DStahl

Ye cats. Anyway, if it's English yew you've got it's Taxus baccata and is sometimes used in making bentwood furniture. "Yew tree trunks grow in a twisted manner affecting the wood’s use in applications. Yew’s irregular growth also impacts the wood’s grain. It can be 'unpredictable and volatile to work,' according to Luke Hughes in the book, The Encyclopedia of Wood." Of course it was also used for longbows back in The Day. Try Woodbin's listing for some idea about the propterties of the stuff.

I'm pretty inexperienced too, but I built a laminated body with a center section of very hard, very dense purpleheart flanked by two strips of bubinga. I put a hardtail bridge and .010 strings on it and the beast do indeed tend to sustain. The wings on the body are soft maple, with very large chambers routed out; even so, the guitar is pretty heavy.

Here's what I did, after reading a bit about it: Take the measurements, just as westhemann described, to find your scale length. Now, I assume your bridge has adjustable saddles? If so, then adjust the saddles so that they are about 3/4 of the way extended--if the bridge was on the guitar, that would mean that they were adjusted 3/4 of their range of travel toward the neck. Now, just as westhemann wrote, the length of the strings from the edge of the nut to the point where the strings cross the saddles needs to be as close as possible to the scale length of the guitar. Most Fender-strat or tele type guitars use a scale length of 25 1/2 inches; a lot of Les Pauls use 24 3/4 inches; Paul Reid Smith uses 25 inches even; but do the measurement thing to be sure! Position your bridge as accurately as possible so that the point where the strings will cross the saddle is exactly 25 1/2 inches (or whatever your measurement comes up with) from the point where the strings leave the nut. (You also want to be sure, sure, sure that the bridge is centered so that the strings won't be off to one side on the neck.) Mark the spots to drill your mounting holes with the bridge exactly where you want it! Now the good news: adjustable saddles give you a bit less than a half-inch of leeway to adjust the individual saddles to get just the right string length after the bridge is installed, so perfection in mounting is not required. I'm a complete amateur, and the bridge position was just about the only thing I got right the first time I did it on my first guitar. Of course, after you get the instrument strung up you'll need to adjust the saddles some in order to get it to play in tune--because each string is stretched slightly when you fret it, a string that is exactly 25 inches long on a neck made for a 25-inch scale length will sound ever so slightly sharp when it's fretted. You compensate for that by screwing the saddle back toward the bridge end of the guitar, making the vibrating length of the string very slightly longer. And because each string is a different gauge, each one stretches slightly differently and you have to adjust each string individually. Take a look at a well-set-up guitar and you'll see that the individual saddles are staggered. If you do it by ear, you're trying to get the harmonic tone produced by touching the string lightly exactly halfway between the nut and the saddle to precisely match the sound of the same string fretted at the 12th fret. I apologize if you understand all this already. I tend to blab on and on.

OK, it makes sense that one could rout out a pocket and replace a broken neck. And as somebody else mentioned, broken necks aren't all that common anyways. My first home-built guitar has a bolt-on neck attached (with steel inserts and machine screws) to a whopping big center block of laminated purpleheart and bubinga, and it seems to have plenty of sustain.

Couple of thoughts--if a through-neck gets damaged or fails then the guitar is probably toast, while if a glued-in neck can be removed (say, if the glue can be released by steaming) then you have a chance to replace the neck. Personally, I'm not very experienced but I'm in the middle of a neck-through...seems to be going well so far.

I don't have much solid info to offer on chambers, just some thoughts-- 1. I've heard and read that some people don't think small chambers (under 3/4 inch deep and less than maybe 4 inches on a side) do a great deal for tone. They're useful for lightening and balancing the body, though. 2. That said, I routed large chambers in a deep body and capped them with thin fir, more or less like an acoustic's soundboard, and I tend to think that the guitar gained some resonance from all that. (These chambers total maybe 60 or 65 cubic inches.) 3. All told, I suspect that a single large chamber will probably resonate at a deeper frequency than two or three smaller chambers with the same total volume. That makes acoustic sense to me but I could be wrong. 4. Be careful routing too near the edge of the body, especially where you're cutting across the grain. Leave plenty of wood for structural strength--I cut too close to the edge near the top horn cutaway and the wood cracked. Oh, and this guitar has a heavy laminated center beam so the bridge in this case is well supported.

I haven't done a bass yet (though I'm looking at parts and getting psyched up) but I have HEARD that Mighty Mite pickups are pretty good. Do a Google on "Mighty Mite" and you'll find them.

Purpleheart is a great wood for necks, especially for laminated necks. I've heard, second-hand, that it may give a "bright" trebly-sounding guitar. There is some variation between species within the genus (I'm sure you know more about them than I do) but the purpleheart I've worked is great. It can be hard to work with hand tools. It is slow work to sand it down if you have a fair amount of wood to remove. It takes glue well and seems very stable. Some people have used it for fretboards. Take your time routing it and remove only a little wood at each pass of the router. As you may know, the wood often turns brown as it is sanded and then in a few days the surface regains its beautiful violet color. Beautiful stuff! I've got a purpleheart-maple-purpleheart laminated neck glued up to make a bolt-on (looks good so far, staying nice and straight) and I put a big block of purpleheart down the center of the body of another guitar. I know nothing about the other wood you mentioned, though.