jmrentis Posted June 4, 2005 Report Share Posted June 4, 2005 Hey Guys, I've been going back and fourth on this and still can't make a final decision. Need some professional help besides counciling. So here's the deal, my project is going to be a Jem/Rg style 6 string flat bodied guitar with no arm contour, with or without handle not sure yet, hardtail bridge,HH, locking sperzel tuners. The body will be a purpleheart back with a quilted maple top, I know it will be a bit heavy and bright, thats cool with me, I might drill a bunch of holes to compensate for this. Now we come to my problem, the neck, I have a rock maple neck blank already, also I have a soft maple piece the size of a neck blank, very nice figuring and pretty hard for soft maple. I'm not planing on using this unless it's laminated and majorly supported. Would it be worth cutting the soft piece from 6 inches across down to 3 and sandwich them around the hardmaple? Would this laminate still be weak? I don't need a neck angle or headstock angle I don't think, it would be recessed from the nut though to get an angle from nut to tuner pegs. Should I just use the hard maple single piece and do a skunk stripe and stiff fretboard along with a truss rod? I didn't necessarily want to buy more wood because I have everything else and my hardwood shop is a bit of a drive, but if I will not get a strong neck that will last I'll do it. If so what makes a good skunk stripe. I would have to buy another piece of rock maple and a wood for skunk stripe or trod cavity. So I need some guidence, if anyone has any ideas on what direction I should go please let me know and if you see something that could be improved put it down as I'm always open to change, other than the body wood, thats set for this project! Sorry for the novel and thanks for taking the time to help! Jason Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmrentis Posted June 4, 2005 Author Report Share Posted June 4, 2005 Any help guys? I've done more research and read here that headstock angle can never hurt. Is this true, if you don't need it would it put excess tension on the strings and nut or not? I was thinking maybe of changing to an angled headstock in which I would have to buy more wood because my current blank is only like 1 1/4" or 1 1/2", I wouldn't be able to get any much of an angle with this. Thanks for your help. BTW is a bump when you post just to bring it up to the top of the list, is this a bump or just more questions. Jason Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RGGR Posted June 5, 2005 Report Share Posted June 5, 2005 Hey Jason.......seem you are bit over scared concerning your neck wood, and possible strength of your neck. Even soft maple neck would be perfectly stable enough to build neck from. Guitars have been built from heavily quilted neck blanks.....and they seem hold up nicely. A bigger issue then stability may be tone wise.....softer, figured wood can result in more darker (warmer) sound of guitar. In your case this wouldn't be soo bad as you state purple heart back and maple top might give you brighter sound. Depends on thickness of maple top though. Everything under 3/8" top will have minimal effects of tone, though.......most 1/4" tops are just there for show. Now if you want angled headstock all depends on what you like better. Either way will work. Yeah, you see people using laminated necks.....yep, you see people use different types of wood......yeap, you see sunk-stripes.......(but that's to burry trussrod) in one piece Strat type neck. (Meaning no fretboard.) Laminted neck ihmo will always be more stable then your one piece neck. But laminate could come from same blank of course....... If you're going for very thin wizard type neck.....you might want to go for laminated neck.....just for strength and stability purposes.... I think with wood you have available you could build a nice neck. Building the neck itself will be challenge enough........if you want nice looking neck......use one piece maple with figuring (softer wood as you call it). If you're bit scared of doing this........use hard maple variant....and cut blank up so you can laminate it. Going for 3rd option....use soft & hard maple in laminate.........it could also work.....you will have looks and stability. But if softer figured maple looks good....I would go for one piece neck on this one. And if you use hardtail bridge you might not even need neck angle. Something to think about. Mostly you need one on TOM type bridges..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmrentis Posted June 5, 2005 Author Report Share Posted June 5, 2005 Thank you very much for your detailed response! I think I will do two neck at about the same time. One laminate with hard maple/jatoba/hard maple with a 8 or 9 degree headstock angle. The other a laminate also with soft curly maple/purpleheart/soft curly maple. Purpleheart is some hard wood. For the body I am going to use a good sized top due to the weight of purpleheart, if it's still too heavy I'll attempt to chamber it. For the second neck I might try to do a scarf joint just so I can learn how. Thanks again for all your help, the more information I read and learn the better and more confident I feel about my wood working abilities. Jason Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RGGR Posted June 5, 2005 Report Share Posted June 5, 2005 Also consideration doing neck....is how you think of finishing it. You can sand maple really smooth.......hardly needs any finish. To prevent moisture affecting neck, people use tung oil to seal neck. I'm fan of this approach. Others use layer of clear, or painting the neck with solid color. You see this alot on LP type instruments, where Mahogany neck is difficult to sand really smooth.....(because of grain in wood) I'm not sure what purple heart will do as a neck wood.....finish wise. Also something to think about is doing is Maple/PH/Maple/PH/Maple laminate for the neck. That way you have two thin layers in between the bigger maple layers..........necks like this look really cool. Here example of new Ibanez (neck-thru) laminates (Maple/Wenge and Maple/Walnut) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmrentis Posted June 5, 2005 Author Report Share Posted June 5, 2005 Also something to think about is doing is Maple/PH/Maple/PH/Maple laminate for the neck. That way you have two thin layers in between the bigger maple layers..........necks like this look really cool. Thats probably a good idea, I've seen a few of the 5 piece but I had figured that it would be easier to do a three piece, but now thinking about a 5 piece would be no different than a three piece in difficulty. And there would be no issue for headstock thickness, so I wouldn't need to glue on ears. I think 3 1/4" in width is all I need for the headstock I want. The maple that I get is 6/4 but equals out to 1 5/16" So with three of those and some thin purpleheart or jatoba it would work out just about perfect. Thanks again for all the help. Jason Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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