Good Thickness Of Set Neck At Body Join?

[j. pierce]

No luck searching, so just a quick question - Are there any structural issues around making a set neck where the "set" part is around (probably just under) an inch thick?

It seems like even my SG has a thicker piece set into the body than that. I'll probably do the same thing I did with my last guitar, which was a very long tenon, (almost to the bridge on my last one) and a 1/4" cap glued on top of that.

Of course, the cap, as well as the neck angle, means that the thickness of this set part of the neck will get rather thin. Asthetically, if the heel carve works out the way I want, it shouldn't be an issue, but should I be concerned about this structurally?

I'd imagine I should be fine if my glue joints are good, right? I mean, there would never be a piece of unnattached wood anywhere in the string path that's thinner than the neck, so I should be fine? I get wondering about wierd things sometimes.

[Ballyfin]

No luck searching, so just a quick question - Are there any structural issues around making a set neck where the "set" part is around (probably just under) an inch thick?

It seems like even my SG has a thicker piece set into the body than that. I'll probably do the same thing I did with my last guitar, which was a very long tenon, (almost to the bridge on my last one) and a 1/4" cap glued on top of that.

Of course, the cap, as well as the neck angle, means that the thickness of this set part of the neck will get rather thin. Asthetically, if the heel carve works out the way I want, it shouldn't be an issue, but should I be concerned about this structurally?

I'd imagine I should be fine if my glue joints are good, right? I mean, there would never be a piece of unnattached wood anywhere in the string path that's thinner than the neck, so I should be fine? I get wondering about wierd things sometimes.

I had the same question on my last one,so I left wings,lugs,on the sides of the neck and cut slots thru the body from the pickup cavity with a bone saw,to increase footprint or area to be glued,it worked

[doug]

If you are planning to use a neck pickup then having a really thin heel might be a concern. Thing is, you'll want to have some wood under the pickup, because it's part of the whole structure. Another thing to consider is how much of the 1" thickness will be glued into the body(touching the sides) before the first pickup. The more you have the better if you're sticking with a thin heel. Let's say your neck is set into the body such that the front of the body starts at about 17th fret, then you would have more strength. Honestly, I would reconsider the heel design, however without a picture it's hard to say for sure.

-Doug

[Mickguard]

A picture would help, yes.

I'm not sure what you mean by the 'set' part? Do you mean the tenon that enters into the body or the amount of body wood beneath the tenon?

In the latter case, I don't think it's a big issue. Have a look at the old Gibson Melody Maker-- on mine, there's only about 10 mm of body beneath the heel.

But the joint starts just after the 18th fret --so there's a good 5-7 cm set into the body wood. Even still, it's only about the 21st fret that the body wood is wide enough to provide any real stability around the neck.

Here's a thumbnail, maybe that'll help:

That neck joint is more than 40 years old now, by the way.

[doug]

What I mean is how thick the heel actualy is underneath the front pickup. Let's say the body is 1-3/4" thick, and your neck heel is 1-1/2" thick, and you cut a 3/4" pocket for the pickup, you then have 3/4" of heel under the pickup of neck tenon. However, as you described the heel being only 1" thick, then the tenon under the pickup would then be 1/4" which I think is a bit thin.

Based on that picture, and where the neck joins the body it should be enough to hold the neck in there if the heel was only 1" thick. Also, since you know the guitar pictured has that kind of neck joint, and it has lasted for many years, then you should be okay. Then again, maybe that wasn't what you were asking about in the beginning then.

-Doug

[Mickguard]

You're talking the wrong guy --I just posted a pic of my guitar to show j. pierce what's possible.

One thing I forgot to point out about the Melody Maker is that there is NO extension to the tenon --that is, none beyond the end of the fretboard. The neck simply ends there. I just took off the pickguard to look a little closely --the tenon is pretty wide and really is almost as wide as the neck itself.

This model is a single pickup model, so there's no reason they couldn't have extended the tenon a bit --there's even a good-sized gap past the end of the heel for that.

[j. pierce]

Thanks guys. I'm asking about the thickness of the neck-blank wood, rather rather than the thickness of the body wood below the neck.

Last time, since I was adding a top and it would all be hidden, I extended the neck tenon to the bridge. Really for no other reason than that was how long my neck blank was. The guitar has a great sound. Is that part of it? Damned if I know. I just figured more contact area was a good thing for a joint. I also left the tenon the thickness of the neck since it was all going to be covered up anyway.

The wood I have is plenty long for a neck, but only one-inch thick. That seems about right looking at my bolt-on, maybe I should go that route. Maybe I won't even use this wood.

Looking closely at my SG, it appears they used an under-1-inch thick neck blank, and then glued an additional piece to the bottom of the neck to add thickness to the heel. Is this an option? (Like this diagram from stew-mac, although they're referencing a classical guitar and adding more than one piece below the neck)

I'll try to get a picture of my idea up later. (Stuck at work with no image-editing capabilities) Is the problem here less the thickness of the heel, and more the amount of neck hanging out there past the body?

