Blackdog

Hello people. I just bought a couple of pieces of curly cherry that would make a nice blank for a solidbody back. I wanted to know what can I expect tonally from this wood. I have had some experience with mahoganies and Korina, how will cherry compare to that in terms of tone and workability ?? I also got a perfectly quartered blank of zebrano that would make a good one-piece neck. Is this any good for this use ?? Any experiences to share about zebrano as a neck ?? Tone/workability ?? So far I have finished one-piece necks in mahogany, maple, rosewood and korina. How do you think zebrano would compare ?? (Mind you, I don't necessarily intend to used them in the same build) Any help is appreciated. Thanks a lot in advance.

Hello Hector !! Not sure I understand the question... The neck extends all the way into the neck pickup cavity, there's significantly more contact area in this design than on the doublecuts I have been building. This neck joint idea is the same applied here: Even though the heel progression is a bit more extreme on this build (from the 15-16th fret on the bass side to the 21st on the treble side, vs. 16th to 19-20th on the previous), you can see that he pocket was pretty big in the previous build. I don't expect it to be a problem now.

Some more progress pictures: The slot for the Truss-Rod and the CF reinforcements have been routed:

Some more pictures of the progress of this build. A couple of pictures to illustrate the top angle. I've been doing this since the second build but never took a straight side-view picture before. And some views of the belly carve. All rasps and sandpaper.

Yes, I'm curious too !!! But for the deep carve at the waists I don't think there are many alternatives to the french-curve scraper...

I'm not sure if I understand what you're asking... The way I do the carving is a succession of several steps. First, with the edge follower adapter on the router, I route a square lip (8mm wide) around the body to leave a clean, even thickness of maple at the edges (I use 6mm). After that I route a round channel, 1.5-2mm deep, all around and slightly towards the center of the body. So the edges are some 4mm flat, then they dip a couple of mm, and they go up again to the full thickness of the top. Next step is to cut the angle of the top. I have used 17-19mm tops so far, and I slant the top from right in front of the bridge to the horns. I usually leave 3-4mm of maple (above faux-binding level) at the horn's tip. You can see pics of these pre-carving steps in the link to my sixth build in my sig. After that I cut the neck pocket and pickup cavities, and then I carve. Hope it helps.

It has wider frequency range then mahogany and rosewood - you'll get good lows and very good mid's. If you add bright sounding wood you will get "rich tone" as i name this. That's why i'm using padauk and ebony here. Some people say that if you combine different sounding wood in the neck it won't sound as a cross between those woods. But have an opposite opinion. I've tapped the wenge and padauk billets and the glued neck really have mixed tone. Thanks again, I don't know about laminated necks combining the tone characteristics, as all my commercial guitars are one piece necks and I'm yet to finish any of the two laminated necks I have on-going... But I'm willing to believe so. And I do know for a fact that the wood (tone) of the neck plays a great role in the final tone of the instrument, I'd guess that for a neck through it would be even more dramatic. Great instrument you have there !! Will follow this thread with a lot of interest.

Thanks for the reply !!! Tell me about the sound of a wenge neck... How does it compare to the basic woods like maple, mahogany or rosewood ??

That looks very clean, congrats !!! BTW, a couple of questions: What are the dotted lines on the sides of the body ?? i have a wenge neck blank that I haven't used yet. Did you find it too hard to carve ??

I never tried with a spokeshave. As a matter of fact I don't have one... I always removed the bulk of the wood with an angle grinder with a sandpaper disk (with this one I also used flat and rounded chisels, the angle grinder is annoyingly dirty !!) and then used scrapers. For a wood soft as this one a cork block with grit 60 sandpaper also proved very handy.

We finally managed to find the time for the 12th fret and TRC inlays. So I could fret the board. When I planed the back of the headstock it ended up a bit too thin, so I made up some thickness by adding a relatively thick faceplate (3mm). This meant that a 2.5mm TRC would conflict with the strings coming out of the nut towards the tuners. So the TRC was recessed into the faceplate for this one. I like the looks, maybe I'll keep on doing this in the future. Now the rather complex inlay on the top remains to be done. After that is pore filling, final sanding and finish. Let's see how nice the top of this one looks under a finish. I have some more of this sapele, I may build me a singlecut sister to this one. I'm thinking IRW neck, 22 frets and P90/HB combo, with a similar fretboard and related inlay designs...

Thanks for the nice comments, The knobs came without the inlays. I did those a while back, when I was doing the inlays myself. Then, for the guitar building phase, my wife took over the design and implementation of the inlay work. The body inlays are her idea. The design in my second build is an evolution of this design. Now she created a new art-nouveau design that will grace my Sapele topped doublecut. But now you get the already inlaid RW knobs from several places. Ebay included.

