ShatnersBassoon

15 minutes ago, Akula said:

 

Here's a quick cross section of the idea I had a few years back. The view is a cross section viewed from the strap button, looking at a slice of the body, down the neck.

 

I've accounted for a 12mm body, standard humbucker at 23mm total height, and a 5mm fretboard. Springs go between the pickup ears and the body, as usual. The drawback being, clearly, you've got the butt-end of a humbucker poking out through the back of the guitar, as in, the pickup route will be quite literally a hole through the guitar body.

 

Solutions include making the body just thick enough for a pickup, but just in the area underneath the pickup. Think like the camera "bump" on a modern super thin smartphone. Or you could look at some ultra thin pickups, I think Lace Sensor make a super slim model.

 

I'm really interested to see this one come together! Following intently.

 

 - Jam

I will have to ‘shim’ the bridge anyway, because as my plans stand the neck will be a little bit higher off the body than usual, so if I did a similar thing in the humbucker area like you suggested then I could make it so that it doesn’t look out of place, maybe make that area kind of ‘at one’ with the bridge.

36 minutes ago, Akula said:

I dig it! Keen to see how the pickup mounting idea works, I investigated a similar idea a few years ago which didn't pan out, I'm sure you have much better ideas.

 

That inverted strat-jack is genius!

 

 - Jam

I think that maybe the difficulty when it comes to that mounting strategy possibly is related to if the pickup is adjustable or not. Don’t think it will be in this case, the body is just too thin to allow for that….but we will see. I came across the inverted Strat jack thing on another forum, but I didn’t hear about anyone doing it for clearance. 

Firstly, an apology of sorts. I’ve realised that I tend to go from one project to the next, even when the previous build could have been titivated in to something approaching true completion. Such is my personality though, I just get way too excited about new ideas. I feel a bit sheepish about that, because I feel I peak peoples interest and they don't get to see where it ends up.

Anyway, for this build I have salvaged the fretboard off a carbon fiber neck I built over a year ago, that proved to not be viable because I hadn’t calculated properly how much it flexed. As you can see, the fretboard is corian...I made the mistake of using too much corian and too little CF. Anyway...Luckily the board came off reasonably easily.

Calculations confirmed that with a shorter scale length, and with the addition of a heel, I could incorporate this fretboard in to a CF panel neck that was ridiculously thin (15.2mm). I went ahead and did just that, making sure to test how much it flexed, almost a negligible amount...but to me about the right amount allowing for around 100lbs of string tension. Luckily my father is a structural engineer, so he helped me out with calculations.

This lead me to want to do a similar thing with the body, why not make use of the rest of my carbon fiber, and make that really thin too? Ofcourse, this has posed a bit of a dilemma with regards to electronics and clearance for the output jack. So I went with the option of a Stratocaster jack turned upside down. The humbucker is going to go all the way through the body and will be screwed in from the back. 

So anyway, in its current incarnation its short scale (23 inch) guitar, zero radius scalloped corian fretboard, 15.2 mm neck (apart from the heel), with a 12mm thick carbon fiber body that has an aluminium back. Im working on semi hemispherical fret ends to incorporate in to it. 

Obviously the neck is going to be recessed, I just placed it on the body so I could get a rough idea of things.

As you can see, its far from there yet on a aesthetic level, but I think I have it worked out. Should hopefully look pretty bangin' when its done. I might even contour it a bit to make some of the areas even thinner...if Im feeling brave enough! Another thing Im going to do is route a quasi scratchlpate section in to the top, which will be filled with coloured epoxy.

“Because I can” is a totally valid reason in my opinion

Like Biz has just suggested, I would have the control cavity covering that

10 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Funny you mentioned Hendrix. This topic has been brewing in my head and when thinking about "optimal" neck shapes Hendrixisms popped up. Ergonomically a V shape is the best shape for wrapping the thumb over the bass strings, that has the least amount of wood around the finger and palm joints. And yes, the proportions are pretty much right, the crosscut of the neck really is that small! A slim D in turns despite potentially being thinner has much more meat against the joints, it definitely wants the thumb to rest on the back. The slanted spine of Strandberg guitars is a good attempt to connect these two worlds.

