Design Questions

[SawDust_Junkie]

Ok, here goes. I am in the brainstorming phase of a new project. I want to build Gibson LP Double Cut Away body style with a bolt on neck and no neck angle. I want to build this on a Gibson scale length.

I still haven't figured out a couple of things with this design.

1.) I have a CAD drawing of a LP Double Cut Away that I will probably be using to

make a template. On this drawing the neck position pick-up is set right at the

end of the heel of the neck. Since the LP Double Cut Away is a set neck, this

does not leave enough room between the neck pick-up and the end of the body

to route a heel pocket for a Fender type bolt on neck (app. 3" would be req-

uired)

Now, I know I can simply move the neck pick-up closer to the bridge to allow

enough room to accomodate my neck pocket. My question is, not knowing

much about natural "tonal intervals" along the scale length, and realizing that

moving the pickup closer to the bridge will produce a higher pitched tone to the

pick-up, what are your feelings about how much effect this would have on the

overall sound of the guitar. ( I know this is subjective, but someone may ex-

perience with this and may be able to offer some advice from that experience)

2.) Since the Gibson scale length is a "compensated" scale length, I realize the

TOM bridges are set at an angle to allow enough room for adjustment for in-

tonation. If I were to use, for example, a Schaller roller type bridge or a

Fender style, string-through, hard-tail bridge, would this type of bridge give me

enough room to adjust for intonation, if the high-E saddle was set to the scale

length at about 75% of its travel toward the nut ?

I figured that if I use a Stewart-Mac pre-slotted fret board for the Gibson scale,

since they are slotted for the true scale length of 24 9/19", if I set the high-E

saddle about 3/4 of the way toward toward the nut and make this my scale

length, it would allow enough travel on the bass side to adjust for intonation,

without having to angle the bridge.

Do you guys agree with this ? Or am I totally off base here ?

[frank falbo]

You can usually get away with a straight T-O-M if it's the wider Schaller type, but it's more a matter of what string gauges you'll use and how high your action will be. If you're action is on the high side, then you will be stretching the string more to get it to fret. So the variance between the saddles will be greater. It's not really something anyone can answer for you until you build the guitar. On the plus side, your problem is solved if you get the Schaller because I'm pretty sure they have three holes in the underside. So you can put your studs in straight across, and still select from the different holes to make different degrees of angles, or go straight across.

As for the neck pickup, I wouldn't move it back. I like it as close to the board as possible. I would look to redesigning your neck joint a little to add strength there. But moving the neck pickup back toward the bridge doesn't make room for the bolt on neck per se. I mean if you move the pickup back so you can get your neck in there, then you'll have to move the bridge and the bridge pickup back too because the neck will sit farther into the body. Which is fine, it just doesn't jive out with what you were saying about the tonal variance of the pickup location.

[SawDust_Junkie]

Thanks for your input frank. After thinking about it some more and looking at the Schaller roller bridges some more, I think I would rather go with a Hip Shot hard tail bridge or the Fender style hard tail bridge. These bridges both flush mount on the top of the guitatr with no posts.

As for the neck pickup, I did not mean to move the neck pickup away from the end of the fret board. It would still be positioned right at the end of the neck/fretboard, it would just have to be moved a little further towards the bridge to give enough room to get a 3" heel pocket.

I thought about just extending the area of the body at the heel pocket to give enough wood to bolt the neck on, but this seems like it would make the neck/body thicker where the two meet, and eliminate some of the benefit of the lower cut-away as far access to the higher frets goes.