Melvyn Hiscock

From memory, the lip is about 3/16 in. Again from memory, the tenon is full width of the neck as stated and the angle is routed into the body, not cut onto the neck. The heel also does not step down where it leaves the body but is just the depth of the tenon. remember Gibson were trying to save money so cutting down the manufacturing steps. Don't take any neck angle estimates as gospel, always draw it and check for yourself. MH

That made me laugh. There is a lot of Black Art Voodoo. The voodoo in force in the late 1970s was the reason I wrote the book in the first place and with the internet there is even more. It is funny that people regard Wikpedia as being dubious in terms of accuracy but will take a lot of other stuff from the internet without question. I have to bite my lip and not react as I could so easily get into flame wars with people who really get into their own digestive system from the wrong direction when talking about guitars. The easiest thing is try it and listen! Like you say a few bits of wood are not going to cost that much. the guitar I am experimenting with has hardware built into the body and facings on the body and is a complicated build. I have to be fairly confident the Fir will work as there must be nearly five pounds invested. Voodoo is interesting. When MYOEG came out in 1986 heavy guitars were the fashion (sustain!!!!) and I did point out that alder body strats sometimes sound nicer and that you should experiment. Since then it has become fashionable to weigh guitars (Les Paul for sale, 9.273 lbs etc) and lightweight is definitely in. The thing is, I have just made a cedar tele that is great fun but I also have a 1971 les Paul 1954 reissue that is very, very heavy but also sounds great. It is all down to experimentation. It'll be a few weeks until the guitar is finished but I may start a few more just for fun. I am also sticking pins in wax models of various guitars and I have taken to making guitars whilst covered in chicken blood and feathers. Nothing to do with voodoo, I am just strange that way . . . MH

No, it has binding so that has made it heavier . . . I haven't weighed it (there isn't much point, it'll sound good) but I think hardware might double it! MH There was a thread on here recently about Parana Pine. That is a good body wood. But you could use European maple, a little greyer in colour than American but still good. If it was good enough for Stradivarius it should be good enough for you (mind you Stradivarius's electrics were pretty average). You could also use Walnut which can be very nice. Ash grows in Europe although can be heavy. Cherry is nice, I have some pearwood that has made a great acoustic. My friend Dave King has used Yew on acoustic backs and that looks good. There is a lot of choice. I would certainly consider Cherry for necks. Try it! you might be surprised. You could try Poplar for bodies but is it not that much fun to work and I have yet to make a guitar from Poplar that really knocks my socks off. I kew a coffin maker, his work was so popular people were dying to get hold of it. - Sorry should have posted a bad joke alert.

Some time ago there was a discussion that mentioned whether Fir could be used for necks so I have been playing with it. The guitar is not sprayed or strung but I can see no problems so far. The guitar is a neck through with two pieces of fir with a 1/4 in strip of Sapele down the middle. This is not for strength but just because I had it available and it was exactly right to make the neck blank the right width. A double action truss rod is in there with a thinnish ebony board. At this stage it certainly seems no more flexible than many other necks. It was fun to carve as it comes off so easily! The piece I chose was very close grained and almost quartered. The body sides on this one are Cedar as making a softwood guitar appealed to my sense of the absurd. It si very light! Since this is one for me it takes a back seat to the pay jobs so will get finished when it is done and not before but I will post how it turns out. It has a good vibe though, I think it will be fine. There will be more. Melvyn Hiscock