Thank you, Andronico. It wasn't that much of a risk, I think. These days I feel reasonably confident carving a neck. And fretting doesn't feel that frightening anymore... Of course there's always the added discomfort of doing all that without removing the neck. The best thing is that she now plays beautifully, and I actually feel like taking her out of the case for a spin quite often. It was annoying before, because it didn't feel comfortable to play but still sounded very well. Something went really well with this guitar soundwise. It has a ringing and a richness and complexity of tone that the others I built so far don't quite have. I believe is the comparatively flexible maple neck, and the very simple construction. Next one-piece neck I build for myself I'll leave the CF reinforcement out to see if I get a bit of that lively tone.

Since I finished Cassandra I have been debating between reworking Clotilde and not touching her at all. The simple fact is that Cassandra was a far superior instrument, and not because it’s more ornate, but because it benefited from the little already acquired experience. Clotilde was never leaving the case for several reasons: the neck profile was too clubby, didn’t feel right. The fretting was not at the same level of precision of my later jobs, and it had some buzzing and fret-outs very difficult to correct with just a setup. To make matters worse the finish wore out too quickly, it was not looking nor feeling very nice anymore. On the other hand, she was my very first. And, in that context, I was proud of the result. It has historic significance to me. Well, I finally took a decision: without changing it into a different guitar (that would be betraying the spirit that drove the build) I made all the necessary corrections to make it a better guitar (and a few small cosmetic enhancements consistent with the original design). It was finished (again) in February. The functional modifications: The neck was completely recarved. Now it has a much sleeker profile, along the lines of the PRS wide-fat (yes, it was much fatter than that). The volute was re-carved to look and feel better, same was done to the heel. The frets were removed to re-plane and re-radius the fretboard. It was then re-fretted to a much better quality standard (experience pays off). The bridge was changed to a Pigtail aluminum wrap-around, with tone-pros posts. This bridge is fully intonatable and has a better string spread than the old Wilkinson. The tradeoff is that it is a bit taller. This and the slight loss of fretboard meat while reworking it made it desirable to increase the height adjustment range a bit. Instead of re-setting the neck with a steeper angle I opted for recessing the bridge a couple of millimeters. This proved a lot easier and safer, and it still looks great. The cosmetic modifications: I added a multi-laminate veneer to the headstock face. I never quite liked the way the long posts of the locking Grovers looked on the rather thin headstock. The added laminations increased the thickness of the headstock and added consistency to the looks, as it was made out of the same mahogany used for the body. The back control cover was redone in solid mahogany, again the same one used for the body. The belly-carve was made wider and deeper. I made some flame maple P90 covers and bought flame maple knobs to replace the plastic ones, in the end I found it looks better with the darker rosewood knobs. I bought these knobs and modded one of them with five inset bronze dots on the side, just like the side dots on the neck, to mark the 6 positions of the rotary switch. I have now finished the guitar in Danish Oil. This keeps the oiled wood appearance, but looks significantly better than the Plastic Coating I used before, and hopefully will last longer (it's easier to maintain, anyway). As a welcomed addition the Danish Oil brought up some nice diffused flaming covering the whole body that was completely invisible under the PC. Danish also polishes very well, and the complete guitar, neck and fretboard have now a nice mild gloss. So let me introduce to you the same old Clotilde again, but all new and shiny:

This is the first guitar I'm building entirely based on a customer's specs. It's a rather traditional solidbody guitar, based on this design: Specs: Solid white limba body, 36mm thick. Deep carved flame maple top, 18mm thick. One piece Korina neck, 13degs tilt-back headstock with a rosewood faceplate. CF reinforcements and HotRod. Flame maple bound IRW fretboard, 25" scale and 22 frets. Single 12th fret inlay. Adjustable wraparound aluminum bridge, locking vintage style tuners. P90 on the neck slot and humbucker at the bridge. 3-way Toggle, 2 volumes 2 tones. Finish will be nitro, natural on back and trans-black/charcoal on the top. Some pics of what I've done so far:

I use a round nose bit with a top mounted bearing to follow a template. This way you can make recesses of any shape. The rest is sanding.

Niiiiice !!! Really nice !!!! Can I ask for pictures of the back ?? I'd like to see what the heel an the mahogany look like. Congratulations, it's a very classy instrument !!!

