Mahogany Neck Question.

[aturner]

I'm in the planning stages for a fully hollow electric guitar. Yeah, technically I'm on the wrong page. Feel free to move me if you like. Basically it'll be a semi-hollow, without the center block. The reason I'm posting here is because semi's play more like electric than acoustic. And it's a neck question.

Anyways, the neck is going to be made from a quartersawn piece of mahogany, Honduran, I believe. My question is: will the neck be stable enough with just the truss rod (I plan on using a double action) or should I add a pair of carbon fiber rods to help keep things straight?

Also, the plan is to have a zero nut. My greatest fear is that if there were two cf rods in the neck it would stiffen it to the point that the neck wouldn't be able to get the slight curve necessary to give me the reasonable action, at least enough to prevent buzz. I've never worked with the stuff before, so I don't know how much flex it has.

[Southpa]

I see no problemo with what you want to do. I have a couple neckthru guitars that I built with solid Hon. mahogany necks + fretboard. They also have the dual action truss rods and both are still stable as a rock. That much wood needed to enclose a dual action truss rod is sufficient mass to maintain stability. Now, if you were going to make one of those slim wizard type necks w/ a single action truss rod out of mahogany I would have some reservations.

[Mattia]

You should be fine with just the truss rod; my hondo necks without CF do just great.

This said, all my necks now have a pair of CF rods in there. I like the stability/stiffness it adds to the mix. Works well for me, and I've never, ever, ever made a neck (90% of my necks are all mahogany, some laminated) that was 'too stiff' after adding 2 1/8" x 3/8" CF rods and a dual action rod. I've had one that needed to be adjusted forward (as in, put curve in) with the dual action rod, but all the others only required very minor tweaking to decrease the amount of relief.

[Acousticraft]

Don't waste your time with anything apart from a single truss rod in a curved routed channel.

The string tension of electric strings is way less than acoustic of the same gauge. D'Addario give string tension on their website.

I make up my own truss rods.

On the first acoustics I made I used 6mm threaded rods and I put the same into my first electric and found it was hardly tensioned at all to keep the neck straight.

On my current guitar, an ES335 lookalike semi-hollow body I am working on, I have used 5mm bright steel rod and threaded one end about 30mm. The other end I bent to 90 degrees and fitted it into a hole drilled into the heel block area so it cant turn. This is the first time I have tried this and is a quick and easy method of anchoring the rod.

[Mattia]

As said, I'd never put anything other than 2 pairs of CF and a dual action rod into an electric neck, simply because they're usually thinner, and they should be built to deal with a set of 12s should someone wish to string 'er up like that.

Is it slightly overkill? Likely yes. Can it hurt? No. The fact it's hardly tensioned at all is exactly what you want the thing to do when the guitar's new. But since wood is plastic, and will shift and deform over time, you want enough adjustability built in. If you need to adjust your rod a lot when you first string up, I think you haven't made the neck optimally strong. Strong enough/stiff enough, perhaps, but not where I want mine. There are those who swear by the tone of single action rods, and won't use anything else, and those guitars can and do sound and play great.

I do like fairly stiff necks, though; the floppiest one I ever built got a 'wow, this neck feels stiff!' comment from a strat player who was used to producing 'trem' effects by bending his (floppy) USA Standard Strat neck while playing.

Different strokes for different folks, different philosphies, and they all work in their own ways. Pick an approach that appeals to you to start with, and experiment a little to see what ends up really working for you.

[cherokee6]

As my predecessors have stated, you'll be fine; afterall, most LP's, SG's and PRS's don't put in the extra carbon rods and they use mahogany necks. You might want to consider a scarf joint, though, which is a stronger joint at the head than just shaping the neck without it. Many an LP user of late has complained about broken peg heads. This is usually due to the way the necks are made without the scarf joint. When the guitar encounters unintentional stress, ie; player dropped the guitar or it fell off a stand, etc., the head will snap off at that weak point. Good luck with your project, show us a pic when you're done!