Even some of the 'scientific' research is not that well judged. Firstly, as we all know, wood can, at times, seem infinitely variable. One sample can be completely different from another sample taken from the same log. It depends on many things such as prevailing winds where the tree grew, the slope it grew on, the disposition of the branches on the tree, how the wood was cut, stored and dried and many other factors. Well all know that yet some research seems to centre on providing a 'standard' which is never going to be achieveable. About twenty years ago there was a feature on a UK TV programme about a University that had been studying the effects of vibration on acoustic guitar tops so they could predict the sound of the guitar before it was made. Fine in theory but they took a guitar top, hung it in an acoustic booth and generated different frequencies into the top through the bridge position and photographed it with some clever light source that showed where the top was vibrating. Fine. Except, The top was not on a guitar and was therefore not in compression in front of the bridge and tension behind it, the top was also not attached to a guitar and so was unsupported around its sides and there was no bridge providing a certain amuont of damping to the top. There was also, as far as I could see, no way of measuring anything but the fundemental, the harmonics seemed to be forgotten. There is some interesting stuff here: http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/music/guitar/intro_engl.html and some work is being done in Wales at the University of Cardiff but, as we have said, little or nothing on electrics. Even if there were the simple fact that guitars are different shapes and therefore different masses will make a difference. The best way of determining what you want is still to experiment and try it, as I said earlier, and use the subjective research that has been done by others. Absolutely. Remember twenty years ago no one referred to 'Swamp Ash" that is a marketing term now that grew out of a nickname. It is no different to using the word 'deal' to desribe various types of pine. It is just a nickname, not a species. In the late 1970s, heavy was all. Try lifting one of those Yamaha SG2000s, they weigh a ton. Framus made the Jan Akkermann model out of solid maple and Hagstrom made the 'swede' out of it too. Imagine a Les Paul-sized guitar made of solid maple! Even so you have to remember that Sweden has a lot of European maple growing, they used what was available and economic, just like Leo Fender did. which is always going to be the best way (we have probably both said before) and to listen to the stuff that is on forums like this. This sort of information was SO hard to get back when I started (you lucky, lucky people) Well it would be for the tone . . .

That was meant as a tounge in cheek comment for everyone. Sorry if it touched a nerve. Perhaps I should use one of those annoying smilies that seem to be everywhere. To me tonewood is that which generates most or all of a guitar's tone in a situation where the vibration of the top is the principle means of generating the sound of an instrument, be it guitar, violin, dulcimer etc. Wood used on electric guitars does have a function in the overall sound of the guitar but is not the principle means of generating the instrument's sound. Next we will hear of 'Tone truss rods' or 'tone inlays'. (insert annoying smilie thing for those that misunderstand) I get your point but I still feel the word 'tonewood' used to describe woods for electric guitar is marketingspeak and misleading to people new to the sport. Agreed, I have been around long enough to see a lot of that and some of it changes back. Change is also not always correct!

Melvyn, Have you ever run across any research on laminated necks being stronger? I guess it would be best to clarify. An increase in strength due to the fact the neck has been laminate(not by laminating stronger woods to weaker woods, but simply the process of glueing pieces together). This is a subject that comes up occasionaly and I have never seen a bit of research that could support the idea. Along the same lines what about the idea that laminating pieces improves dimensional stability. My gut tells me yes within reason, but I have never seen a bit of research that confirms it. It is the same as for bodies. Lots of opinion backed up with zero research. Pretty much like a lot of stuff really (Violin making has more than it's fair share of this too) The contrasting thing came in with Alembic. It does mean that you don't have to find big pieces of good wood and can use the smaller pieces that are better quality. I like laminating as I use smaller pieces. In a way I wish you wouldn't call it tonewood. That has come in over the last few years to describe wood used on solids. As far as I am concerned tonewood is spruce and the like used on guitar tops. There is more access to stuff now that ever before. When I started there was one place in the UK selling guitar parts and there was a choice between cheap japanese pickups and Fender and Gibson. Prices on those were not a lot different to now as I remember. Getting fingerboards and stuff was near on impossible for me. Even fretwire was impossible to find. I laugh now when I see people getting **** about what type to use when we used what we could get! Wood is easier but the quality has gone down a little. It is hard to find Alder in the UK at the moment. Good mahogany is very expensive and hard to get. I have some Brazilian rosewood fingerboards left and no, you can't have any. For me to be able to shop anywhere in the world for anything is as far away as possible to what was going on the early 1970s. I used to have to get whatever wood I could from the local woodyard. Maple was out as there was nowhere anywhere near that stocked it. Most of my early guitars were mahogany-types as that was what I could get. It was only when I discovered David Dyke and Touchstone Tonewoods in the late 1970s that it started to get easier as they could also cut the stuff. I think my early customer number at Touchstone was in the early 20s! However, alternatives always come along. At Giffin's we made some guitars from jelutong. Remember too that I can remember when heavy guitars were considered best! MH

