost some serious buckaroos and wouldn't make much of a change in how the guitar sounded... I was also thinking of doing the block fill myself but I'm lucky I know which end of a screwdriver is the business end! :D

while we were discussing it about 5 other people asked the EXACT same question. Seems there are a lot of us that got strats with trems that should have been hardtails! so I'm going with it the way it is... but the truss and bridge needed some adjusting because of the way that the block holds the trem down. I'll have it back by thursday of this week and I'll let you all know how it sounds!