Mattia

Wood glue barely bonds with CF at all, no matter what you do. Epoxy or polyurethane glue here. Both work. As does (thick) CA glue, for that matter. The advantage to epoxy is that it doesn't matter if some gets left on the gluing surface, at least not if you're gluing the fingerboard on with epoxy.

Mottola's site's a good one. And you can do the 'Taylor Style' recessed cantilevered neck joint, or even just float the supported part of the neck without bolting, but it's not strictly necessary.

Yes, you want at least a buffer, possibly even a seperate preamp for a piezo. At least, if you want it to sound nice. As for the other questions: that very much depends on the buffer/preamp circuit in question. If you want a design for a homebrew preamp, check the MIMF.com library for something suitable. I think LR Baggs control X will do roughly what you want to, although your best bet is probably to use baggs piezos as well. GraphTech's GHOST system also has a variety of preamp ptions.

If the fit's tight, vacuum should be able to veneer 1/8" and/or 1/4" wood without too much trouble. I recently got a nice big vacuum bag from vac-u-clamp.com, on their blowout page, fair price. Also got one of their rotating vacuum clamps (sold out now, I think) which works perfectly, and a ventauri vacuum generator that lets me pull vacuum using my compressor. Handy, since I don't have the space for a dedicated vacuum pump at this moment in time.

Other than tradition? Can't think of any, no. Bolt on necks sound great, look completely stock, and make it very easy to reset in the future, and finishing is simple (seperately, no worries about glue squeezout or anything of the sort). What's not to love?

The heel's not tinytinytiny, but still reasonably slim; you don't need much more than 1/2"-3/4" of heel thickness total: Side view of heel, still slightly oversize: http://www.xs4all.nl/~mvalente/guitarpics/Neck_GAB1_13.jpg If you want it inset further, sure, add a tenon. My adjustable neck joint neck will be set in a little bit deeper, and I'm taking a few design cues from Lowden for the next few, but if I decide to go with non-adjustable neck joints, I'm likely to stick to butt joints. I know Mario Proulx has even switched to bolt hanger things (wood screw in one half, screwed into the neck, use a nut to bolt the neck in place). Works just fine as well, but it doesn't look as graceful to me. I've even seen people use cumpiano-style barrel nuts in this kind of heel by drilling vertially into the heel and popping the nuts in that way (vertically rather than horizontally), although if I use barrel nuts I'm likely to switch to using a tenon, simply for servicability's sake.

For the record, I don't think we actually disagree in any significant way.

Quartered, no run out, even grained fingerboards are inherently more stable than skew or flatsawn boards. Yes, they all need to be perfectly dry and stable, and at that point it doesn't matter quite so much if the wood's quartered or not, but that's not to say there's zero effect. But if they dry out too much, I'd rather have a quartered board that shrinks a little laterally than a flatsawn board that suddenly tries to warp a little. Now, frankly, most of the time I do it for aesthetic reasons, and I prefer skew cut wood for acoustic bridges because it's less split prone, but for a wood like ebony, that takes a long, long, long time to stabilise, and is not the most stable of woods in my wood pile, I'll take quartered where I can get it. I can look at my stack of fingerboards, which I often get slightly green, and select flatsawn and quartersawn almost purely by how flat they all stay in a relatively climate controlled area; the flatsawn boards all cup veeeery slightly, the quartered ones do not. If you insist on gluing with waterbased glues rather than epoxy, I'd say definitely go for quartered.

Depends on what you're gluing the frets for, and how. I sometimes add a dab of titebond or hot hide to frets before fretting, fills the gap, lubricates the fret seating, and locks it in, without making fret removal difficult (doesn't stick to the metal). Superglue for fret ends, though. Most of my fretjobs have been glue-less, using only a bit of superglue to hold ends down on bound boards.