I thought it was time to troll in . . . . Mahogany has been used as a generic term for mahoganies and similar woods by guitar makers for years. Honduras mahogany is very nice to work but very hard to get hold of for all the right reasons. Other mahoganies can have wilder grain. Most makers used it because Gibson had been using it for years and many guitars are just copies of others. Alder is used a lot because Fender used it. Leo Fender was, without any doubt, a genius so why did he use alder? Was it that it was a superior 'tone' wood? No, he had started using Ash (because it was stable and cheap) but it needed grain filling beore spraying. Alder didn't and therefore he could cut out several stages in the finishing process and save money. The fact that alder happens to sound great on some guitars was just a bonus. Not all high end guitars are one or even two piece. I remember seeing an early 1960s Jazzmaster body made of seven pieces and some Strats with quite a few. Roger Giffin and I used to call guitars like this "Friday afternoon Fenders" because it was as if they needed to get the weeek's production numbers so any old piece of wood was glued together. I have had someone call me a liar on a forum when I posted about this guitar. Quite why I would lie about it is beyond me but I was there and I remember it well. Now, there is a lot of tosh talked about lamination. I have yet to see ANY genuine research data that desrcibes the differences between single piece and laminated bodies and since no one seems to have properly researched it ALL opinions on the differences are just that - opinions. I have no problems joining two, three or even four pieces together as there are far more factors to consider than the number of bits. If they are good wood and glued together properly I have yet to find a problem. Remember that the bad name some laminated guitars get is due to them being laminated from inferior wood so is it the lamination of the wood that is the problem? Also quite a few builders I have seen over the years will go on and on about one-piece bodies but then laminate necks for strength (obviously laminating necks doesn't alter tone and laminating bodies does!) As with all these things try it and experiment. I happen to love good Honduras mahogany guitars (I have a great '62 SG Les Paul Junior that could melt your teeth enamel) and I also love others. I have mentioned elsewhere on this forum that I have just made a couple of guitars out of cedar (two piece bodies if anyone is measuring) and they are great. But remember you still have to fit it all together properly and a bad truss rod fit will suck more 'tone' out of your guitar than any amount of laminations. So, go play and have fun. I am waiting for the workshop planer to get fixed so that I can complete the Douglas Fir neck-through that i am making to prive that you don't NEED to use hardwoods and I might have a play with a few other things. Who knows, I am a man of mystery . . . Trolling off now. . . .

So, I glued up three pieces of Douglad fir and two small pieces of Sapele into a five-piece neck (the sapeles was only there as the Fir was not quite wide enough) and the planer decided to play up and remove wood at an angle. It was a shame as it was long enough to get a through neck from it. It looked like being fun. Have to reset the planer and try again. This time it'll be a three piece, possibly all Fir. I will keep you informed. . . .

Both brass and ali are pretty nasty for nuts. There was a school of thought (back in the late 1970s) that said a brass nut would 'even out the sound between the open and fretted strings" but this was all heresay and a lot of very nice old guitars suddenly had brass nuts. Since most people claiming this were also playing through valve amps and often with distortion pedals it was all a bit academic. Downside, brass looks horrible, hard to work and is, surprisingly, quite soft so the wound strings mark the inside of the slots and cause tuning problems as the string winding ump over the marks they make. It also tarnishes and I would never use it. Aluminium is even worse. Easy to work but softer even than brass and not recommended at all. Wood is going to last no time on an eight string either. The only time I would consider wood as a nut material is on a fretless where the depth is minimal and it is really only being used to stop the strings moving from side to side. Go graphite corian or bone. hope that helps. MH

It might only be in the first edition, I can't remember. However it is good wood for bodies. MH

20 years? That might be *just* dry enough!!

You don't want to be using so much pressure that you dent the wood as this would also tend to squeeze all the glue out of the join. You can make a caul with raised sides if you are worried about the edges not going down properly. Make a caul the size of the fingerboard from, say, 3/8 in ply and then add some small strips of 1/16in ply along the edges. Clamp that down and don't overtighten. If you have to use a lot of pressure to clamp anything you have done it wrong.