[doug]

mickguard -- Oops, long day yesterday...

j. pierce -- Simply put, a bolt on heel thickness is really too thin unless there is maybe 3" of it glued into the body. That's basically the size of a typical bolt on neck pocket. So yes, you could do that. Should you decide to make your neck tenon real long it could enhance the guitar's overall sound. Without a neck pickup more of the heel would be left in tact which is even better.

In the shop right now I am replacing a neck in a guitar that has a bolt on neck, however it has a heel that's about 8" long. There's no neck pickup, and it bolts in 6 places along it's length. Kind of an odd one if you ask me, but I am confident it will be quite outstanding when done. The key here is that the heel is not modified, other than bolt holes along it's length, preserving the structural intergrity of it. It could easily have been glued in instead of bolts.

-Doug

[Mickguard]

In the shop right now I am replacing a neck in a guitar that has a bolt on neck, however it has a heel that's about 8" long. There's no neck pickup, and it bolts in 6 places along it's length. Kind of an odd one if you ask me,

I'd be interested in seeing photos of that if you have them-- I'm considering something similar for my own project , instead of going with a set neck.

[j. pierce]

Thanks guys.

Is gluing additional thickness onto the bottom of these neck blanks an option? I'm not going to proceed with something that's not a good idea or I'm uncertain of, I guess I just really like this wood (It's the last of some mahogany that I've used for three other necks I really like) and would like to use it on this project. Looks like I'll be going with something else though. There will certainly be more than 3 inchs glued in that tenon, just because of the sheer length of the piece, but now that I think about neck pickups - I hadn't planned one, but I wouldn't want to cut that option off from myself, either, and a neck pickup would certainly slice right through most of that neck tenon.

My design is something like this: http://homepage.mac.com/sfjoshua/roughguitar.jpg (really rough quicky drawing, all my plans, full size and otherwise, are by hand and I don't have a way to get them into the computer at hand)

My last guitar was a Rick-inspired thing not too different from Idch's "Rocket 350", although a bit more symmetrical. One pickup jobber. I made a neck tenon like I'd described here, and the "heel" was really little more than a slight curve from the neck into body to make it asthetically pleasing. I ended up carving the back slightly, a bit of a taper, to make it easier to access the handfull of frets on the body. (I'd never need 24 frets, but with one pickup it helped even up the look a bit more.) It wasn't a shelf like you see on some JEM-style guitars or anything, just a bit of a taper. After all was said and done, no where outside of the body was it evident the actual thickness of the neck blank - since only the thickness of the neck showed. I guess that's what got me wondering if I could get away with using this one-inch thick piece as a neck on my next build.

I want to carve the neck into the body in a fashion sort of like some of the single cut basses I've seen - (here's some good examples) although it would be much less drastic seeing as the difference between the the two bouts is much less. And the angles involved are different. Obviously, the way to go if I wanted something that bold would be a neck-through. I don't want something quite like that, but I want to blend the neck into the body as seemlessly as I can, mostly for asthetics over anything else. I guess I'm "inspired" by those pictures more than anything else. (I rarely play above the 17th fret. That black line on the "fret board" in my sketch is around where the 17th/18th fret would be. I don't remember which off hand, I have it all layed out in my plans.)

[Mickguard]

I'm looking at Hiscock's book...page 82, the diagrams of the neck for the first guitar...

It took me a while to figure out that he's laminating the heel --is there any advantage to using a laminated heel over going with a solid heel?

But I think that Hiscock pretty much answers j. pierce's original question --if it's good enough for Hiscock, it's good enough for anyone, I suppose.

Meanwhile...

I measured the heel thickness of my Melody Maker --it comes out at 25 mm (not including fingerboard). Doesn't appear to have been laminated either. And the headstock doesn't show any kind of scarf. (And it looks like they just painted the headstock, instead of adding an overlay).

I'm using the Melody Maker as the basis for my first neck build, because it's always been my favorite guitar. The project will basically be a cross between the MM and an LP Jr. (but only because of the P90).

Now, it's hard to get a true measurement, since the tuners are on the guitar, but it seems to me that in order to accommodate the angle of the headstock, the neck must have been cut from a blank that was around 5 mm thick (maybe a little shy of that).

Does that sound right?

[j. pierce]

What is with you resurrecting my old threads, Mickguard?

Yeah, I recently ran across that myself, and decided I'm going to have a go at it. I've recently run across some guitars with laminated heels of contrasting wood and veneers that look so classy. I had only seen on acoustics up until now, but it looks very nice on an electric.

Now, it's hard to get a true measurement, since the tuners are on the guitar, but it seems to me that in order to accommodate the angle of the headstock, the neck must have been cut from a blank that was around 5 mm thick (maybe a little shy of that).

Does that sound right?

