WezV

nah - wont be a hufschimd unless its built by you! But personally i see the flat headstock/1 -piece neck as easier to copy than an angled or laminated neck - - - once you have the nice materials of course, which anyone could get a few pieces of - its finding the regular supply of top quality wood that is hard! The forum has loads of bolt on, through and set neck builds here, in various styles. Loads of imitations and loads of original designs - usually based on previously existing guitars since certain shapes are hard to get away from. the forum also has loads of different skill levels, budgets and loads of different approaches. I build with laminates a lot, and the occasional neck-through. Not for any other reason than liking those techniques. I dont see how that is more likely to make me "rip off" another builder ??? But as soon as you start posting stuff here you are directly providing the same bunch of builders with ideas and inspiration...its quite natural that somebody coming here to learn how to build guitars will look at the way better builders are doing it and copy certain things.

Maybe so,but that would fall into the same "hype" category as buying a set of pickups because Metallica uses them,would it not? it could also just as easily be stated the opposite way round without being any less true (well, i aint going to try statistically working it out!!) The biggest majority of legendary guitar players in the world play or have played on angled headstocks

there is a place for comedy - but it is easily lost or misinterpreted on the internet. hell i think if you carry on you will get votes for this shape through shear determinism better that than getting your family & friends to sign up and vote just for you

yeah - seen the Benedetto vids, it does make a lot of sense to me doing it that way - never sure about the way he tapers the headstock thinner though - especially with equal height tuners :? - yes, i would even go as far as questioning someone like benedetto on the odd small detail i think my main issue with a non-angled 3-aside headstock is that it usually requires the addition of a string retainer, well even the fender way usually requires string trees - and i like to keep nut to tuner as free as possible... only time i really move from that is on stuff like low tuned guitars/baritones where behind the nut resonance can be a negative issue. if you fancy having a go with a piece of quartersawn macasser ebony for a neck then give me a shout - i had enough for two necks, built one and dont know when i will get around to doing another! Bit undecided about whether i want to keep it or not

i would be tempted to make blanks to inlay rather than pour the chips into the route before adding glue pour the shards and some clear epoxy onto a flat non-stick surface like some waxed glass or silicone sheet - possibly make a square mold to phelp - then cut the inlays out of the resulting sheet it will look a lot cleaner than just pouring them in

dunno about everyone else but i have seen more problems with cracks and shrinkage in ebony than any other wood. Its quite common to see a few issues with a vintage ebony fretboard on neglected fretboards I can say quite happily that ebony is not very good at resisting the elements, unless well looked after. I did do a solid mac ebony neck, but i would not have done one out of the black stuff... the main difference being the size of tree, and therefore size/quality of lumber available! My mac ebony was perfectly quarter sawn, slightly, but consistently flamed with most grain running the entire length - and it was long enough for two fender style necks (I still have the second). Try and find a piece of gaboon like that and you will struggle

Thanks Just to clarify: I am not a custom shop and I take pride building one piece necks since the very first day. Adding an angle to the headstock on a one piece neck would be a huge waist of mother nature but also would not be strong enough because of grain runout. I am also using an exclusive material for the string retainers and nuts which I am the only to be using + a new neck reinforcement system which I invented so its not JUST a regular non angled headstock. I also cant stand the looks of a scarf joint (which I have built in the past) I also dont approve that building method - and that is also my opinion and the opinion of many other guitar builders who dont like angled headstocks haha Like you say each their own style yea - each to their own! Completely agree about 1-piece angled necks being a waste and weak - thats why i went down the laminate (usually 3 or 5 piece) route. I find this to be the best use of mother natures resources as looking for 1-piece blanks around here led me to reject a lot of wood! I went off scarfs a few years ago. I still think they are preferable to a one piece angled neck though... a did experiment with a few laminate centre/scarfed outer necks a few years ago but mainly as a way to use up smaller pieces of decent wood again - it comes down to a style thing as with my comments to boggs above. I just dont think the flat headstock back/volute on your necks looks as graceful as the angled version would. Again i will point out how i find real critique more useful than "wow, i want to have your babies" comments

