Blackdog

If I may add a comment from my very limited experience I would like to say that the reinforcement aspect would probably the least of my concerns. If you decide to keep the ears and go for the proposed solution of adding wood at the sides of the neck you'll have to deal with a much wider piece for cutting the profile on the saw. It's going to be like 10-15cm wide. It's a lot more convenient to work with a narrower piece of wood, like the original blank without the ears. Just remember that you already had problems with the verticality of the cut when you shaped your body. Cutting such a wide piece of wood might be very problematic in the end. My vote goes to removing the ears and work confortably with the original blank and your template. Then add the ears with the grain orientation of your choice at a later stage. When the solution to a problem is potentially more problems, then maybe it's not a solution after all.

Thanks for the replies.... Yes, I diluted the stain a lot. I actually used a few drops in 50ml of alcohol. I think I'll use shellac for the finish of the neck and body and spray some coats of nitro on the fretboard from a rattle can I already have. So the shellac should bring more of the flame out then.

For the neck pocket vs. neck heel angle debate have a look at this thread. I believe the jigs involved are also mentioned there. Regarding the top angle, if you're going to use a hardtail I would start the angle just behind the bridge. This way your bridge sits in the same plane of the pickups and is only affected by the neck angle. If you're building a tremolo guitar, I would start the top angle just in front of the bridge mounting screws. In this way the bridge sits parallel to the back of the guitar and you don't have to deal with strange parallax issues when routing the springs cavity. I don't have any personal experience on this, it's just a thought. My next build will have a tremolo and i will angle the top. And this is what "in principle" I plan to do.

Yet another small step for a man..... Well, almost a giant leap for THIS man. Finalized the shaping of the neck back. I'm really proud how well it feels on the hand. BTW, has anybody used this tool when carving the neck ?? I think it's called a Profile Gauge or something. Never seen it mentioned before, but it's great for checking the progress while carving the neck, determining the simmetry and would be invaluable in reproducing an existing neck profile. Highly recommended and 13 euros at KarWei.... Also tried some light tinting of the wood. I was after enhancing the flame a little. I used SMD ColorTone Concentrated Liquid Stain, dilluted in alcohol. Then sanded to get rid of most of the color. But the results were less than spectacular. The neck ended up slightly tinted all around and only a marginal enhancement of the flame. What did I do wrong ?? Now Before Additionaly the fretboard has been cambered quite successfully and I have started my first ever fret job !!! I used the sanding block and the fret caul set on the drill press from SMD. The frets were radiused with the jig sold by ebay seller zdguitars, great stuff and much cheaper than SMD's. So far looking great: Tomorrow I'll clip and file the fret ends... Looks like I'll be glueing the neck to the body this weekend.

With respect to the neck angle there seems to be a forum preference and consesus that it is better to angle the neck pocket and keep the neck heel parallel with the fretboard. FWIW PRS angles the neck heel instead of the neck pocket. As a matter of fact your templates reflect that. But be careful, the angle of the template may not be the angle you'll need in the end. If you do not angle the top it will definitely be much less. I ended up with 2 degrees neck angle for my build.

Let me try to explain what I mean by angled top. You are after the PRS general shape, so you've probably noticed that a roughly pear-shaped central area of the top, remains essentially flat after the carving. This is where the pickups and the bridge seat. Well, in a PRS this flat area is angled with respect to the flat back of the body (as in not parallel). On a maple-on-mahogany PRS, like the Customs or McCartys, the thickness of the mahogany back is constant all around the guitar while the maple cap tapers towards the neck joint area with it's highest point about where the bridge is. Other carved-top designs like the Hamer Studios and Artists have the flat area of the top parallel to the back. The Les Paul is somewhat of a compromise as most of the top angle is where the fretboard sits on the top (following the neck angle) and the rest of the central area is roughly parallel to the back. I didn't angled the top on mine, and I had to file down the top of the horns to make them look balanced. You can actually do it both ways, it's pretty much a matter of taste. The only functional consideration is that IF you angle the top, then you have to reference your neck angle to the top plane. Hope this explanation makes sense... Has anybody got any pictures to illustrate this ??

