pan_kara

ah, ok - so basically the wings will be bloodwood, with ebony veneer? This will be interesting to see! I have a similar color scheme in mind on one of my ongoing projects, but I'm using wenge and padouk, with a bloodwood fingerboard. Good luck with this one!

Thanks man, I'm very happy that you like it! When I was looking for hardware for this guitar I bumped into the Schaller vintage copper line and I managed to talk the customer into using these. I knew as soon as they arrived that this was THE right choice for this guitar. To me they look stunning together.

When this padouk blank arrived it was deep burgundy red all over. Now the untouched parts have turned almost to brown, and fresh cuts are more orange - as the pic shows. I like all of these colors except the brown that apparently is inevitable and sooner or later will be all over the place. This will be more of a problem with the guitar top, where I want the orange to contrast dark veneer that I will be applying there.. I'm already testing workarounds, but I'll be researching some sort of UV blocking finish to maybe keep the color for as long as possible..

And here's the progress on Etna: I routed the body outline from the back, not all the way yet - I'm keeping a bit less than 1cm of wood for later work with the front. I threw in a roundover at the back side so now I'm at this: the Schaller Hannes bridge has arrived so I sent it to say hi to the body front: The only bloodwood fingerboard blank big enough for the 686mm scale that I could find (at a reasonable price) was a 5-string bass blank at lmi - so I ordered it from the US. I cut it to size and cut the fret slots. I used my 648mm template shifted by one fret and cut the nut slot using calipers and then a wooden block as a guide. my preferred method for cutting fingerboard taper is still the shooting board: Since I had a few cm of wood beyond the last fret on both the heel and the fingerboard, I used this area for alignment - before gluing I clamped the board in place and drilled two 6mm holes past the heel and then used two 6mm drill bits to keep the board from slipping after applying titebond. This worked very well, I had zero lateral movement (and zero transverse movement at the heel), the only place where the fingeboard could slip was sideways at the nut, but it was easy to just keep it in place when tightening down the clamps as I now needed to worry about just this one degree of freedom (instead of three). here is the neck out of the clamps and after some trimming of the sides and heel with a jigsaw

A small collection of updates: the flying V got a truss rod slot I used the same metal rails (originally build for cutting truss rod channels with a dremel ) and some mdf to build a variation of the usual router planing jig. I got a relatively big bit with rounded edges used the setup to thickness the headstock: the client's fingerboard wood choice was pao ferro, here is the board after slotting. I had since cut the taper and just need to thickness it and its ready to be glued on.

Ok, if this is because of the rings then I understand. thanks! I have to agree with HCRoadie that the nut slotting idea of yours is fantastic in its simplicity. I needed to look at this a second time to understand that Good because the day when I'll be cutting a nut from scratch is approaching..

Hey Scott, is there a particular reason for trying to NOT get any nitro into the pickup cavities? That and the electronics cavity. I never worried about this in the past..

This is the closest that I came across, maybe not really "ebony burl" but at least "figured ebony" I guess... I bought it from madinter.com as "special ebony fingerboard". Actually they were giving these to orders above 100 EUR or smth at some point. I tried asking them if they had any more of these later on, they said yes and when I ordered and sent me two pitch black boards...

True, the way it looks on the back is not the best thing ever..

Spectacular. The top and the whole thing blew me away! This is really one of the best looking stained tops that I've seen. re the Hannes - I'm tempted to do an actual A/B with a body that I'm building to test the sound of different necks. I'll have a cheapo hardtail on it, but if I did the routing for the Hannes I could try to see if there is any perceivable difference in sound. (I'm getting the Hannes for one of my builds anyway)

Wow. Nice job on that 2-part binding. With that padouk thats one good looking fretboard!

Ah, sorry - I guess the part "This guitar doesnt seem to hold low action anywhere near as well as the other guitar with steeper neck angle." threw me off. If its only playability then I can think of two things: one is that steeper neck angle bings the fretting hand closer to the body (assuming the back of the guitar is flat), so the ergonomics should be better a bit I think. The other is what the palm and the forearm of the right hand rest on. Here its probably a matter of preference. I've always rested the palm of the picking hand on the body, when I play a guitar with a TOM bridge it feels a bit awkward. I don't see any other variables..

Long overdue update. The hardware for the V has arrived. Schaller low profile floyd in "vintage copper" finish and matching knobs and tuners. I love the way these look, should match up nicely with the dirty-looking ovangkol (the guitar will most likely get natural finish) I glued up the scarf joint and added black oak veneer to the face of the headstock:

Hmm. I can't comment on the playability that much since nearly all guitars I ever played had zero or very little neck angle. But in terms of action and setup my simplisitic view is the following: First I'd just imagine there is no body at all - just the neck and the bridge. Action is defined by the position of the saddles relative to the projected surface of the frets. Regardless of the type of bridge. So I can't see any fundamental relation between neck angle and action - if there is one then I'm missing something and I'd be happy to learn what The rest is standard stuff I guess - when you choose the bridge type you choose more or less the distance between the bottom of the bridge and the strings. So the distance between the strings and the body (barring things like recessing the bridge etc). So then you have to add the body back to the picture - the top ends up either parallel to the strings or not (modulo carving), depending on the height of the strings above the body at the bridge (-->bridge type) and the height of the strings above the body plane at the neck joint.

