Black Limba Prs Mcarty

[bradleyjere]

Regarding the top angle, if you're going to use a hardtail I would start the angle just behind the bridge. This way your bridge sits in the same plane of the pickups and is only affected by the neck angle. If you're building a tremolo guitar, I would start the top angle just in front of the bridge mounting screws. In this way the bridge sits parallel to the back of the guitar and you don't have to deal with strange parallax issues when routing the springs cavity. I don't have any personal experience on this, it's just a thought. My next build will have a tremolo and i will angle the top. And this is what "in principle" I plan to do.

Thanks, that makes perfect sense to me! I am doing a hardtail so I'll start just behind the bridge.

By the way, looking at my PRS I can totally see this angle now. Just a small detail that never stood out to me before!

[bradleyjere]

Well, after a long time of not having time to work on my guitar I am back at it! My wife and I had our first baby and that has proved to be a time intensive activity...

I sorted out the neck issue with another thread and ended up going with the advise that the majority of people gave me. I used a bandsaw to remove the "ears" off the headstock. I left just a slight amount of wood so I wouldn't need to plane down the entire neck length. Then I sanded the remainder off each side to get back to a nice flat and parallel situation.

After marking the elevation and headstock angle of the neck from my templates I used the band saw to rough cut the top of the headstock angle. Then I was able to sand that surface to my marked line with very nice results. Then I rough cut the rest of the elevation leaving about a quarter inch of material except for the heel. (I have not decided on the details of the heel so I am leaving that alone for now.)

I tried to use the same sander to sand down the back of the headstock but the shape of the neck and the type of sander makes the sandpaper unsupported in the area I need to remove. So I wasn't getting very good results. I stopped while I still had some wood to work with and I'm back to figuring out my next step.

I also ran the body through the thickness sander a few times to thin it up a bit. I brought it down to 1.8" (It was just shy of 2.0" before). I wanted to leave a little stock since I still am not clear on how thick the body should be.

So, here is the one picture I took of the neck to show where it's at. I didn't bother taking any in process pictures.