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About Necks And Heads.


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Guys, What are the options that I have to build a neck and the head of it ? ?

I´m a little confused because I know that depends of if you are going to do an angled head or not, but don´t understand very well all the options that you have to make both. :D

for example HERE warmoth offers a neck blank with only 27" lenght (I suppose no room for head) and below an angled neck that dont understand if are two pieces of wood glued or simply they prepared one piece wood with the angle. :D

OR HERE where he glued 3 pieces wood with 70mm thickness and then cut the wood as he wants. As I understand that this is the most acceptable way to do it.

So, For the neck and head of it, has to be the length always one piece of wood or I can build the neck, then the head and then glue both.

If I buy a 3/4" thickness neck blank Can I have an angled (13 degree) neck ? ?.

Thanx,

Demian

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27" should be plenty of room for a headstock.

I think you're confusing the neck length, with the scale length...

Now, as for which way to do it...

You can go one-piece, with no angle.

Or one-piece slab, with the angle cut into it, as shown in your 2nd example (however, this wastes alot of wood). Or two-piece, where you attach the head to the neck, as shown in the Warmoth example.

Which way is better could probably be argued for days...

:D

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I've been wondering about this too, it would make the most sense to me to make it as a single solid piece just because I would feel it'd me more secure. But it'd be easier to do a seperate headstock and attach it. I'm planning on painting the back of my neck/headstock anyway so I don't really suppose it matters which method I choose for mine anyway. If I was going for a natural finish on the back of the neck I think I'd want a single piece.

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If you buy a blank, you can make an angled headstock with a scarf joint I believe. What you see with the headstock glued on is called a "scarf joint".

It stabalizes one of the weakest parts of the neck, basically, and allows for an angled heastock withouth having to waste the wood on a one-piece blank.

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27" should be plenty of room for a headstock.

I think you're confusing the neck length, with the scale length...

:D

Yes, my mistake sorry! :D , I was thinking in scale length..

however, I think 3/4 thickness for that blanck is not too much to do an angled neck, doesn´t it?.

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3/4" (about 19-20mm) planed, surfaced wood is perfectly good for either a scarf-jointed or a fender-style neck, but too thin if you want to do a 1-piece fender neck (no seperate fingerboard). Remember the 'board adds a good 1/4" or so (maybe slightly less) to the overall neck thickness.

Scarf jointing isn't terribly hard if you've got moderate skills with a hand plane; almost all my necks are scarfed, with a veneer on top (and the next few will have one on the back as well, to hide the joint completely and add still more support to the whole thing.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of 1-piece angled headstock necks, both because they're potentially weaker (lots of short grain) than a well-scarfed neck, and because they're inherently, well, pretty damn wasteful in terms of wood. It's also a whole lot easier to find a smaller piece of clear, quartersawn wood. The fact I don't have a bandsaw to saw out the basic shape probably doesn't help either :-)

Pott: you're in NL, right? A flatsawn maple blanks (which is probably what you'll get from warmoth for 15 bucks) shouldn't cost that much, even here. I got a whole board of slightly flamed (flatsawn) maple for about 26 euros, enough for three to four necks. If you're ordering from warmoth anyway, might as well, but remember the shipping costs for transatlantic stuff ain't negligible.

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True...it just seemed like the most handy option to be honest, and with the favorable exchange rate...

I'm in The Netherlands (Amsterdam) for now but in Edinburgh during most of the year, and I'm French technically :D But yeah I kinda live here.

I think I'll need something thicker anyway for the neck. Just to be sure. I'm not too familiar with scarved joints as well, I'd rather do it all in one piece to be honest.

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True...it just seemed like the most handy option to be honest, and with the favorable exchange rate...

I'm in The Netherlands (Amsterdam) for now but in Edinburgh during most of the year, and I'm French technically :D But yeah I kinda live here.

I think I'll need something thicker anyway for the neck. Just to be sure. I'm not too familiar with scarved joints as well, I'd rather do it all in one piece to be honest.

Heh. Well, I'm half Dutch, half Italian, and I've been living in Amsterdam for, oh, 6 years now.

Since your in Amsterdam, I'd reccomend heading up to the Amsterdamsche Fijnhouthandel, which is up in the Houthavens (above Westerpark, like). It's where I go a-woodshopping for pretty much all my (non-figured) electric guitar wood needs. Don't always have great stuff, or great prices, but they're friendly enough for me, and occasionally have stuff you might want. I know they have some quartersawn maple neck blanks, which are overpriced simply because they picked 'em out, planed them square and labled them as neck blanks. I prefer to go through their stacks of 'regular' wood, and leave their 'guitar woods' by the wayside. Fijnhout.nl is the address, in case you care.

Edited by mattia
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