Ok, not a radical idea or anything... but lemme run something by you...

[mistermikev]

so thinking a few builds ahead here and perhaps this is just daydreaming... but wanted to explore the idea and see if y'all could help me find any pitfalls that aren't on my radar.  Nothing radical or game changing... but I think an interesting idea anyway...

 

I'd like to do a lp style guitar... but do it multi-scale.  I think I'd like to do 25.5 to 24.625 - very small change.  split the difference at the nut/bridge so we'd be moving the bridge on the low E side back approx 7/16". 

the crux: I would really like to use the std tom style bridge - I don't like the look of something else for this build,  just move it back that far(7/16")... and since you typically have to slot the saddles anyway... just put a slight angle on them.  now, moving the bridge to that diagonal will actually reduce string spacing a bit on that end... I'm not sure by how much, and will have to mock it up and see, but I can't imagine it would be a huge dif.  It might actually effect the bridge pickup pole alignment a little... more on that later.

now one objection I see is that the difference between the two scales is negligible, sidestepping most of the benefits of multiscale.  Having grown up playing an sg 90 (one of the few gibson electrics that is 25.5 scale) the differences between them is fairly significant to me.  not just the sound, and tension... but the 'feel'.  This would combine elements I like from both scales.

Further I think the ergonomics of multi-scale would feel better with a slight change as opposed to the typical 1.5" difference.  when I look at my fingers going across the frets... it's only at a very slight angle.  

I also am just not crazy about the topology of a wider difference...("V") it might be fine for another body style... but on a lp style so much is symetrical... angling the pickups even 7/16" might ruin the look.  With that in mind I would leave them spaced straight,  and keep the fretboard where it meets the neck pickup straight.  This again may introduce issues with the strings going over the poles... and I'd have to maybe fall back to a 25 to 24.615 difference if that is the case.

I would very much love your thoughts on the idea.

[MiKro]

So what you are saying is use the 12th fret as the perpendicular and pivot point. Move the nut and the bridge accordingly. I would maybe suggest doing a mock up using lesser woods and your cnc and see how it works first. Also make the neck bolt on for the mockup as this allows you to make changes easier I would think?

Just my thoughts out loud Mike.

MK

[mistermikev]

8 minutes ago, MiKro said:

So what you are saying is use the 12th fret as the perpendicular and pivot point. Move the nut and the bridge accordingly. I would maybe suggest doing a mock up using lesser woods and your cnc and see how it works first. Also make the neck bolt on for the mockup as this allows you to make changes easier I would think?

Just my thoughts out loud Mike.

MK

def a good idea.  I am going to do a mockup in photoshop (in fact working on it now) and def b4 i sink any wood-I-can't-afford-to-loose into it I will test the waters with something cheaper.  with photoshop I should be able to determine if the string spacing is going to be an issue, if the pickup-poles-strings will be an issue and possibly ferrit out some other things along the way.  

was just working with fret2Dfind and had figured like you said - make the 12th fret straight and it should distribute the angled pieces evenly.  suprrised how little tilt there is at the 22nd fret - that's gonna work out fine.  

one issue is going to be strings over the nut... I don't want to change the headstock away from the typical symetry so a compound angle won't work... which means either the low string has to stick out over the 14deg headstock angle, or the high e has to have enough heigh to not hit the place 7/16" in front of it where the 14deg angle meets the plane from the bottom of the fretboard.  gonna have to mock that up and see but it looks like that wouldn't be an issue.

thank you for the input mike... got my juices stewing over here and that's what I need!!

[curtisa]

3 hours ago, mistermikev said:

make the 12th fret straight and it should distribute the angled pieces evenly.  suprrised how little tilt there is at the 22nd fret - that's gonna work out fine. 

Making the 12th fret the perpendicular distributes the amount of 'splay' the nut and bridge have equally from end to end, but because the fret spacing reduces as you go up the neck the degree of 'splay' of the playable portion of the strings is unequal (as you've noticed with the 22nd fret having minimal tilt when experimenting with fretfind2D). Possibly not such a bad thing on a singlecut body shape as utilising the lowest strings on the highest positions is naturally difficult even when the frets are conventionally laid out; it would be even worse if the amount of tilt on the upper frets effectively 'buries' the bass-end of the frets further out of reach into the body.