Great looking wood you have there !! It's going to look killer !! I'm working on a somewhat similar project and it's also my first. I did the rough cut with a jigsaw, so I left plenty of material for final shaping with the router. I didn't know that the bandsaw would not keep the cut vertical, that's a pity. Still it doesn't look too serious from your picture, it should even out nicely. I guess next time you'll want to leave some more wood... Remember, this is a substractive process: you shape by removing wood. You can always remove some more if necessary, the opposite is a lot more difficult. When I was about to start mine I was also exploring the possibility of doing a simpler carving on the top (like the Mira) or some sort of clever bevels like the SE Singlecut. In the end I went for a full carving, and it was not as difficult as I thought it would be. And it was quite fun too. Please carve that top !! That straight grained wood it's going to look killer with all the curves. Are you going to angle the top ?? How much "top" are you going to set aside for carving ?? I didn't angle the top on mine and left 13mm for the carving. I found that it's a little too much, Next time I'll angle the top and set aside maybe 11mm at the highest point, it's going to be easier still to carve and still look nice and sexy. For the headplate I would not use the grain running perpendicular. It will look odd. Maybe just settle for a truss rod cover made of limba, with the grain properly oriented. It is rather great when it's no longer a plank and starts looking like a guitar, right ?? More of these satisfaction moments ahead: when you see it carved, when you fit the neck for the first time, when you feel the carved profile of your neck... And many more small milestones along the way, I'm sure. Enjoy it !!

Are you sure that the hollowbody is the same thickness of the mccarty? archtop if you compare to this one (which is a custom, not a mccarty, but it looks way more than 3mm. custom What I was trying to say is that the Mac is 3mm thicker than the Custom. Using your pic of the Custom as reference, the jackplate top edge would be at the same level of the maple/mahogany transition on the Mac (I'l looking at mine right now). And the Archtop was the thickest of the bunch, now discontinued I believe. I have the Hollowbody II which is a lot thinner than the Archtop. In the HBII the mahogany "middle" is approx the same thickness as the mahogany back of the Mac. The HBII has a maple carved top and a maple carved back. Mine seen here with a Les Paul.

A few more figures: The top at its thickest (about 10mm behind the bridge) is about 19mm. It tapers down to 13mm at the point where the neck inserts into the body. The exposed maple at the edges (faux binding) is about 6mm from horn to horn. The mahogany back of the McCarty is around 30mm thick, around 3mm thicker than the Custom. The neck extends almost to the end of the neck PU pocket. Even though the top is angled, the Mac also has a shallow (around 2 degrees) neck angle (due to the height of the fixed bridge). And one very interesting thing is that PRS angles the heel of the neck. Visual inspection of the rather longish exposed neck heel reveals this. The pickup pockets are shallower than those in a Les Paul, for instance. And their pickups have shallower "ears" and use shorter height adjustment screws. I believe they do this to make them fit in their slimmer guitars (Standards and CEs) with tremolo cavities on the back. Fitting standard pickups in those can sometimes be problematic. You should probably make the cavities of standard depths to accomodate standard pickups easily, there's plenty of room with the Mac dimensions. The bridge is PRS made. You can buy it from any PRS distributor. I have both models, the adjustable one in a Hollowbody II and the fixed one in the Mac, and I have found that the fixed bridge, when used with normal string sets, intonates just fine. The ABM company in germany makes a very good quality aluminum lookalike, I don't know if they are available in the US: http://www.abm-mueller.com/index2.html BTW: The hollowbody has exactly the same body siluette than the Macs or Customs. The mahogany mid portion of a Hollowbody II is 30mm thick just like the Mac. The addition of a 13mm maple carved back makes it thicker overall.

As far as I know the FB radius of the Les Paul (and of basically all Gibson electrics to date) has always been 12".