Thank you guys !!! These have all been quite interesting replies. I appreciate the inputs very much. I see a lot of common ground, I never thought about the after sales support, great info. I agreed in principle to take just this one commission, and given my very limited experience I want both of us (customer and me) to take it as a shared adventure. I decided to do this one at my cost because I also welcome the flexibility of failing to fulfill without any consequences. I took good care to steer the specs a little to a guitar I would be perfectly comfortable to keep for myself. And it would also be easy to sell to someone else if it comes to that. But this shared experiment ends with this build. If I decide to take more commissions after this one I'll definitely use something like what you have explained here. Many thanks again.

Hello again, I have accepted "in principle" my first real commission. Being the first ever and considering my obviously limited experience, I agreed with the customer the following safeguard conditions: 1) We agree on the specs, tentative delivery timeframe and final price. 2) I build the guitar 100% at my own cost. 3) when finished the customer has first rights (and moral duty) to buy it at the agreed price. 4) if the guitar is not to his entire satisfaction, I'll take it back and reimburse the money. As general terms I believe it's reasonable and along the lines of some suggestions I read here in the past. The price is also quite reasonable (considering the amount of hours, even on the cheap side). My question now is how to handle the payment. I am thinking something based on mutual trust like: Customer transfers 100% of the money, I ship the guitar, customer has a trial period of say 1 or 2 weeks, If not satisfied customer ships the guitar back, I receive the guitar, check that everything is in good order, I reimburse 100% of the money. Not sure how to handle shipping fees. What can you suggest ?? Many, many thanks for the help.

There are probably a thousand ways of doing it, this is the way I do it: 1- I do the black (according to your drawing) first, a safe removal of the bulk of the wood 2- I drill reference holes at the center of the pots/switch position. About 3mm diameter. 3- With these reference centered holes I do the recess on the top the way I like them to be. Depending on the position on the top each control can be different. 4- With a 17mm forstner bit I do a little recess on the top for the nut and washer of the pots (this step is optional). I like the knobs sitting low. 5- with a 25mm diameter forstner bit I deepen the cavity from the back (the red in your drawing), always centered with the reference holes, to the get proper thickness for the threaded part of the pot to come through. The forstner works well for the pots, with a 90 degree toggle switch you have to route the back accordingly. 6- with a round-nose bit and a template centered on the guiding holes I do the dishing on the top. 7- I drill the final diameter holes for the pots and switch.

I see what you mean, and I fully agree. I was thinking of doing something for my own use, but then again, I only paid 16 euros for this blank, probably not even worthy for personal use either (I want my own guitars to last too !!). I'm already looking for a quartered blank for the commission. Thanks.

Thanks for the replies and the pointer. I'm buying from Europe, so I don't know if it would be practical. I'm in the process of checking my usual local sources. And about this blank I have: If I use it for a laminated neck (for myself), for the sides with opposed grain orientation, with a center piece of quartered flamed maple or rosewood. Would it still be a no-go ?? Thanks.

Hello people, So far when I built a one piece neck I always took special care to choose a perfectly quartered blank. Now I have to build one for my first "customer". It's a one piece Korina neck that will have a HotRod and twin CF rods at the sides. the frertboard will be RW. But the grain of the wood in the blank I have, while perfectly straight all along the blank, is at about 45 degrees and not perpendicular to the fretboard gluing surface. I could laminate it in three pieces and reverse the grain orientation on one, but this is finished natural and the customer wants one piece. So, will it still be safe or should I try to get a new, quarter-sawn, blank ?? Many thanks in advance for sharing your experience.

Wellcome Richie !! Are you talking about the belly carve ?? This one was done with just rasps and 60grit sandpaper on a cork block. Another pic. Just draw your "limit" lines and file with the rasp held at the proper angle. Then smooth things out with the sandpaper.

Thanks for the nice words, people. I like how it's coming. I used to employ the angle grinder and scrapers for the top carving. And a sanding flap attachment for the drill that is just great for shaping concave surfaces like the lower cutaway scoop and the belly carve. It is also fantastic for shaping the heel and the neck-to-headstock/volute area. But the big problem with these is the amazing generation and liberal distribution of tons of powder-fine sawdust !!! For this build I started with the angle grinder, but quickly went to do the rough wood removal by other methods, like a couple of god rasps, the good old chisels, and 40 and 60 grit sandpaper on cork blocks. Then the sanding flap attachment just to finish the shapes and the scrapers for the final touches. In this way I've been able to cut the dust problem to a fraction of what it used to be. It's slower, but there's also less risk of removing too much by accident. I think I'm going to adopt this alternate method, the final results are equally good. Or maybe buy a CNC mahine... But no planes for the carving. I don't have any of these violin maker planes. Maybe I should try them...