Scott Bond's Neck Through Guitar
| This one started as a carvin 25" scale neck and a block of alder.
The whole idea of this guitar was to keep as much wood as possible in
the body, with minimum routing for bridge, pickups, controls etc. The
body shape is from a tracing of an "S" series Ibanez, with minor
adjustments, such as deeper cutaways, no jack on the front I had to figure the least amount of angle for the neck that would allow me to use a tunomatic style bridge. This was one of the features that I wanted, but made. The design a bit more challenging. Since the body and neck wood were only 1.7 inches thick, any neck angle that I set would make the guitar thinner at the back, as the neck wood would rise above the face of the guitar, and have to be removed. Likewise with the back where it would be below the plane of the body wood since this was based on an s series, I counted on it being thin, so the small amount of angle I used worked well. |
| The guitar is light and thin, but not too thin. The pickup routes
were measured so that the pickups would mount flush against the wood at
just the right height. There are no springs- they are screwed solid to
the wood of the body. The pickups are a Duncan Little '59 in the neck,
and a Duncan JB Junior in the bridge. The bridge itself is the standard
gotoh low profile bridge available from carvin, and the stop tailpiece
is a Schaller fine tuning. It took about 6 months to get that tailpiece,
since apparently they don't make them in black. It was special ordered
through Guitar center. I think I have one of the only ones in existence!
I liked the idea of having fine tuners at the bridge, They are not absolutely
necessary, but they are a nice touch. One of my more clever design elements was how I drilled the wire channel for the neck pickup. One of my changes from the s series guitar was to put the jack on the side. I don't really like them on the front. The jack is recessed into the body and angled. The angle was measured precisely so that I could use a long 1/4 bit placed through the jack hole and control cavity, and drill a straight line to the pickup route, which was through about 6 inches of wood. This was very nerve racking, as I could have easily missed the rout or come through the face or back. Luckily, it came out exactly where I wanted it without any problems. The control cavity rout is just big enough for the controls and wiring. The pickup selector is a Megaswitch "P" model, which gives me PRS style switching: Positions: 1 Bridge pickup; 2 Inner pickup coils, parallel; 3 Outer coils, series; 4 Outer coils, parallel; 5 Neck pickup. |
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