rowan_page

look at westhemans, although thats a set-neck you can see he has more support running down the side of the neck... so something like that could be done - also a neck pocket with a 'tongue' of wood that goes a bit further up the neck will provide support

allright thank you ill plan it all out now.

you just need to draw it all out full size and it will start to make sense.

draw a long centre line and mark on the nut and bridge locations... i would then draw the fretboard on - possibly with all frets roughly marked or at least a few key ones like 12th, 24th.

ok, so you have a piece of paper with a centre line, a fretboard and a bridge location. Now take an explorer template/outline and position it on the centre line, the key areas you need to focus on are fret access, how far the neck goes into the body and whether that will work with your construction style and whether the bridge looks to be in the right place, as too far back on an explorer shape can be uncomfortable...

just for reference here is an explorer pro (about 90% size) shape i did with a 25.5 scale length and 24 frets:

key things to note are that the bridge is just a bit back from the waist - further back and that large fin starts to get in the way, and there is good access to all 24 frets. this is a set neck guitar with the tenon extending all the way to the pickup cavity, this allowed me to have a lot of the neck clear of the body. if i was doing it as a bolt on neck i would need to think about having a bit more support around the neck

So if i wanted to do a bolt on neck how would I support it more around the neck?

Hi.

Im going to be building an Explorer guitar soon. I want to use a 24 fret neck 25-1/2'' inch scale length. A normal explorer neck normally has a scale length 24.75'', what difference will this make to the guitar. I assume from my research that this will just mean the bridge will be placed further back. And where would a 24 fret neck connect to the body?

Thanks, Rowan.