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Bookmatched Or Single Piece Headstock Cap And Backstrap?


jmrentis

Bookmatched or single piece headstock caps?  

16 members have voted

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Well, not quite sure how these polls work, so don't mind me if this thing is confusing or a mess. Anyhow, just want the input on what I should do. I don't have any good pictures of the actual headstock shape, I have a very, very rough outline of the headstock and it looks bad, so I don't see it being of much help in deciding. I should have my template done tomorrow or the next day at which time I can offer a better picture. Basically, it looks common almost acoustic style symmetrical shape, but the end of it has a little flare and is not symmetrical. I still have some fine tuning on the shape as I changed it to widen it a little as the first one had too deep of curves for my taste. Anyhow, I wanted to mention the shape because the different shapes like a sharp jackson headstock or a LP can affect what would look better as headstock plates. The neck is sugar maple on the outside with Jatoba(brazilian cherry) in the middle.

Here are some pictures of the headstock plates. I have 4 I believe and can actually make more if need be, these were part of the package I received from Jon and they look amazing, especially when you wet em or put something on them. Also, in the pictures I orientate the bookmatch in both directions, so if you see one that you prefer just mention it in a post with the pictures title. For those that don't understand what I mean, when you bookmatch you get two edges that match up and you can place them in two ways to show off the bookmatch and most of the time they look different, as with mine. One way is more vertical lines and the other way looks more flatsawn with little bits or circles and such. They all look good to me, hence the poll.

Bookmatched Cap:

BookmatchA

BookmatchB

BookmatchC

BookmatchD

Single Piece Cap:

SinglepieceA

SinglepieceB

SinglepieceC

SinglepieceD

I think either one will look nice and they both use the exact same amount of wood. This is because if I bookmatch the front, I should have enough to use the left over to bookmatch the back of the headstock by using the other bookmatched edge, which is kinda cool. So, two plates should cover me either way. I have four in total anyway, plus I can cut up a few more.

Here are two older mock up type pics one with a bookmatched style and the other single. These were before rough cutting most of the woods

Older Bookmatched Mockup

Older Single Piece Mockup

Thanks for the help guys and once this project nears completion I'll make a thread for it. I kept putting it off and decided I'll wait til I get to the finishing stage, this way my ideas won't be swayed by other peoples opinions of design as this guitar is of my own design and I know people would want to change everything about it and I don't. Plus, everything takes me a million years to do, so by the time I finished the guitar half the people who originally commented on my project would be dead from old age. This is a 100% PG guitar though, I owe the entire build to this forum as I have learned everything I've done on that build from PG and it's members, so thanks guys. J

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Do you want symmetry or not? The only reason I'd bookmatch would be if it really added something to the design, or you have a nice piece of wood that's too narrow, or you want to add some decorative feature (say, sapwood) to accent things.

Honestly, I'd say use a matched pair front and back (that is a nice look, and one I'm going to be doing more of now that I can resaw most of my 4 to 5mm thick headplates).

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Man....you don't need a poll, you just need to decide!

There will be tuners and strings and maybe a truss rod cover over top of this....it is a distinction without a difference.

Ha, if I could I wouldn't have made the poll!

I tend to see a difference between the two in most any guitar minus tiny little pointy headstocks, which would look poor with a bookmatch anyway. As Mattia said its symmetry or not, but that is part of where I'm split as the top is bookmatched and would look good with a bookmatched headstock, but the fretboard being the same wood might go better with the single piece. I just wanted to get a vote and go with it as either look nice to me and I couldn't decide myself, hence the poll. The entire point is to get other people's vote on what they like and to choose for me, trust me as I don't really ask for opinions on what I should do with my own work, I just could not pick one over the other, so figured I'd get a vote.

Since the vote seems to be leaning towards the single piece, thats what I'll do and Mattia's idea sounded cool as well, using matching pieces. I had always planned on bookmatching, but that was when I was going to use the cocobolo I had which did have some sapwood that would have looked nice, but I changed the plans and fretboard for this. Anyhow, thanks for the votes thats all that I needed.

Here is the Cocobolo headstock cap I was originally going to use. I'll be saving that one for another one.

Edited by jmrentis
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