nothing ironic about it - i always try to be constructive, if you can look back and any times i may have said i did not like this body shape i am sure you will also find suggestions i may have made about it too. You will notice i aim to do the same with everybody, but i know you always think its just aimed at you because people dont find your body shapes aesthetically pleasing. well you keep entering them and i may get bored of typing 'the shape isnt pleasing to my eye' every month, so i also aim to be constructive in different ways since you have previously explained and demonstrated your reasons for the shape. But yes, they could be described as "weird", although i would prefer the word "unconventional" for the lack of negative implications! (but yes, it does cost you votes) so lets repeat: no problem with the centre stripes at all! no real problems with any of it - but i did want to question the use of sapwood 'wings' this time as being a step too far as far as the shape was concerned when combined with the centre stripes, just as part of the usual criticism i give to all the entries (occasionally i cant find anything to criticise!). Means nothing at the end of the day, i wont get to chance to own most of the guitars in these threads - but i do comment the way i do because when i have entered this thing real feedback meant more to me than repeated "wow, thats great" comments! You are in no way "penalised" by the voters in this competition - and definitely not in my voting and commenting habits!

i made a solid mac ebony guitar neck recently - its about an inch thick as i like chunky necks. it is very stable - but the truss rod still moves it, i had to dial in a little relief. That tells me that string tension would also have an effect over time if not visable quickly, and that truss rods can also be useful things with very stable/straight necks! on a longer, and presumably thinner bass neck i would definitely want a truss rod!

tbh i think you want to keep your touch up work as localised as possible, other wise you end up with a lot more work - especially if you end up sanding through!! start by scraping the drop fill down to almost level, rather than sanding. A razor blade scraper with a bit of masking tape on the edges allows you to control where you are removing stuff a lot more accurately than a piece of sandpaper will strip sanding will also let you focus the repair on the required area http://www.stewmac.com/tsarchive/ts0040.html http://www.frets.com/FRETSPages/Luthier/Technique/Finish/RazorScrape/razorscrape1.html http://www.frets.com/FRETSPages/Luthier/Technique/Finish/Lacquer/DropFill/dropfill.html before a rebuff of the whole area

its really not that uncommon to see it on guitars built this way - you get to see a bit of the neck tenon next to the body - even when both are the same species of mahogany there is often a colour difference, usually because neck and body woods are chosen with different properties in mind

only wasteful if you waste it! Its 6" wide so i would cut off 1.5" first, then slice that into a 3 x 4.5" piece top to give me a 13.5" wide top and an extra piece of perfectly usable 1x1.5" maple. at the very least I could give/sell that bit to some wood turners. That is if i deemed it unsuitable for neck lam material or binding stock also, a top cut like that is going to look more aesthetically balanced than one with a 6" wide centre section, infact i would probably trim the middle bit down to 4" or maybe even angle the cut like on those acoustics - plenty of options!

it would certainly help and would probably be more than enough. if i was doing that i would think a few inches long would do it - but the full length CF bars are a worthwhile addition to any skinny neck Then there is the question of what to do with the holes. If you can get the CF bars out the way of them its no issue, you will have to see how best to lay them out, if not i would plug then with a matching wood plug (not a dowel), probably before routing for the Cf bars

ya really think? i was talking about installing the bars laid out like this - although obviously under the fretboard - not on the back of the neck they need to go under the nut as far as possible to get the most benefit - but not onto the headstock. i cant see how that wont massively increase the strength in this area (as well as reinforcing the whole neck!!)

always liked the look of masur birch, but not had chance to use any yet

i have also been using the allparts rods for a little while now - easiest to install and i think they are more reliable then the hot-rods as well as the big advantage of needing to remove less wood/being able to do thinner necks (without routing a slot out the bottom of the fretboard, only way to get a skinny neck with a hot-rod) i dont actually do skinny necks that often, but the rods are a lot more substantial and feel a lot safer and more responsive when adjusting. I wouldnt dare adjust a hot-rod with string tension on the neck for fearing of snapping the nut off, but its not a problem with an allparts rod (of course i still recommend newbies take string tension off for adjustments - safety first and all that) sometimes they benefit from a little grinding down of the welds as RAD has shown in recent threads

that will certainly help, especially if the inlays are pre-radiused and inlayed as close to flush as possible - if you have to sand more than a mm or so then you can easily be back to raw maple even with a good soaking of thin CA - depends on the wood also not a bad idea to do that once installed to keep the feel of the ebony and CA soaked maple the same and prevent the need for a finish