I have some cedar and some douglas fir if you would want to try that. Contact me offline if you do melvyn@melvynhiscock.com Regards

It has roughly the same density as Alder and makes a good body wood but it can also shrink in length as well as width so make sure it is dry. I have used it in the past and it is fine for bodies, wouldn't use it on necks though

When two strat pickups are on together, in positions 2 and 4 of a normal five-way strat switch it is often known as 'out of phase' when it is not. They are just on in parallel. If you do put them out of phase it does sound a complete load of old pants, as you point out. However that is parallel out of phase what I have is series out of phase, so there is much more volume but still a nice jangliness about it. So, back pickup as normal. Both on in parallel - the normal (post 1950s) tele mid position, both in on series - so acting as a great big humbucker, both on in series out of phase (jangly) and front. It actually sounds very good.

Thanks for the kind words chaps. It makes an old man proud. Mind you, I am not that nice in real life, ask Mattia! Just as an add-on to this thread. Last week I finished putting together a cedar-bodied not-a-tele. The wiring was as I have in my other tele - back/both in parallel/both in series/both in series out of phase/front. Instead of single coils on this one I have humbuckers and the addition of a coilt tap on a push-pull. So I get that wiring option in humbucking or single coil. It works well and is very useful. If you want a copy of the diagram I can do this and I will not charge but will ask for a donation to cancer charities. I lost a good friend this year to lukaemia (David Covell who used to post a lot of rec.music.makers.guitar) so that'll be for him. Trust me, he was worth it. Melvyn Proud to be a newbie

I was looking at some Douglas fir in the workshop yesterday and I was thinking about a neck through with it. There are some rojects taking up time at the moment but I am sure I can spare some time to make up an interesting douglas fir guitar. We have, literally, about a ton of it at the workshop so finding a good bit won't be hard. We also have a lot of maple boards suitable for neck laminates. Again, quite literally about a ton so any UK builders wanting stuff (I know I am probably not supposed to solicit on here but I also know how hard it is to find wood when you are starting out and we can machine it too) If and when I do this douglas fir neck I will post details. As I type this I am wondering about acoustic necks too . . .

I have to may that I have just checked in the mirror and I am, indeed, me. Although, who is to say I am dealing in the same reality as you??? But seriously, Heavy woods and light woods can sound good on electric guitars, there are other forces in play. Make it right and be surprised . . . As for Douglas fir. I use it for acoustic braces as the quality can be so good. I hav ebeen thinking about making necks from it. One problem is that it can develop grain staining over time so what looks good on an acoustic top or on a neck looks nasty over time. I have been playing a cedar tele-esque thing with maple one-piece neck (actually over 100 pieces if you include heads and frets, truss rod and dots) with a thin maple front and two humbuckers wired to a five-way giving back/both in parallel/both in series/both in series out of phase and front with a coil tap to add more to this. It s a lot of fun, Cedar is good. Cedar marks easily. Use cedar and be careful. Go and pay, have fun and try things and Mattia, send me some mapole!

I have recently made a couple of guitars with cedar and it is a good wood. Both sound bright and ring really well. Of course, with a neck-through you will have other considerations as the string will not be anchored into the cedar but I like it. It is soft and easily marked but it is a good choice.

It dopesn't matter of the guitar is set up for a floating or a 'locked' trem. You don't need to install five sroings and have the trem flat against the body they CAN be set up to work when floating. Firstly the nut needs to be good. It is no good having nut slots that are exactly the right size, the strings will bind. You need some play so the strings can move in the nut slots without rattling. There is way too much talk about 'exact'. EXACT is not always good, RIGHT is much better. Allow a tiny bit of play in the nut slots so that the strings can move. Lubricate, even if you only use grahpite from a pencil (all I ever use) Wang the trem up and down a lot so that everything beds in when you have got it adjusted how you want it. Then string it and STRETCH THE STRINGS. You would not believe the amount of people who get tuning problems because they have not stretched the strings. If I can get a standard Fender Strat trem to play in tune when floating, while being able to pull up and down then so can you. it is not rocket science. MH

If in doubt draw it out. get a piece of paper, plan it out. It is much quicker.

You could use a push-pull pot in each position for eac of the pickups. That would work. You could also use a three pole double throw switch that you can find if you look. That woul tap all three with one click. If you want to do each individually and mix them then go for the push pull option.

Use the 250 Log, they will be fine.

Thanks for all your kind words. I sort of like being a newbie, however it has been suggested that I get a VIP badge (stands for Very Interested in P90s.) Melvyn