Making the 7th fret the perpendicular has the effect of distributing the degree of tilt equally between nut and 24th (7th fret is the midpoint of the fretboard when considering only the lineal distance of the whole neck), but will tilt the bridge more severely. Using a Tune-o-matic tailpiece could actually be beneficial here as you're not bound to some kind of custom or hard-to-get hardware solution for the bridge. Although be aware that the more you tilt the tailpiece around the narrower you're effectively making the string spacing.

Angling the pickups is not mandatory to suit the angle at the bridge if you don't want it to be. There is some tonal change from leaving the pickups perpendicular and the bridge angled back, particularly at the bridge position, but personally I prefer to embrace this change in my multiscale builds as just another flavour of the same thing. For reference have a look at some of Strandberg's instruments which have a mixture of angled and slanted pickups, although for the most part their guitars that utilise bar or blade-style pole pieces are the only ones that will get angled pickups. There may be tonal reasons for this (the individual pairs of pole pieces on a regular humbucker for example will end up slightly out of alignment for each string which might change ...something... detrimentally for tone?), but I'm willing to bet it's largely done for aesthetic reasons due to the fact that regular humbuckers with exposed slug-style polepieces look a bit cock-eyed.

 

3 hours ago, mistermikev said:

one issue is going to be strings over the nut... I don't want to change the headstock away from the typical symetry so a compound angle won't work... which means either the low string has to stick out over the 14deg headstock angle, or the high e has to have enough heigh to not hit the place 7/16" in front of it where the 14deg angle meets the plane from the bottom of the fretboard. 

That's normally dealt with by using a compound scarf joint, where the 'ramp' of the neck piece is done at the same angle as the nut. The headstock piece just gets attached conventionally as you would for a regular scarf jointed neck, but because the joint tilts away at a slight downward angle the headstock twists in sympathy with the projected angle of the strings as they deflect away from the nut towards the tuners.

The ghetto method of doing it with ye olde router-planer is something like this:

You can use a perpendicular scarf joint if you wish, but as you've noted it looks kinda clunky with a triangular dead area behind the treble side of the nut where all the angled pieces need to kinda 'null' each other out before allowing the strings to spear off towards the tuners. I personally find this:

...too be a much more elegant solution than this:

 

[mistermikev]

4 hours ago, curtisa said:

Making the 12th fret the perpendicular distributes the amount of 'splay' the nut and bridge have equally from end to end, but because the fret spacing reduces as you go up the neck the degree of 'splay' of the playable portion of the strings is unequal (as you've noticed with the 22nd fret having minimal tilt when experimenting with fretfind2D). Possibly not such a bad thing on a singlecut body shape as utilising the lowest strings on the highest positions is naturally difficult even when the frets are conventionally laid out; it would be even worse if the amount of tilt on the upper frets effectively 'buries' the bass-end of the frets further out of reach into the body.

Making the 7th fret the perpendicular has the effect of distributing the degree of tilt equally between nut and 24th (7th fret is the midpoint of the fretboard when considering only the lineal distance of the whole neck), but will tilt the bridge more severely. Using a Tune-o-matic tailpiece could actually be beneficial here as you're not bound to some kind of custom or hard-to-get hardware solution for the bridge. Although be aware that the more you tilt the tailpiece around the narrower you're effectively making the string spacing.

Angling the pickups is not mandatory to suit the angle at the bridge if you don't want it to be. There is some tonal change from leaving the pickups perpendicular and the bridge angled back, particularly at the bridge position, but personally I prefer to embrace this change in my multiscale builds as just another flavour of the same thing. For reference have a look at some of Strandberg's instruments which have a mixture of angled and slanted pickups, although for the most part their guitars that utilise bar or blade-style pole pieces are the only ones that will get angled pickups. There may be tonal reasons for this (the individual pairs of pole pieces on a regular humbucker for example will end up slightly out of alignment for each string which might change ...something... detrimentally for tone?), but I'm willing to bet it's largely done for aesthetic reasons due to the fact that regular humbuckers with exposed slug-style polepieces look a bit cock-eyed.

 

That's normally dealt with by using a compound scarf joint, where the 'ramp' of the neck piece is done at the same angle as the nut. The headstock piece just gets attached conventionally as you would for a regular scarf jointed neck, but because the joint tilts away at a slight downward angle the headstock twists in sympathy with the projected angle of the strings as they deflect away from the nut towards the tuners.