Thanks for the encouraging words. The "McCarty" cover was there just for the mockup. The official TRC is a design consistent with the body and 12th fret inlays: We have it already inlaid in rosewood and maple, still uncut. We'll see wich one looks better on this guitar. BTW, does anybody know what's the wood used for the headstock veneer ?? I bought the neck blank with the veneer already there and I have no clue... The neck ended very well aligned with the centerline of the body. String geometry shouldn't be a problem and alignment with the PU polepieces should be quite good. Anyway, I'll drill the holes for the bridge posts (a Wilkinson wrap-around BTW) after I have glued the neck on.

Progress report. The fingerboard has been slotted. This proved to be more delicate than I had anticipated. The FB was already glued to the neck and the whole neck already tapered, but I have a nice steel ruler with marks on both edges, so by drawing the centerline on the fretboard and aligning the ruler's marks to that (on both sides) I could draw the slots positions perpendicular to the centerline without much trouble. All the slot marks were measured from the nut (to avoid error propagation) and doublechecked against a pre-slotted FB I have for a future build. The neck blank's back was fortunately still parallel to the FB surface, so clamping the neck was not an issue. To guide and support the saw perpendicular to the FB I cut a 6cm piece of an "L" shaped aluminum beam that I clamped on the FB with the corner edge aligned to each position and to the centerline. All in all I believe it ended up OK. Next I tapered the neck back to the desired depths at the 1st and 12th frets using the router sled I made specifically for working on this neck. This jig proved to be invaluable for all the work on this neck. I was pleased to find out that I still had a little extra wood to work out a small volute. I also shortened the heel and drum-sanded the transition. I put the side dots too. I made these out of 2mm brass wire I had around. Not terribly visible, but they look classy. Finally got to try the carving. I have to agree with Mattia and Mickguard, this is really fun stuff. It's not yet finished, but pretty close. With the neck tapered to the proper depths I drawed a centerline along the back and removed wood from the sides leaving the pencilmark undisturbed. I run roundover router bits along the edges first (9.5mm and 12.7mm) to remove some of the bulk, then it was all rasps, files, scrapers and sandpaper. It took me 3x 1 1/2 hrs sessions to get to this point: Overall neck. Head end. Heel end. As I said, it will probably require one more carving session, but this is starting to look like a proper guitar even from the backside: Next steps: Radiusing the fretboard, and we'll see if the 12th fret inlay survives the camber (it's 1.5mm pearl, it's going to be close). And fretting !!! This is going to be an interesting one too. Thanks again to everyone at this forum for the help, either by answering my questions or by the enourmous amount of good advice that's in this wonderful forum !!

I got some great advice from our fellow member Mattia on how to use some maple veneer to solve this problem and I'm very happy to say that now I have a "close to perfect" fit. You can actually hold the guitar from the neck at any position (even horizontal) and the neck will not even move. And it's perfectly aligned too. So I'm on with the next challenge: to saw the fret slots on the fingerboard. I can already see that the tasks related to the neck require something that wasn't quite that critical when making the body: PRECISION. I'm starting to think that the most important part of this craft is to make the necks... A good neck could be attached to a toilet seat (provided the neck pocket and bridge position are accurate) and it would still be a playable guitar !!! I even think it has been done.... For future builds I will concentrate on making a good neck first. Then make a good neck pocket on the barely shaped body blank, and take it from there. Having to deal with a neck pickup cavity and a less than perfectly flat top (after carving) generated most of the problems I had.

I get the idea, it makes great sense. I think I'll give it a try. Being basically template guided is much more versatile than the simpler round bit approach. Thanks for sharing.

Great page that one !! Of course, the bridge I'm using isn't there (wilkinson wrap-around), but I can surely work it out from the given info. Thanks !!