1) it'll get horribly filthy without any finish 2) It's probably a laminated top/back guitar, which means if you sand through you'll see the layers. Not pretty. I say leave it. If you must, you can consider going with a satin/matte finish by dulling the finish with fine steel wool (or better, synthetic wool, so you don't get steel particles stuck to pickups and the like)

Um, they're bolts. No glueing bolts. That defeats the entire purpose of having bolts. Daniel: I can't think of a good reason to do a mortise and tenon joint - butt-joints are just as strong, easy to line up, no risk of making holes in the body (routing mishaps) and require less bulky (= heavy) neck blocks.

Yep, that's certainly an option. Or you can just finish without pore filling. I've done both, and for my own guitars, particularly guitars with seperate necks (acoustics), I don't bother pore filling. It doesn't make the necks feel in any way 'rough'.

Stability.

Eh? Just do a butt-jointed bolt on neck. Drill from the outside in, using a new, sharp bit. Stick a bit of scrap to the inside of the block with double-sided tape to prevent some of the blow out, and you're fine.

Fleishman/Williams style jig with drawer slides and a lazy susan. Quick google for DEW guitars binding jig will show instructions. Tried LMI style, didn't like it much. Tried handheld style, liked it even less. Built this, love it to bits. Not going back.

'Setch style' here as well; tuned to pitch, bend the neck manually, adjust rod a little.

All wood effects are pretty damn close to voodoo once you pump humbuckers through a high-gain marshall. And in most blind listening tests, it's tough to pick out the differences between guitars. Thing is, it's about the player, not the listener, and different guitars respond differently and feel different, and yes, some of it is psychological. My personal (unscientific, untested) opinion is that strings, scale length, pickups, body construction (chambered/solid), neck wood, body wood, body shape affect tone, roughly in that order, most of the time. In other words: neck wood's certainly an important factor to take into account, but not as important as solid construction (good joinery, good fretwork, CF bars/no CF bars, good quality hardware and mounting). And we're ignoring the other half of the instrument here, ie the amplifier, without which an electric guitar is just a plank of wood with some strings on.

Actually determining grain direction is a pain in black ebony, but getting quartered boards certainly is well worth it if you can find them! Ebony's one of the most finicky fingerboard woods when it comes to drying (takes a long, long time) and can and will shrink and move while it does so. once it's dry and stable, it's perfectly fine, and lovely to play on (if a little dead sounding in the tonal department because of the high damping), but I won't use fingerboards that haven't been 'aging' in my stash for at least 3-4 years.

My best tip: buy tools as you feel you need them. A router is an absolute requirement for me, as are a rasp or two, and a handplane or two, but you're not me, and might choose to do things differently.

Yep. Pretty much what you said. Hand cut rasp = FTW. For the record, the Herdim rasps are certainly worth the surcharge over the chinese rasps, decent though they are.

The 'Ultra' tools are superduper very fine cut tools; frankly, I don't think you need anything that fine - at that point use some sandpaper and/or scrapers. I reccomend cabinet files, not half-round files for guitar work. Perfect amount of curve for pretty much everything on a guitar body or neck. I have the medium and coarse (I think...) pair with some small rosewood handles, and love them: http://www.dick.biz/cgi-bin/dick.storefron...uct/View/704716 Got some of the chinese ones as 'extras' in coarser grits.

Wood moves over time, and truss rod tweaks can't always take up the slack. There's certainly a place for fully adjustable neck joints in acoustic guitars (where the body moves, bridge rises with seasons and over time), and adjusting the neck angle can give you better control over intonation and setup. However, it shouldn't really be necessary for an electric guitar.

Hand cut is a completely different tool from those machine cut rasps you're used to. I like having a fairly coarse (medium, really) and a finer rasp, each has it's place, but I'd choose a medium-coarse over a super fine if I could only get one. BTW, for you Euro folks, Dick Tools (Dick.biz) has pretty darn decent Chinese made swordfish and other rasps that cost almost nothing (less than 8 euros, some less than 5). They're not as nice as the Herdim rasps, but they're fantastic value for cash, that's for certain...

Ditto. Particularly given the headless design I've been refining for a certain unnamed PG member...

Spoken like a true Yorkshireman. Where'd you learn your English, Mattia? Hull? < Hull Heh. International Schools, if you must know...