Building A 2-piece Guitar

[SoundAt11]

I've got a crazy idea: a 2-piece guitar. I picked up a 1 3/4" thick, 6 1/2" wide, and 4' long peice of Mahogany at the local lumber store ($30).

I'm considering getting an identical sized

piece, joining them in the middle, and litterally cutting a

guitar out of the entire board (one continuous piece, no seperate neck and body).

Has this been done before?

Do you think the neck (let alone the guitar) would be stable on something like

this?

Soundwise, would this be the uber-sustain, tone-monster I'm imagining or just heavy, dead guitar?

I'd have to route and install my own trussrod and fret a pre-cut fretboard (might get a luthier friend to do it for me)

How hard is doing the trussrod?

FWIW, I've built a previous neck-thru guitar using the Carvin neck and building the body (routing, wiring, finishing, and setup) and have also refretted a neck.

Edited May 27, 2005 by PRG

[GregP]

Hrm. Probably hasn't been done often before simply because that's a lot of wasted wood. Well, I suppose you could always use the trimmings for other stuff, so it's not -necessarily- a waste, but it just doesn't seem efficient.

A better question-- why would you WANT to do this? It doesn't really save you any work off of making your own neck-through, really. Indeed, having such a huge chunk of wood to work on would make certain tasks very difficult; ones that could fairly easily be done with a neck-through that doesn't have 'wings' on it yet.

Finally, the odds of it being a better-sustaining guitar than a neck through are pretty slim. It might sustain the same, or even sustain a second longer, but at what cost?

Sustain is so overrated anyhow. How often in a solo or a song do you hit a chord or a note and just let it hang there until it dies completely? Once or twice in a lifetime I bet. In some of my recordings with that long sustained note that fades away, I've had to manually tweak the fade in my recording software to make it shorter, because the natural sustain was too long for my purposes. And this is just a humble Godin LG or Yamaha Pacifica. Sustain is only important insofar as that your notes don't die prematurely. Nobody wants a dead NON-sustaining guitar, but if you make a guitar with proper woods and hardware (with any method of neck attachment), you're going to get decent sustain. Anything extra beyond that is a very diminished return on your investment.

I DO believe that sustain has an important place in a guitar player's arsenal, actually, but the kind of sustain that I'm thinking of as still being "useful" should be reproducible on any guitar-- using sympathetic vibration from an amp, or using a sustain-driver like the Sustainiac. "Natural" sustain only gets you so for for these kinds of applications.

Greg

[SoundAt11]

Good points, Greg. Honestly, my current neck-thru guitar doesn't sustain "infinitely" (as I'd wish), just on par with a good set neck guitar. My main line of thinking is a few points.

I figure that the more glue in my guitar, the more potential for robbing vibrations of the pieces of wood I'm joining. By that logic, a 1-piece solid maple guitar with it's maple fretboard, would be the ideal......of course, it'd weigh a TON and be ear-piercingly bright.

Next, I figure if the neck and body are one literal piece of wood, that all vibrations will be transmitted clearly between the two.

I'll be doing direct-mounted p'ups and strings-thru the body, so having the pickups being mounted to this fully resonating body would be the ideal guitar.

I personally don't like the design or effort to put together bolt-on neck or set-neck guitars. Neck-thru's aren't too bad, I used dowel rods between the neck and body to line them up for the clamp-n-glue process. But even better, having no neck joint at all, with this 2-piece carved guitar, would be easiest, because, there basically is no "joint" to speak of.

Lastly, cost isn't much of an issue on this one. I paid $200 for my Carvin neck-thru blank and $30 for wood on my current neck-thru homemade guitar. Someone buying a Warmoth neck+body is looking at $400 as well.

Two slabs of $30 mahogany would be $60, grab a $20 fretboard, and your trussroad, and you've got the essentials out of the way for a little over $100.

Like you said, have plent of spare mahogany left over, or just stick it on ebay and recoup some of your expense.

[Mr.Churchyard]

A better question-- why would you WANT to do this?  It doesn't really save you any work off of making your own neck-through, really.  Indeed, having such a huge chunk of wood to work on would make certain tasks very difficult; ones that could fairly easily be done with a neck-through that doesn't have 'wings' on it yet.

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Because so there are less unwanted volume dynamics...

[marksound]

Damn them uppity volume dynamics, anyway!

[GregP]

A better question-- why would you WANT to do this?  It doesn't really save you any work off of making your own neck-through, really.  Indeed, having such a huge chunk of wood to work on would make certain tasks very difficult; ones that could fairly easily be done with a neck-through that doesn't have 'wings' on it yet.

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Because so there are less unwanted volume dynamics...

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Like what?

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I think, PRG, that at the end of the day you'd be better off buying the components of a neck-through and making one yourself, rather than doing the 2-piece idea. Meaning, the raw materials (which should still end up costing the same or less as your 2-slab idea) and not simply a pre-made neck-through.

Greg

[fryovanni]

Greg is on the money.

I would go for a well constructed neck thru block. I an going to bet you will have to compromise the quality of the wood to do what you propose (with regards to well quarter sawn material for the neck). When you buy 8/4 stock join it and level it. Odds are you will not be left with enough material for much neck angle an headstock angle.

Less unwanted volume dynamics . Well I dunno.

Peace, Rich

[javacody]

Dan Erlewine built a guitar made out of one piece of wood (if memory serves). It's been done. Check out Dan's forum at www.lespaulforum.com (his is a subforum).