Food for thought, thanks! I have thought about experimenting at some point with the Strandberg profile. It kind of looks like a distorted V shape? Maybe a hybrid profile may be worth messing around with too, whereby it’s a v on the bass side and more of a C or D on the treble side. 

4 hours ago, Crusader said:

I reckon this is a great idea but I think it would only need to be scalloped on the thumb side

I guess it’s partly a question of where people commonly place their thumb on the back of the neck, I suppose that typically it’s either the  middle or slightly below, or occasionally wrapping it over for bends and Hendrixisms. 

33 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

Does this answer your question, starting at about 29:30:

 

I suppose so! Looks like he was carving valleys in a similar manner and the thought was that it just felt too weird  

If I have a strange idea there’s always a possibility that Crowe has tackled it at some point

9 minutes ago, henrim said:

For a moment I thought I was looking at a pair of knickers. With somewhat off putting colours I'd say.

But it was a neck profile! I'm not really sure how my thumb would like that. Interesting thought though. 

With some careful contouring maybe some of those issues could be negated. I’m guessing it would facilitate playing in a certain way. 
 

Hey I could call it the cacky pants special!

1 hour ago, Bizman62 said:

You mean that the profile would be faceted instead of half round? Like this:

If so, there's a Crimson guitar named 'Odd' with that kind of a neck.

I mean a bit more like this, where it is scooped at each side…’scalloped’ if you will. In theory mean less fiction on that part of the hand. Forgive the messy doodling.

My girlfriend has just pointed out that it looks like a pair of Y fronts

Just wondering if anyone has ever done a guitar neck that is faceted on both sides, like in the picture below. Would it feel awful I wonder? The only particularly left field profile I have seen is the Strandberg one, which of course isn’t quite the same as this idea.

Anyway…I mean something like this…don’t laugh  

16 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

On my few factory built guitars the distance between two tuners varies from 25mm of the 6 in line Strats (or 1") to 35 mm on the 3+3 electric Eko and the acoustic, all measured between the centers of two adjacent tuner knob screws. For my own builds I've been using a PRS style template which seems to follow the 35 mm rule or close enough.

One factor is the size of the knobs. Mine vary from 18 to 24 mm, obviously the smaller the knobs the tighter the tuners can be packed. And obviously some clearance is required so that you don't accidentally nudge the adjacent knobs while tuning. That clearance seems to vary from about 5 mm upwards.

Regarding the string angle from the nut it doesn't change much if the height of the nut is similar to that of the hole of the string post. See illustration:

As can be seen a tall nut will make the strings fall in a fan pattern whilst a shallower nut matching with the tuner holes will have a constant angle. As thinner strings require more windings than thick ones even the thickness of the bass strings doesn't pull the angle steeper. Thus the theory about the break angle being stronger on shorter headstocks requires other design factors to be plausible. A tall nut works similarly to a flat Fendery headstock where the string angle depends on the depth of the fallaway.

Thus in my opinion the size of the headstock alone makes no difference at least regarding string pressure on the nut.

Aesthetics is another thing. To my eyes a small headstock can be nicer than a huge paddle but the first time I saw the 4+2 MusicMan headstock it looked a bit crowded for the size. And headless guitars, they seem to miss something! The straight string pull idea has made me look at headstocks differently as well as learning about neck dive. Those two turn the question to another tangent: Which is more important, functionality or fanciness? Or what are the visually pleasing properties of a tool that definitely looks like it will work flawlessly?

Thanks so much for the detailed reply Biz! Genuinely useful information there, I will definitely use it!

Quite like headless designs myself, love the look of the Strandbergs. It’s just the price of decent hardware that stops me making more of them. 