WezV... It is not a two-tone top and back. It's 4 different woods so 4 different tones... You musta REALLY hated it then! :D thats 5 tone then - i was talking about the bubinga sapwood. so bubinga sapwood, bubinga, spruce, mahogany, and walnut. 5 different colour tones! anyway - i like stripes in the middle, big fan of through necks so it looking like that isnt a problem for me. I also usually like a bit of sapwood, but it may be that with the middle stripes the combined look tales away from the shape for me

i got first vote in - giving swede a 100% Lead scatter lee - love it, completely my thing, completely perfect spec - love those pickups - would have liked to see them out of the guitar! (come across a few vintage ones that sounded great, but always struggle with microphonics at gain as you would expect from such a complex design) why not vote for it? just because you have done far more impressive stuff... even though i would prefer to own this over the violin stuff hydrogeoman - nice and clean, just lacks the extra contouring and shaping that could have taken it to another level for me - or more wood/laminate detail, that works with this kind of shape! Boggs - liking the mini-humbuckers, they really suit the design. i have a problem with two-tone tops, as they can redefine a guitars shape. I am starting to like this shape now, but the top/back wood is taking away from the shape i am used to seeing crow - nice, clean. the squareness of the neck around the join takes away from some impressive contouring. 6 string (chunky) string retainer on a 7 string guitar??? good metal tele design though, not far off a commercial look - i think a string through design would have helped with aesthetic balance as the pickup, bridge & tail-piece are quite close together. headstock is dull and derivative - but inline headstock are nearly impossible to get right Hufschmid - i think its awesome and cleanly done, wood choice & design is awesome. I do like the wooden cavity covers, but the main one on this is at an odd angle with wood grain causing a contrast. Also not sure on the 6 bolt neck join - is it needed? i dislike the non-angled headstock. it means the volute is less graceful that a curved version on an angled headstock and insists on the inclusion of that oversized string retainer (slightly more graceful this time). With the stuff you build i can see the need for a string mute behind the nut even with an angled headstock, so the retainer may still be needed then. anyway, i really struggle with non-angled headstocks on 3-aside necks swedishluthier - yeah, i like. can i have this and the recent green one (at a discount please). think i would be a happy man

and i think that relates back to variety! at the moment you have a few threads detailing similar builds with different woods - might make sense if they were in one place - accompanied by a group shot at the end! (like your tele builds were one thread) but if you were doing 4 or 5 very different builds then keeping them separate starts to make sense depends how much we want to ignore/abuse the rather ignored/abused 4 pic rule

tbh - i think hard carving that bit is perfectly reasonable, not a 'cheat' at all. i would add that it makes sense to score the top and side edge of the binding slot as much as possible before clearing the rest out with a chisel, but its still the most straightforward way i can think of.

tru oil will keep it clean for a while - but your real issue comes well before that. Its rather hard to sand an ebony/maple board without getting ebony dust ground into the maple, so if you dont do this right its going to be dirty grimy maple from the start basically you will need to scrape the inlays with the sharpest razor blade you can find, but gently enough not to reshape the fretboard or leave scraper marks that need sanding out. razor blades are particularly good for this because you can hold them in a slight bend to better match the radius i would seriously consider inlaying a scrap piece of maple into a scrap piece of ebony to get practice with this before you do it for real. perfectly possible but the technique takes a little practice which could cost you more work on the fretboard if you don't do it on scrap first

ovangkol is a bit splintery with its interlocked grain - worth it though, its pretty and polishes up really well. i made a few necks from it about 6 years ago and just did a simple oil & wax finish, I still see one of the guitars regularly and it still feels awesome with very little aftercare

making an archtop guitar. Bob Benedetto, centerstream publishing

i think its always worth quoting benedetto's point here. he actually says: maybe that's jut me being picky, quite possibly A few other things he says: when bob makes the claim the construction pine instrument still sounds just as good - he is making a point about a skilled acoustic builders ability to shape the sound of the instrument (eventually to something that could be described as their characteristic voice). readings bob's book it is clear that he sees the tone of an archtop as a combination of both the woods used and the way its built/shaped/tap tuned to me, he does not clearly say 'construction grade pine is great for guitars', at least not without the caveat of 'if you have spent years learning how to control the sound a guitar will make'