How do you give a neckthrough guitar a neck angle

[aeli]

How? Or do you actually need it?

I'm using tuneomatic.

[krizalid]

Steven Kersting

i think his telehawk should answer your question.

[goth_fiend]

if you dont do a neck angle with that, your going to have your action about a 1/2 inch of the fretboard, do you like that idea?

but in order to make a neckthru with a angle you have to calculate the angle first off, on a 25 1/2" scale i believe its a 5/8" drop at the 16th fret, but can anybody confirm this?

also its extremly imortant to have a full sized drawing when building a neckthru for reference and measurements, better safe then sorry.

[asm]

yeah, can someone clear up this area for us? i needs to know too.

[darren wilson]

You can recess the tune-o-matic into the body to get the action lower without having to have an angled neck.

[MzI]

ill take a stab at this one, to angle your neck thru make your neck with the extension that goes into the body, take your two wings or sides and glue them onto the neck at an angle specific to your set up usually around 2-3 degrees, as said before it is important to have a full size cross section drawing of the guitar to reference that way you can draw lines on the pieces of wood to make sure everything comes out correctly and you dont hafta scrap the project

MzI

[Devon Headen]

I wouldn't glue the wings up any differently. Just plane the angle in. Draw the angle with a protractor onto the neck, then plane to the line.

[aeli]

Thank you very much. I probably evaded a big mistake by asking this. I might now be switching to tremolo.

[Jivin]

Most people seem to be very very scared of doing neck angles. Maybe a nice tutorial on setting a neck angle for a TOM bridge (or any bridge that requries it really) with piccies by a seasoned builder would go down well?

[diehardcrew]

Not that I speak from experience, but I was going to leave the surfaced side of my neck blank flat, and draw/cut my headstock angle (like 12 degrees) and the body angle (about 2 degrees) away from the flat neck.

I figured this would cut down on wood waste (oh man there's like 2 bad puns in there). So this would give me a neck angle of 2 degrees but I'd just cut the body end if that makes sense.

I could be wrong, but I think if more people realized this, (that you don't have to cut the whole angle down the length of the neck), they wouldn't be so hesitant? Then again since my bridge is only like 1/2" tall, I was thinking of just recessing it a couple of hairs. We'll see.

But I think on a taller, more traditional bridge it may look funny to be recessed much.

[Southpa]

What a coincidence. I just did that very cut the other day, but I'm not sure you want to venture into my methods and madness. I got a 4" X 2" X 39" block of mahogany. I assembled the wings and then positioned my SG style pickguard and fretboard and determined where I wanted the 3 degree angle to start (roughly between fretboard and pickguard). I then drew the line after measuring the angle with a protractor.

OK, this part is not for the squeamish and I'm sure some of you will wince. I went into the back yard and set the block edgewise on a perfectly flat table. I then laid enough timber alongside to reach the same height. On top of that timber I clamped a low fence which was the same width as my er....Skilsaw (blade to edge of platform). ZIIIIIIPPP! I cut a 2" deep slot on one side then flipped the wood over and reset my fence and ZZIIIIIIIP! cut the other side. Of course, the two cuts didn't meet perfectly so I got my block plane out and went at 'er. The most important part of all this is ensuring that your sides and back are square. You have to keep checking for squareness with a carpenter's square as you plane the top. I also kept checking with a straightedge along the length and across the top. Then I finished up with my DA (dual action) orbital sander with 36 grit paper.

I'm not sure if I'm getting better at this (2nd time I cut a neck angle this way) or just plain lucky. But the end result is very satisfactory. Its a LOT easier to shape your neck before attaching the wings. I will go as far as cutting the sides down, scarf joining headstock, routing truss rod slot, installing truss rod and fretboard and even fretting the fretboard before gluing the wings on. I'll shape the back of the neck and between the horn joints afterwards. Like I said, its MY madness and I can do what I want with it.