The ghetto method of doing it with ye olde router-planer is something like this:

You can use a perpendicular scarf joint if you wish, but as you've noted it looks kinda clunky with a triangular dead area behind the treble side of the nut where all the angled pieces need to kinda 'null' each other out before allowing the strings to spear off towards the tuners. I personally find this:

...too be a much more elegant solution than this:

 

right on, thank you for stewing the pot!!  last night I mocked it up and it made it a bit clearer.  

looks like the bridge - well it will just push the strings a hair off center on the saddles but totally manageable. 

The pickup spacing looks to be just fine which now thinking about it... shouldn't be a surprise cause I'm leaving them straight (doh on me).  the tonal effects: well, on the downside this will equate to essentially moving the high side of the neck pickup a bit back... effectively making it less "bassy".  Is one of my fav things about a les paul - the neck sound... but looks like the impact is in the 1/4" range so... probably not as different as a 24 fret neck - which is good.  24 fret necks are really a sound all their own in that respect and imo.  it's a good sound... just sounds surprisingly NOT like the classic lp neck tone.  the bridge pu... well we'll be effectively angling the bass side fwd... making it MORE bassy.  Similar but more modified than say a tele bridge pickup.

It has def been my experience that you can move the strings away from the center of the poles and there is some slop there but as soon as you start to get to the outter edge of the pole the volume drops off quickly - at least if it's a bar-magnet/ferrous-pole type pickup.  ferrous polers day off haha!

Using the std bridge - yeah I like the idea of not needing anything special there good point.  keeps it reasonably priced and looking pretty classic.  One unforseen issue is that the tailstop is going to have to move a bit back because it will probably cause a severe angle on the thicker strings.  Might angle it or even go with through body there - against my desire to be more conventional.  

the sympathetic neck angle - that looks i pretty cool and mostly like the head-twisting design factor of it... but it just does not look right for a headstock that is trying to be symetrical.  the schecter above - yeah it doesn't look very elegant... but in my case we're going to be marrying an ebony fretboard with an ebony headstock overlay and I suspect it's going to be much better hidden.  looks like the schecter also does NOT have the angled-angle then (hehe)?  looking at my design last night... I was thinking that I'd try to put the mid point of the nut angle on the midpoint of the multiscale difference.  this complicates the implementation as now we'd have to consider some sort of 'wedge' between the fretboard and headstock overlay on half the strings... but has the benefit of "looking" a bit less drastic.  could leave the overlay cut back at an angle there... and do similar with the 14deg cut... but showing the neck wood through the overlay may look a bit wonky.  

you guys are great muses (plural of muse?) and have helped flush out several details and for that I thank you.  

 

 

so (read on if you dare) did you know they make the worlds best hollandaise sauce in nome alaska?  apparently people come from all around the world to try it.  (I had no idea).  yeah, they say there is "no place like nome for the hollandaise"!!!!! lol hahahahahahaha ba da tssssss.

[curtisa]

15 hours ago, mistermikev said:

looks like the bridge - well it will just push the strings a hair off center on the saddles but totally manageable. 

I realise it's just a mockup, but be aware that the ToM tailpiece will need to be tilted further around anticlockwise than what your rendering indicates. Don't forget that a ToM bridge on a conventional guitar has to be naturally tilted (I dunno, 8-10 degrees?) to allow enough intonation range on those teeny little saddle adjusters. Fretfind2D doesn't include any saddle intonation compensation in its layouts, so your eventual ToM bridge rotation will be the typical angle it usually has plus whatever Fretfind2D says the bridge should be twisted to given your multiscale parameters.

 

15 hours ago, mistermikev said:

One unforseen issue is that the tailstop is going to have to move a bit back because it will probably cause a severe angle on the thicker strings.

What about angling the tail piece slightly to match? Or ditching it altogether and running string-thru body ferrules instead?

 

15 hours ago, mistermikev said:

but it just does not look right for a headstock that is trying to be symetrical

Fair enough. If it were me I'd take advantage of the fact that the multiscale guitar now has an inherent angular-ness to it and puposely design the headstock to be slightly asymmetric to complement the look. But, y'know. I isn't you

 

15 hours ago, mistermikev said:

they say there is "no place like nome for the hollandaise"!!!!!

[mistermikev]

4 minutes ago, curtisa said:

I realise it's just a mockup, but be aware that the ToM tailpiece will need to be tilted further around anticlockwise than what your rendering indicates. Don't forget that a ToM bridge on a conventional guitar has to be naturally tilted (I dunno, 8-10 degrees?) to allow enough intonation range on those teeny little saddle adjusters. Fretfind2D doesn't include any saddle intonation compensation in its layouts, so your eventual ToM bridge rotation will be the typical angle it usually has plus whatever Fretfind2D says the bridge should be twisted to given your multiscale parameters.