Etna neck work c.d. The headstock piece just barely fits the headstock shape so I had to be careful when gluing up the scarf joint. I had too little room on the sides to prevent the pieces from slipping around with holes and drill bits and due to the lack of flat surfaces I couldng use the "put neck on the side, clamp to the table then clamp the scarf joint" method. I did use a variation of the latter, clamping the neck side to the granite block I was using as support, and holding the headstock piece in a vise - and after securing both I clamped the actual joint. Here's the messy jig in action: After gluing and some cleanup I flattened the fingerboard side and now its waiting for the truss rod channel:

Whoa! I love the way this turned out! If it were me I'd probably make the horns a tiny bit thinner, but this is just personal preference. The cerving is awesome (not to mention the wood itself). Congrats Scott!

Wow a Red Special build! Brian May was my first major guitar influence. I even managed to be performing a modified "Bohemian Rhapsody" at the Montreux Jazz Festival this year one day before he was playing but attempts to get him to come failed. (as did attempts to get him to come to CERN and have me show him around). I'll be watching this one closely, it also on my list of "to do sometime in the future". I wonder how closely are you planning to try to replicate the hardware, that's the tricky bit I guess..

And here comes Fail #1: originally I planned to use one of the body off-cuts for the headstock. But for some reason, despite having it planned, the piece ended up too small. I considered using a padouk fingerboard blank instead but decided to try saving it for an actual fingerboard and to attempt using the body piece anyway - by cutting it flat along its length and re-gluing to get the correct shape. Here's the puzzle: and here's the solution: The advantage of such layout is that I have the grain running alont the thin shape of the headstock.. Now I just need to actually glue it and then I'll need to keep the work very precise, there's little margin for error.

well I don't take this as a "hater" thing, I like to hear people's opinions. For this guitar the headstock is fixed since this is what the customer wanted and I like it myself too. There might be some ibanez influence in the tip of this design of mine - it is the same as on ibanez headstocks that's true. anyway. the scarf joint. 1. cut. 2. align. 3. Clean up. (hand plane and scraper) Now just a dry fit before gluing:

supplement: here's a pic of the drawing of the V

Guys, this is not ibanez. At least not the usual 6-in-line one. Is that the one you're referring to? This is a slightly asymmetric 3x3 that I drew myself, not intending to copy anything (but of course its anything but original) Anyway if you don't like this one you're probably hate the one I designed for the baritone.. soon. For now, here's the laminate gluing. I did it in 2 steps, here's the inner three pieces: Glued and smoothed out with a handplane: @Scott - thanks, the saw has also become my scarf joint tool of choice - see below. At least this is some good workout - unlike pointlessly throwing pieces of iron, like some people seem to enjoy (aka gym) For this guitar the neck was too short too allow me to make the head from the same piece so I just cut the scarf angle and I'll try to use a body off-cut for the head itself.

http://shop.rothkoandfrost.co.uk/ havent tried them myself though - I've been making my own so far (all three of them )

Progress on the flying V: I made a thin HDF template for the neck section and a thicker MDF template for the body: Due to the abundance of straight lines in a flying V and due to not owning or having access to a bandsaw I will be using this tool a lot Here I'm taking down the thickness in the neck section. The cut-off is basically neck-blank size so I will recycle it in some future build.

After finishing up the nylon string solidbody I started a new round of builds some time ago. This is a thread for two of them. A 6-sting 27' baritone I'm building for myself and a RR flying V I'm building for a friend of mine. Here's the initial specs and wood choices: The baritone will be called "Etna" and will be almost entirely a wenge-padouk combination. The fingerboard will most likely be bloodwood. Here's the body blank - padouk: and the neck laminate pieces - wenge and padouk: The Flying V will be a slighty tweaked version of the RR asymmetrical V shape with a 3x3 headstock. After checking the body dimensions I figured that the best (for me) way to find a body blank piece that's long enough is to make this guitar a neck-thru, thus limiting the lenght of the wings. So this will be my first try at a neck-thru - we'll see how this will go. The neck section is ovangkol with a wenge strip and the body wings will be walnut. Here's the wood: The fingerboard for this one is undecided at this point. Both of these guitars will most likely get transparent finish - some combination of oil and nitro (or RPC). Before I move on I have a bunch of templates to be made...

On the few necks that I made up to now I used a robosander in a drill press with a fence to get the flat area after taking off some wood with a spokeshave. This is possible though maybe a little tricky with the headstock already in place. I try to have the neck 1mm or so thicker than the target thickness at this point. Then I carve the sides until the flat spot becomes a very narrow ledge in the center (assuming a symmetrical neck profile). Then some sandpaper to finish off and take off the final ~1mm