Need help with guitar plans

[Jivin]

Hi,

I'm in the process of planning a bolt-on explorer style guitar, and ive hit a bit of a snag even before ive put pen to paper

Ive had heaps of time to think as ivw gone through other smaller projects, so i know what i want, and in traditional explorer style, I am going with a tune-o-matic bridge. Rather than shying away from it and just recessing the bridge, I dont see any issue with making the neck angle, however with regard to drawing my plans, i'm having trouble accurately representing what i want to build without actually having bought most of hte materials...

Now, I may be wrong here, so by all means correct me if i am please!

Im assuming there is a height difference between the bridge and the nut, hence the need for a neck angle in the first place right? Well for this project im planning on buying a neck from warmoth, but i dont have it (or anything yet), so im at a bit of a loss as to how im meant to draw an accurate representation of the guitar so i can figure out the neck angle without knowing the height of the bridge and nut.

I could have sworn id seen people building guitar bodies/necks and buying the hardware later... so surely im just missing something?

sorry for the long post!

any help would be appreciated, as i would really like to draw some good plans before i start.

- Dan

[rhoads56]

You need hardwares sizes, either from buying the hardware first, measuring another guitar with the exact smae brand/model hardware, or finding dimensions on the web, and hoping they havent changed the specs

[GregP]

People who make their plans before buying hardware probably either have a reference piece, or at least the measurements lying around somewhere. And if they're making their own neck, they can know in advance that the heel, for example, will be 7/8" thick plus 1/4" for the fretboard.

If you've ordered a neck, I would probably be tempted to wait until it arrives, but that's just me. I'm a very visual learner, so I need to SEE the stuff right in front of me before I can do anything with it.

Greg

[Jivin]

yeah, im a bit the same as you GregP, but hte problem is im gonna be ordering the guitar from the US, and im in Australia, and it is going to take me a bit of time to get the cash!

Oh well, i guess i can start off and just change my drawings later when i have the gear.

Does anyone give me some measurements of a TonePros TOM bridge?

[Morben Guitars]

After a number of mistakes in previus projects, I've now vowed to not even start thinking about the guitar until every last piece is on the table. You'd be surprised how much trouble a small oversight can create.

[toddler68]

Jivin, I was just on the Stew-Mac site the other day and they have a beautiful detailed drawing of both versions of the TonePros TOM's. Just navigate to the TonePros TuneOmatic bridge section. It gives you the string spread, saddle arc, post centers and all that and under the SPECS tab they have the great drawing with dimensions. Check here: Stew-Mac TonePros

Hope this helps.