 

What about angling the tail piece slightly to match? Or ditching it altogether and running string-thru body ferrules instead?

 

Fair enough. If it were me I'd take advantage of the fact that the multiscale guitar now has an inherent angular-ness to it and puposely design the headstock to be slightly asymmetric to complement the look. But, y'know. I isn't you

 

further - i have always just put it centered on the intonnation line then moved the bass side back 1/8" but yes, good point... 1/8" more tilted.

string thru... yessir good option there.  angle might be another good option.  tbh seeing it all right now I'm really not happy with it and when I feel like that I usually opt to just put it down for a while and see it with fresh eyes.  

angular - oh I think that is a good option for some guitars... but the lp is just so symetrical... I do not see that working out favorably.  on a offset - absolutely would be going 180deg the other direction.  for example:

no offence to whomever made it... just looks horific to me!

[curtisa]

Agreed. That's running with the idea and cranking up the volume with no real regard to how it looks as a whole. It does look kinda daft, but it does have a pretty severe fan on it which doesn't help either. Your proposal is much more subtle and sympathetic to the Les Paul heritage. Well...ignoring the 50s hotrod airbrush flames of course...

Something a little more in keeping with the idea, but not afraid to acknowledge that there's a little bit of a deviation from the traditional. Like your seasick example this is still probably a little bit too extreme, but perhaps illustrates how it may be possible to marry the two themes without it resting too heavily in Les Paul-ness:

[mistermikev]

7 hours ago, curtisa said:

Agreed. That's running with the idea and cranking up the volume with no real regard to how it looks as a whole. It does look kinda daft, but it does have a pretty severe fan on it which doesn't help either. Your proposal is much more subtle and sympathetic to the Les Paul heritage. Well...ignoring the 50s hotrod airbrush flames of course...

Something a little more in keeping with the idea, but not afraid to acknowledge that there's a little bit of a deviation from the traditional. Like your seasick example this is still probably a little bit too extreme, but perhaps illustrates how it may be possible to marry the two themes without it resting too heavily in Les Paul-ness:

thank you curtisa for continuing to help me mold this clay.

hot rod flames...  lol.  was thinking it'd be nice to explore something painted... and I used to draw flames a lot.  not necc what i'd use for this and probably not what I'll use at all.  

looking at above... the reason this works better is they tweaked the body/headstock out of symmetry.  I think the reason the angled pickups look allright is because they aren't std pickups.  was trying to restrain the idea to not do any or that. 

[Bizman62]

How about building your own "humbuckers" out of two single coils. You know better than I how the polarities should go, but it can and has been done. That would allow for putting the pickups in an angle.

[mistermikev]

1 hour ago, Bizman62 said:

How about building your own "humbuckers" out of two single coils. You know better than I how the polarities should go, but it can and has been done. That would allow for putting the pickups in an angle.

great idea biz.  there are some 'hangups' to it... but it could work.  have thought on my next 'try' of four singles I'll flip every other pickup and put them right next to each other... but this would prevent the neck pickup from getting close to the fretboard.  Further, single coils just don't quite sound like humbuckers.  I kind of really want to stay with traditional humbuckers for a lp style... something to think about tho.   I have heard of folks buying aftermarket base plates and simply transplaning a humbucker to a new baseplate.  might look into that a bit more but it would prevent the use of the chrome covers (another fav of mine).  coule always make my own covers... but I don't think I'll be making metal covers any time soon.

[Bizman62]

18 minutes ago, mistermikev said:

 Further, single coils just don't quite sound like humbuckers.

That's what I've read the guy having done it saying. But he also said the combination sounds great so I thought why not give that option a chance.

A new baseplate sounds like a viable option as the measurements seem to match with square ones. Getting chrome covers is another thing, not easily achievable!

[mistermikev]

3 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

That's what I've read the guy having done it saying. But he also said the combination sounds great so I thought why not give that option a chance.