Scale length = [distance from nut edge (fingerboard side, obviously!) to centre of 12th fret wire] x 2 I would go with that instead of trying to guess which Floyd saddle was in the right place!! May I ask the opposite question (I hope it's useful info for the OP too) ?? By your definition above I know where the theoretical scale end lies on the body (it's a line parallel to the frets and nut). Now where do you position your bridge around this ?? Are there any rules as to how to distribute saddle travel span around the theoretical "zero" for the different strings ?? TIA

Some warnings first. You need to know if the switch on the panel is carrying any serious DC voltage. Or if it is directly in the signal path somehow. My guess is that it simply activates some switching electronics. So none of the above would be a problem, but you need to find out. Then if your plan is to simply wire a footswitch in parallel with the existing switch it might work. You also need to determine is if any of the wires at the switch is connected to chassis ground. It might not be the case. So the safest woud be to run a stereo shielded cable from the switch (If you'll put a jack in the backpanel, use a stereo jack) and run the hot wires to the footswitch keeping them isolated from chassis ground. Just use the chassis ground to shield the whole thing. I hope this explanation makes sense... Of course if you happen to have the schematic PM me and I'll have a look at it for you.

Thank you, Erik !!

This is pretty much what the production rosewood Tele was. I used to own one. The neck was constructed like a maple Fender neck, but in rosewood. One piece, truss rod mounted from the back and a walnut skunk stripe. The body was made of two hollowed halves of rosewood with a thin maple leaf in between, like the Norlin style pankake Les Paul bodies. I think that the original one played by George Harrison at the roof concert wasn't even hollowed.... Mine looked terrific, but weighted a ton and was pretty much dead sounding. But this only proves that it might not be a good platform for a Tele, other designs might work better...

OK, some progress has been made... Another... The body and 12th fret inlays have been designed and executed by my wife (but I taught her how to do it, shhhh....) The body inlay... A complementing design is going to grace the truss rod cover. Also the neck heel has been finished, and the neck pocket has been routed on the body. This went less than great. I had the problem of having routed the neck pickup cavity weeks ago. My follower router bit is only 1"long, and so routing the neck pocket was more problematic: it ended having some 0.3 mm gap all around with respect to the neck heel. This is a major setback. So I'm basically looking at making a new neck altogether to properly fit the existing pocket. This one will have to go on another build. It is unfortunate as the idea of the flame/birdseye maple neck had grown on me, it definitely looked nice, now I'll have go back to the more traditional mahogany/rosewood combo. But I'm learning a lot after all...

Yes, originally from Belgrano, Buenos Aires. Moved to The Netherlands 6 years ago.

I just came across this thread now that it's been bumped up (I wasn't a wannabee builder back in February). Sounds like a very nice project, good luck with it !! Regarding the hardware, have you tried the guys at Fusion Musical in Sarmiento and Parana ?? They specialize in parts and hardware, they migth have bridges and things for 8-stringers... So there's a "De Castro Custom 8" pickup !!! Amazing !! When I met Adolfo years ago he was the resident luthier/repairman at the Gibson distributor in Buenos Aires... Great guy BTW.

Thanks for the replies so far. Thanks Erik for a very detailed and specific procedure, sounds like it is what I'll be doing. This fretboard is too beautiful to let it get dirty. So only 50% there, right ?? Oh well... Erik: if you don't mind me asking: how long do I need to let rattle-can poly cure between coats (before sanding) ??

By a twist of destiny I ended up having a maple on maple neck for my first build (mahogany body) that will have to finish somehow. I don't have any spraying equipment, I was originally thinking about lightly staining the body and spraying some clear coats from a spray-can. I'm going for a satin type of finish, and was planning on leaving the grain of the mahogany unfilled as I like the look of the pores showing a little. My original plan was to do pretty much the same with the neck (which was always going to be maple) and just oiling the unfinished fretboard (which was going to be rosewood). But now I have a birdseye maple fingerboard and I don't like the way maple gets dirty when unfinished. (Images of worn-through-the-lacquer Fender maple fretboards come to mind). What are my alternatives, other than lacquering the fretboard too and scraping the lacquer from the frets Fender style ?? I much prefer the feel of unfinished wood for the fretboard, will any oiling method work ?? Will it seal the wood good enough to avoid the dirty look ?? Shall I apply it before or after fretting ?? Thanks for the help.

Understood. A piece of wood half the taper of the neck will definitely do the trick. Thanks for the clarification.