5mm - that's a little over 3/16ths, right? I'm going to say that doesn't sound quite right. Maybe you should take the tuners off before you measure? Picking on typos aside, and assuming you meant 5 cm, (that's around 2 inches? I'm all pro metric but can't think in it very well, and can't find metric rules here) I'd say you might want a little thicker - measuring off two of the neck blanks I've made and got kicking around, it looks like you'd need closer to three inches, but I haven't thicknessed those headstocks yet, either, that could change things a bit. Measuring off my SG, it looks like you could squeeze by with 2 1/4 inches. (5.7 cm)

I would go with a scarf joint, honestly. I find them easier to do, (although a good part of that is my not having access to a band saw) and they should be sturdier. If you've got a hand plane and a good dovetail saw or something of the like, they're a peach to throw together.

[Guitarfrenzy]

.....

The wood I have is plenty long for a neck, but only one-inch thick. That seems about right looking at my bolt-on, maybe I should go that route. Maybe I won't even use this wood.

Looking closely at my SG, it appears they used an under-1-inch thick neck blank, and then glued an additional piece to the bottom of the neck to add thickness to the heel. Is this an option? (Like this diagram from stew-mac, although they're referencing a classical guitar and adding more than one piece below the neck)

I'll try to get a picture of my idea up later. (Stuck at work with no image-editing capabilities) Is the problem here less the thickness of the heel, and more the amount of neck hanging out there past the body?

The SG was probably 3/4" thick wood, and glued another 3/4" piece on the heel area to make it 1-1/2" like Doug was talking about. I glued my heel on the JV-1 guitar I built in the same manner and had no problem. It's just a great way to save wood, I even scarf jointed the neck, so basically I made the neck with one long piece of maple that was 3/4" thick. Here's a picture of what I'm talking about.

I just used a big vise to clamp it together while the glue dried.

closeup pic

front view after it had dried..

picture of the neck after the added heel wood was tapered...

I don't see a reason in the world you couldn't do the same. I would however advise you to use wood from the same board if possible, simply because it will match your wood better and be less noticeable.

Good luck..

Matt Vinson

[Mickguard]

5mm - that's a little over 3/16ths, right?

Heh...I've only been living in Europe since...what...20 years...you'd figure that would be long enough to avoid silly mistakes like that.

Now, there's the only advantage to the imperial system...difficult to confuse feet and inches...unless you're Spinal Tap.

I like that contrasting heel idea...that would definitely look great on a guitar with a cap--you make the heel laminate the same wood as the cap...that would indeed be very cool.

I think you're right about the scarfed headstock...I'm looking at this huge block of wood here and just getting intimidated (I have a second blank prepared though, which is only 35 mm thick). If I had realized that a laminated heel isn't a big issue, I wouldn't have bothered making this big thing...maybe I'll cut it in two then, there's enough there to have two blanks, with plenty left over to laminate the heel.

I'm also tempted to stick with a drop-down headstock though...I like the way they look, and I think it'd look good with this guitar (I wouldn't waste my big blank on that one). I'm wondering what would happen if I made an extreme drop down --i.e., using the full 35 mm thickness, so the drop would end up being 15 mm deeper than a usual drop down.

There's time...I'm getting my templates in order first...

[j. pierce]

My last two guitars, I made the two necks out of the same blank - interesting saw job - the heels were the full thickness of the blank, one at each end of the neck blank, and then split the piece down the middle.

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(Hope that ASCII stuff works out - even changing to a monospaced font, it looks like I need to fill spaces with periods to get the spacing right)

The blank was extra long, so I still had enough on each neck for a cut off to make a scarf joint.

I did all this with a hand saw. It wasn't very much fun.

[verhoevenc]

See my GOTM this month. It was a mahogany neck blank that was about 1" thick and I scarfed it, and added a piece from the end on to make a SUPER thick heel (contoured all the way up to the body though, so it's only thick IN the body ). So it's definately do-able. I've got a bird's eye maple blank I'm going to be using on a future project that is BARELY over 1" thick and it's still got some rough marks so needs to be drum sanded. Either way, I'll probably be 1" thick after. And that's as thick as it's getting! Cause this body is only 1.5" thick, 1" at the edges (about 1-3/16 where the neck joins for added stability), neckw ill join at 19/20th fret and the tenon will go all the way to the 24th fret, maybe a little further. And after all my research I'm not so worried about it. HOWEVER it's having a floating jazz pick for the neck... so granted alot of the tenon will remain. But still.

Chris

[Mickguard]

Hey, good idea about the floating pickup, that definitely helps to solve that problem. Although there are some low profile surface mounted toaster type pickups out there too...in fact, I won an auction for GFS floating pickup, got it for 99 cents, so I might try that out too, down the road.

I've been looking at the blank, I might be able to cut it for two necks and a heel (I have plenty of the same wood lying around, it all came from the same plank, so I can always grab more for the headstock.

I think I'm going to start with the other blank though, it'll be easier for a first effort.