A new baseplate sounds like a viable option as the measurements seem to match with square ones. Getting chrome covers is another thing, not easily achievable!

right on... well my "sweet spot" strat exploration basically tried this out pretty well.  It does sound GREAT.. but it is a heavy emphasis on the single coil sound.  any sort of attempt to bridge the gap between singles and humbuckers IMO results in something that is either "not quite a single" in the case where you split humbuckers and try to approx a strat... or "not quite a humbucker" in the case where you take 4 singles and try to approx a humbucker.  For an lp style guitar... I'd rather stay on the "not quite a single" side of that paradigm.  

right on - covers... have not seen anyone do angled humbucker covers... i guess for obvious reasons.  these comments are going to stew in my brain while I finish up my current tele, move on to my fish-on bass and eventually get on to making a lp-style... so for that: I thank you (and everyone who has chimed in here).

[mistermikev]

for the record... the time is 7:46am local time, stardate dec 6, 2021... it occurs to me that std tom style bridge will not work for this without changing the multiscale offset.  I would slot in the strings where they go... but as the saddles were adjust fwd/back they would move the strings closer/farther together/apart.  I know that is basically happening with a tom bridge as is given the slight 1/8" offset from square... but I fear the much larger offset of 1/2(1/8 for low strings + 3/8 for multiscale) would be problematic.  So with that in mind I'm thinking of shifting all multiscale offset to the neck side... or at least most of it.  

was re-working this idea last night and another thing occurred to me that I am writing down now as much to remind myself as to tell... the neck/headstock transition... I've got it.  I'm going to mill the fretboard beyond the nut into the same plane as the headstock prior to adding an overlay, then I'm going to cut the overlay at the matching angle.  This way the head will be in a straight 14 degree plane... but it will "look" like it comes right up to the fretboard.  will mock up in photoshop to ensure there is enough real estate for that to happen.

also ditched my failed attempt at flames... started toying with the idea of a lovely piece of bocote I have.  this wood would only be thick enough for a drop top.  I guess not being able to really stay traditional has broken me(or you guys convinced me - you decide)... and am thinking I'll do this as a steep radius top instead of traditional carve.

 probably 1.5deg neck angle with the neck rising out of the top where it meets the body similar to a lp jr.  would be a complicated bottom side of the neck underside meeting the radius... so thinking I'll cut a "leveled" pocket for the neck -just into the top/body... enough to hide it.  will be some fairly interesting exercises in geometry/joinery there.

had been considering angled pickups for a minute but stock pu  I was looking at where one could snag multiscale baseplates to convert a pickup.  the only options I'm seeing are china made pickups and even then they are kind of expensive given I would just use the baseplate... and quite certainly not the quality steel/brass baseplates one might expect on a seymour/dimarzio... so i dunno.  

I do see that seymour  makes a replacement for the nighthawk pickup... but other than that was surprised to not find much for places to buy multiscale pickups.  anywho... just mulling it over s'more.

[Bizman62]

I can understand your concern about the TOM tilted half an inch further back on the bass side really makes a difference as the adjustment range of the blocks is another half an inch. The image below illustrates and exaggerates the issue by assuming that the normal situation would require the blocks to be in the front position while on the angled bridge the string line is drawn with the blocks being pushed all back. As you can see the issue would be bigger on the bass side. However, at the very maximum the narrowing effect would be about 3 mm for the low E at the bridge which means about 1.5 mm at the 12th fret and 2.2 mm at the last fret. And as the bridge pieces usually already are pushed a bit back on the bass side the effect would be even less. Take a ruler and see for yourself!

[mistermikev]

23 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

I can understand your concern about the TOM tilted half an inch further back on the bass side really makes a difference as the adjustment range of the blocks is another half an inch. The image below illustrates and exaggerates the issue by assuming that the normal situation would require the blocks to be in the front position while on the angled bridge the string line is drawn with the blocks being pushed all back. As you can see the issue would be bigger on the bass side. However, at the very maximum the narrowing effect would be about 3 mm for the low E at the bridge which means about 1.5 mm at the 12th fret and 2.2 mm at the last fret. And as the bridge pieces usually already are pushed a bit back on the bass side the effect would be even less. Take a ruler and see for yourself!

well in theory... if one were to get approximate positioning of the intonnation prior to cutting slots... and one would cut the slots not on center to saddle, but on location of the ideal string spacing... it should be very minimized as one should never need to use the full range of the saddle to zero in on perfect intonnation.  that said... I worry that it would be just enough that it would look wonky, worse yet it could create binding which would become a real problem.  Further... it might make the strings line up with dif overhang on the fretboard... and even if this was .5mm, my eye will be immediately drawn to it!

all that said... I think if I shift 1/4" more the the offset towards the head it will actually fix the look of the bridge vs pickups.  it's a win win.  only question is whether that xtra 1/4 is going to be problematic on the other end.  Honestly the more I think of it I think I want a perfectly perpendicular 22nd fret.  My mind can't wrap around the math that would tell me what that equates to for the angle of the bridge right now... but I'm guessing it'd be in the 1/8 to 1/4 additional over the normal 1/8" offset which should solve the issue mentioned above with certainty.