Is there any particular functional reason why the tuners on some designs have to be so vertically far away from each other? In the photo below for example, it seams that there is a tonne of space between each tuner. Just thinking because if they were closer together then you would get a stronger break angle for the strings from the nut, and consequently you could get away with a smaller headstock angle. I know that a smaller headstock wouldn’t be aesthetically pleasing to some, but that can’t be the only reason surely? Thanks for any thoughts. 

On 9/26/2023 at 4:28 PM, mistermikev said:

"little soft" - must.... resist... urge... to... quote... steve... correl..... that's... what.... she......... (head explodes)

not sure what variety of cedar my acoustic is (western red) but the top on has remained in pretty good shape... that said I take care of my stuff.  the interesting thing is it def has a distinct sound to it.  lots of midrange... 

cedar comes in so many beautiful shades... I like the natural streaks in that body.  my acoustic has that typical cedar 'olive' look to it.  

anywho... putting cedar solidbody on my bucketlist!  Looking fwd to seeing your new cedar creation.

Yep…I had a Breedlove acoustic many years back that sounded glorious. I keep telling myself that it was partly to do with the cedar top. Like you say, nice midrange…’woody’ for want of a better word:

Lovely work. Manages to have ‘mojo’, without having that excessively beaten up look that some people go for. Personally, I’m a fan of clean mojo

Ah…I think that the string retainer is bent slightly to achieve the angle…

Ok…first off, these look like absolutely incredible guitars! Lightweight, sleek, rock solid, stable and elegant. I can’t for the life of me work out how they got this to work though (see photo below). The headstock area is only slightly recessed below the fretboard…on the website it says that the specially designed string guide works by supposedly creating the minimal break angle that is needed. Can’t quite figure out how they have done this? Note that the headstock is not angled. 
 

Also, they say that the minimal break angle helps to cause less friction on the zero fret? I can’t see how that would be, because the string guide would be taking the load, not the zero fret. Atleast that’s supposed to be how things are done. 
 

1 hour ago, Bizman62 said:

Holy slices, that thing must be heavy!

Then again, I don't thing you'd need a truss rod unless it's for applying relief.

So the result would be a very stable neck! Hmm…food for thought!

On 9/7/2023 at 9:46 PM, ADFinlayson said:

Get Morrells (uk made) pre cat nitro from wood finishes direct, it cures in no time and all and has all the pros of nitro. 

I’m dying to try Nitro, will definitely give that stuff a try Ash. Cheers

For some reason I missed all these replies! Lots of food for thought here. Thanks everyone! 

When you start building acoustics, it’s serious business! Will be following this one closely Ash!

So, I slapped on a set of 10’s and wired up the Irongear ‘Hot Slag’ pickup, it sounds fantastic!

Only issue is the G, B and E strings slipping out of tune…especially when I bend. I’m hoping it’s just because I haven’t actually screwed on the tuners yet, some suitable screws are in the post now. For this reason it’s tuned down to D standard at the moment. I can’t see myself needing string trees because the face of the headstock is quite low from the top of the zero fret. 

Personally, I would test some yellow dye on there. But maybe that’s just me Tonnes of potential here! It’s a really interesting top.

24 minutes ago, henrim said:

Nowadays they use concrete in Finland. But the old ones were creosote treated wood. Not something I would like to work with. But the old rails are good for many things!

Come to think of it, I always thought it was oak they used. But maybe that is a UK thing. 

2 minutes ago, Professor Woozle said:

That's got me thinking about the potential of reclaimed railway sleepers!

Nice username

Yeah, the thing about pine is that it’s so readily available! 

I enjoy it…but it’s a royal pain in the proverbial! Been pondering about sending some of my builds to a local lady I know that does finishes on motorbikes. Anyone else gone down this route? I don’t have the means at the moment to spray 2K…and it scares me! Still haven’t tried nitro…maybe I should, although the curing time puts me off a bit! I’ve heard that the pre cat lacquer cures a lot faster, is this true?