Building A Neck

[thegarehanman]

Oh, and before you carve the back. Go to warmoth and look at all of the different profiles you can give your neck. See which ones you think you'd like. Then go to guitar center and see which neck profile you like best. Then you can incorporate that into your design. I use a SRV kind of offset center neck. It gives you the ability to either have a fat neck or a skinny neck depending on wether you're playing lead or rhythm.

[backwoodsguitars]

allparts.com has pre fretted fretboards 25.5 scale rosewood, jumbo frets. I have used these in the past and they are fairly good. I have only had to level them a bit. I also used a piece of flat steel and a hammer and laid it on the frets and lightly tapped using a carpenters hammer it up and down the board once or twice (just in case) but they arent bad.

I am however now learning to fret my own. I am excited about the different scales I can use since stew mac has a wide selection of pre slotted boards.

Please learn this skill and dont be scared like I was. After 2 years I am just now learning to do this myself. I wish I had learned in the begining.

Backwoods

[Kith]

thanks, ill think about trying to fret it myself, but if it doesnt work, do you know of anyplace that sells 25 or 24.75 scale fretted fretboards?

[nollock]

I am making my first guitar (almost finished now) and I have made the neck myself. I messed up my first few attempts, router tearout, poor measurement and glue failure. But I went ahead and finished them as much as posible. Luckily I had a spare fretboard that was cracked during shipping so I glued that on one and practiced fretting & inlay. I could have carried on with the first neck as the tearout was on the heel and would not be visible, but I decided to keep trying untill I have a good neck I was totally happy with.

So my advice is to try making a neck, if you make a mistake try again. But dont stop at the mistake, carry on and use it as practice, you can experiment with differant tools and find what methods suit you best.

You dont need to make a perfect neck first go, and you dont need to use the first neck you make.

chris

[fryovanni]

There are a lot of places to get pre-slotted fretboards.

When you try it yourself. I have three things I would recommend to you do. First use an on line fret calculator and print out the scale spacing full size to have an accurate template for spacing. I tack glue this to an un-radiused fretboard and use it to line up slots. Second make sure that the fretboard blank has a straight square edge to help guide the process (don't cut the shape of the board before you slot it). Three if you can afford to buy a circular saw blade from Stew Mac, do it. I use the blade in my miter saw. It normally has a 10" blade with stew macs 6" blade installed you have room below the blade to build up a guide for slotting (the blocking also sets the depth of your slots). I still use the template tack glued to the fretboard. I set the blade right on the line, then run the cut. You can see the material and lines (no guess work), and takes just a few minutes to slot a board. If you can't get the circular blade and use a hand saw, be sure to keep the blade square (using guides, or wood blocks). Also keep the blade in comtact with the board, don't let it walk. If you can clamp down the fretboard blank so that you don't have to try to control it and you can focus on the hand saw.

Peace, Rich

[Kith]

thanks for the advice

any other opinions/advisories/warnings?

Thanks

[jmrentis]

StewMac Preslotted Fretboards

This is one of the many places that sell preslotted boards, if you decide to buy one instead of make it, there are many other places too. Good luck with your project, as someone just said if you happen to make a mistake, just try again, but do as much research as possible, because if you miss a single step you could completely ruin it, just like what fryovanni just said if you cut the fretboard to size with taper and everything it would be nearly impossible to get straight slots, the order you do things is very important!

One little tip that I did unintentionally for my neck was, I made it big enough to cut 2 or more necks out of it if I cut it right, and it is a neck with a headstock angle, so you need more room to cut it out of, also it's a 3 piece laminate. If you do that you can have a couple necks that are all the same, so if you mess up you have a back up. So good luck and let us know how it goes and what you decide! Later. Jason

[Mattia]

Go with a pre-slotted board if you don't get a slotting setup/template of some kind, and just go for whatever neck style you want. My first from scratch guitar was a set-neck, scarf jointed headstock mahogany thing, and it's still fine to this day. Just make sure you think everything through, and work meticulously.

[n8rofwyo]

My first guitar was a full on build. Everything was from scratch exept the electronics. I joined this forum shortly after making the decision to build my own, and read as much a I could before beginning. The result was that I had a neck that was a very thick D style, a crooked 17th fret, and a helluva leveling job because I only properly seated 18 of 22 frets. However, of the three guitars I own that one is my favorite to play, it doesn't really sound any better than the others, but I "feel" better when I play it. When it comes down to it, either you do it or you don't. To expect perfection your first time out isn't going to get you what you want, but it will leave you with an idea of what to improve on and a tremendous amount of satisfaction! Good luck with the build, and welcome to the forum.

Nate Robinson

[Kith]

would it be ok to fret the fingerboard before I attach it to the neck?