 

[curtisa]

5 hours ago, mistermikev said:

had been considering angled pickups for a minute but stock pu  I was looking at where one could snag multiscale baseplates to convert a pickup.  the only options I'm seeing are china made pickups and even then they are kind of expensive given I would just use the baseplate... and quite certainly not the quality steel/brass baseplates one might expect on a seymour/dimarzio... so i dunno.  

If you push the perpendicular fret back towards the nut, thereby straightening the bridge you can probably get away with conventional pickups mounted...well, conventionally. There'd be no real advantage in investing in angled pickups (or angling regular pickups) if the bridge was nearly back to where it was on a regular 'un-fanned' LP. That leaves your options wide open to installing any pickup you like too.

You do have your own CNC - you could mill your own baseplates  I'd suggest that transplanting regular pickup bobbins onto an angled baseplate might need some planning, as the bobbins will have their polepieces spaced assuming the strings run perpendicular to them. If the angle gets too severe the outer pole pieces will start falling out of alignment with the strings. Effectively this is the same issue as rotating the ToM tailpiece around to match the required bridge fan angle; at some point the rotation starts influencing string spacing too much. I suspect this is why companies like Bareknuckle only offer their pickups in a limited number of fan angles - it saves them having to tool up their bobbins for multiple different pole spacings and lengths.

For that reason you probably couldn't just transplant conventional pickup bobbins onto those cheap Chinese multiscale pickups either, as there's no guarantee the angled Chinese baseplates will accept straight bobbins at an angle.

 

6 hours ago, mistermikev said:

I do see that seymour  makes a replacement for the nighthawk pickup... but other than that was surprised to not find much for places to buy multiscale pickups.  anywho... just mulling it over s'more.

Pretty sure the Nighthawk pickup angles the wrong way for a multiscale build, unless you can find a left-handed version. I'm guessing that might be super-rare and if you don't like the sound of the Nighthawk pickup, super-limiting as to what the guitar could be capable of doing.

 

4 hours ago, mistermikev said:

only question is whether that xtra 1/4 is going to be problematic on the other end. 

What about reducing your fan by 1/4" to compensate? Because of the compounding nature of the fret spacings vs fret angle towards the top of the neck, you're probably not going to notice that angular difference near the pickups, plus it keeps the nut angle the same as it was before. 

[mistermikev]

2 minutes ago, curtisa said:

If you push the perpendicular fret back towards the nut, thereby straightening the bridge you can probably get away with conventional pickups mounted...well, conventionally. There'd be no real advantage in investing in angled pickups (or angling regular pickups) if the bridge was nearly back to where it was on a regular 'un-fanned' LP. That leaves your options wide open to installing any pickup you like too.

You do have your own CNC - you could mill your own baseplates  I'd suggest that transplanting regular pickup bobbins onto an angled baseplate might need some planning, as the bobbins will have their polepieces spaced assuming the strings run perpendicular to them. If the angle gets too severe the outer pole pieces will start falling out of alignment with the strings. Effectively this is the same issue as rotating the ToM tailpiece around to match the required bridge fan angle; at some point the rotation starts influencing string spacing too much. I suspect this is why companies like Bareknuckle only offer their pickups in a limited number of fan angles - it saves them having to tool up their bobbins for multiple different pole spacings and lengths.

For that reason you probably couldn't just transplant conventional pickup bobbins onto those cheap Chinese multiscale pickups either, as there's no guarantee the angled Chinese baseplates will accept straight bobbins at an angle.

 

Pretty sure the Nighthawk pickup angles the wrong way for a multiscale build, unless you can find a left-handed version. I'm guessing that might be super-rare and if you don't like the sound of the Nighthawk pickup, super-limiting as to what the guitar could be capable of doing.

