Jump to content

Baritone Design Questions


Recommended Posts

I've been kicking around the idea of building a baritone guitar for myself out of some parts I have lying around. The biggest thing is that I have a 30" scale slotted and radiused ebony board. I was going to use it on the bass I'm building for my wife, but I found some purpleheart thats the right dimensions, so she wants me to use that instead. So, what to do with this 30" scale board... of course think up another project that I dont have time for.

Anyhow, I was thinking of doing a six string baritone... low string tuned to B or A. The design will be neck through and ebony board. I'm going to make the neck maple/walnut laminates, but I have a few questions about baritone construction, pickups, hardware and body wood.

-Am I nuts to use a 30" scale? Is this too long without fanned frets or something to make it sound good across all strings? If need be I can cut off the last fret slot or two and get it shortened somewhat...

-I'm looking for decent note definition in the tone, fairly bright with tight bottom end. For the body wood, I've got hard maple, ash, soft maple and walnut that I could use for the wings, but i'm not sure which of these is the best for what I'm going for. If this was a regular scale guitar, I'd probably use ash. What do you guys think?

-I notice lots of baritones seem to have a neck pickup closer to where a middle pickup would go on a standard guitar, kinda where most 'neck' pickups are on basses. Are there any rules of thumb for this? I have the fb slotted to 30 frets, and I'd like to have some extended high end, without losing that traditional "neck pickup" sound.

-Last question, Can I used a strat style hard tail bridge for a baritone? Will the intonation adjustment be sufficient? Reason is, I have one of these lying around, and that keeps the cost nice and affordable.

I know that's alot of questions, but any advice you all can contribute is much appreciated.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've seen several acoustic baritones with 29+" scales, 30" seems a little bit extreme to me. My 28.7 (with LaBella .080 on the bass, phosphor bronze though) is plenty tight, wouldn't want it tighter for a B to B tuning. I'd go for a fairly bright wood (ash rather than Walnut) for a solidbody. You'll have more bass than you can handle anyway, you want to make sure you support the upper end as well.

As for pickup placement...which 'lots of baritones'? Care to name a few models? I can't think of any that don't have standard pickup layouts, insofar as a 'standard baritone' even exists.

And yes, a standard bridge should provide plenty of adjustment. At least, my Baritone doesn't have out of the ordinary compensation/angling at the bridge (fixed saddle acoustic style bridge).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can testify to 30" being *very* long! Yes, you may want to consider reducing the scale by removing the first fret or two. This would make your new scale something more sensible like 28.3" (if you remove one) or 26.7" (if you remove two).

You should be able to use any bridge as long as the seating in the saddle provides good contact. You may need to fettle the lower saddles, or even the stringing-through holes. Same applies to your tuner posts.

Intonation will be sufficient if you position your saddles all the way forward, and have the contact point marginally behind or straight on that point. The lower strings will be the ones that will need the saddles yoinking all the way back (look at the Les Paul TOM bridge angle for example). Measure the adjustment travel your hardtail gives and calculate it from there. You probably have more than enough.

Oh, what that's Mattia said also! Silly me. :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mattia, the guitars that jump to mind are Stef's signature series from ESP. He has a bridge/mid combination, rather than a neck. It makes sense, in theory (I've never played one). The longer scale, the more bassy, and a neck pickup in the traditional neck position can get too muddy too fast. The same reason why you rarely see bass pickups right up against the fretboard.

I've been toying around with the idea of a guitar tuned to drop C rather than baritone. I'm thinking a 26" scale would be pretty good for string tension...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Right. A quick google shows a fair split between up against the fretboard neck pups and a little further down (but not quite mid pickup position). Again, selection of the right pickups matters; something bright will likely work well here.

also, you could still call a drop-C tuned guitar a baritone if it's got a longer scale, IMO, as it's not like there's any sort of 'standard' you have to conform to.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I believe the ESP offerings in the Steven Carpenter models are the EMG-707s which are (IIRC) based on the EMG-85. The 85 is way too powerful in the bass range for a neck pickup....I really don't like them myself for that same reason! An EMG81-7 would work better as a neck pickup in a seven. My ESP Explorer is set up with two 81s and my LTD EXP has an 81/60 combination. A 707/85 in a mid position is probably as far forward as i'd have one personally. That said, the 85 sounds better when *clean* as opposed to dirty or crunched, but it limits the usage of the pickup because of that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Incidentally, whilst i'm on the topic - i'm constructing a longer scale replacement neck for the LTD EXP so it can handle the tunings I use better. I use open C, so I am making a 27.5" scale neck for it. This way I can continue to use the string gauges I prefer with little change apart from the tension.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the input guys. Regarding pickup locations, The Stephen Carpenter ESP was the model that came to mind when I put the original post up. I've also seen the guitar players in Lacuna Coil play a similar model, and I've seen a few other folks play baritones with similar pickup locations. I need to think about what I want to do for scale length.. shortening it by a fret or two may be the answer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's the most readily achievable one considering you have a slotted board already, especially as you've already had it cut to thirty frets. 28 should be more than enough anyway once you remove perhaps two of them.

Removing two frets from a 30" scale 30 fret board reduces your scale length to just under 26-3/4". This means that even if you did bang the "neck" pickup straight up against the end of the fretboard, it would still be closer to the bridge than most neck pickups. A Les Paul neck pickup is just over 3/4 of the way from the nut to the bridge. If you're running a board longer than 22 frets you're going to push the "neck" pickup further back. Don't discount the potential for going to a longer scale 29 fret board by removing just the one fret however. This is still an option!

Also, if you do cut the board shorter then the width of the fret slot may marginally affect nut position by around 0.5mm. If you cut across the slot and sand off the "shorter" part from inside the fret slot then you may have very very slight intonation problems. How measurable this would be is debatable, and i've probably opened a can of worms by mentioning it. You can probably compensate for this with tilting the contact point of the nut back half the width of a fret slot, but this is precision work which may be overkill in the real world.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Right. A quick google shows a fair split between up against the fretboard neck pups and a little further down (but not quite mid pickup position). Again, selection of the right pickups matters; something bright will likely work well here.

also, you could still call a drop-C tuned guitar a baritone if it's got a longer scale, IMO, as it's not like there's any sort of 'standard' you have to conform to.

Mmm, yeah. When I said baritone I meant normal B-b tuning. I hate playing with strings thicker than 10s, which is why I thought just a tad longer scale would do it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If need be I can cut off the last fret slot or two and get it shortened somewhat...

not the last, the FIRST!

if you cut the last one you will end up with nothing more than a 23 or 21 fret, 30" scale fretboard.

Oops! You're correct Hector, I was probably thinking about the fretboard from the wrong direction :D

:D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...