 

What about reducing your fan by 1/4" to compensate? Because of the compounding nature of the fret spacings vs fret angle towards the top of the neck, you're probably not going to notice that angular difference near the pickups, plus it keeps the nut angle the same as it was before. 

i do have my own cnc... but with that you gotta make decisions on how you are gonna spend the ltd time you have... and things you WANT to do... and things you HAVE to do in order to do the things you want to do (not sure where I was going with this... I forget).  long story long, I'm out if it means setting up to run brass and then having to bend the legs and tap the feet (oddly sounds more like a dance when I put it like that)... not interested in doing that much work on something that means that little to me.  My level of interest was - I thought If I could just buy the base plate and even pay $20 ea for em... (and they were steel) it might be worth the experimentation... but if not... nah.  

chinese... well I wouldn't go that router either way... but if I had some steel ones... I think I could probably make it work.  the poles only need to stick trough the baseplate really... they don't nec have to be threaded in, they get magnetized by touching the magnet(I guess you prob know that but just being cap'n obvious).  just the four screws on the bottom would have to line up... and even them... might be able to make that work if they don't.  as I said... it'd be worth a little experimentation but not much to me... not even sure I would have gone through with it... but just something I was exploring.  

I'm very much liking the idea of putting all/most the offset to one side.  we're back to a symetrical looking lp.  Further I think it'll look pretty cool if the headstock overlay works out the way I envision without going higher than the nut.

nighthawk - lol, "sir I need a LEFT handed nighthawk pickup".  did not put 2 + 2 together there.  I have no idea what those sound like... really just saw the pic and went "well I guess that MIGHT be an option".  if it's seymour it can't be all bad but yeah, I have boxes of pickups and I feel the need to draw on that.  still, good point and thank you for making it.

reducing - well I could do that... but 24.625-25.5 is already a pretty small difference.  I think I'll see if I can make the headstock overlay work there... if that doesn't work out then I that will be a good fall back point.  

thank you again for your thoughtful input.  very much appreciate it!!!

[mistermikev]

ok so for better or worse this is where I am at.  I took all your advice... and used most of it.  I tried the string thru but I need that big fat black parallel piece to ballance things out on the left side.  setup a mockup using my piece of bocote... has some lovely strange grain... but is a bit fuzzy right there right now cause I sloppily (is that a word?) started filling the crack with black ca glue.  will further fill with black epoxy... just wanted to prevent any more checking in the meantime.  yup, big ole check... but when I saw this grain I just had to have it.  have got enough that I could do a fretboard and tried that... but that black in the grain just was calling me for an ebony fretboard.  

Partially taking your advice, I changed my minimum scale length from 24.625 to 24.75 to make up 1/8 inch... and created a fretboard with sm specs but the parallel fret being the 22nd which means 3/4" difference between top of fretboard and bottom at the headstock.  

so did some math... or rather used a rise/run calculator to determine that the ratio is .249... so multiply that by max run of .74 and we get .1875.  so... if I start my 14 degree angle at the backside of the nut... the base of my headstock prior to an overlay will rise .1875 as it proceeds back towards the nut from the start of the 14deg angle.  so... what this means is my overlay would have to be around 1/16"... so we'd basically be at the heigh of the middle/top-arc of the fretboard when the top of the overlay reaches the back of the nut.  should be pretty good.  can always file in a slight curve if it looks wonky but I think it'll be fine.

bridge is placed at intonnation line then moved 1/8" back so should be where it goes.

once concern is bending this bocote over a radius... given it's already got a check in it.  hopefully filling with epoxy will strengthen it... bocote appears to be some pretty gol darn hard wood so... might need a lot of bending relief depending on what the final radius is.  don't think I'll try a bell curve on this one.  

anywho, if I haven't overstayed my welcome yet.. would love your honest impressions/thoughts.

[curtisa]

Looks better. Still think you're missing a trick not taking advantage of an asymmetric headstock, but can fully appreciate that's not your design goal in this case.

Errmmmm...You apparently have 14 frets to the octave...

[mistermikev]

5 hours ago, curtisa said:

Looks better. Still think you're missing a trick not taking advantage of an asymmetric headstock, but can fully appreciate that's not your design goal in this case.

Errmmmm...You apparently have 14 frets to the octave...

doh, my inlays!!  good catch.  

headstock... hmmm... well I have to admit that you had me half convinced to skew the whole guitar... but then it occurred to me how I might do the headstock w/o the compound angle and the challenge of that kind of grabbed hold of my attention.  not that a compound angle wouldn't be a challenge... i hereby reserve the right to change my mind on that before "go time"!!