Guitar WIll

Hi, I'm having difficulty working out how I should cut my neck for my strat style project. I have a strat copy that I am using for the most of measurements but my neck is of a differnt scale to this. Will this make any difference, or do I make a template that will mean that the neck will fit tight, route it and then adjest the bridge accordingly? I can't see why this wouldn't work, but I may be missing something.

Also do I route the depth of the neck, up to the fretboard? Cheers, I know that this information is on the net, and in books, but since my neck is an anomaly I just wanted to check.

BTW the neck has only 21 frets and an 18 inch scale.

Cheers, Will

I would think that you could sell that guitar and use the money to buy the parts to make one. However if this guitar has future value it may be better to leave it.

Thanks, just what I wanted to hear. I think that if I use a hard tail bridge I wouldn't be too fussed with holes in the wrong place. If in the unlikely situation to have to replace the neck it wouldn't be to bad moving a hardtail because the holes would give it character! (my main concern was that the frets would be in the wrong place and the innotation would be wrong, which it will be

thanks for the response jnewman

Hi, I've got a neck with 21 frets. This is a bit unusual but it is a really nice neck that I like it. My first question is how long will a neck last with lots of playing (about 2hrs a night). This gutiar that I am building I want to last for ages, because I am planning a top notch painting on the guitar body. For this reason if I have a problem with the neck becomming dammaged or wearing away I will want to replace it an maybe upgrade it. However, (and this is where it gets complicated) most of the fender and warmoth necks are 22 frets. Since I will have an expensive paint job on it I will not be able to move the position of the bridge, so will there be a chance of replacing a 21 fret neck with a 22 fret length neck without moving the bridge.

Cheers, Will.

If you have an Ibanez RG without a pickguard and you want to put one on, is this possible? What I am worried about is that the switches and the pots will not reach over that extra 3mm or so. Would I need to route out a square for them to sit on?

Cheers, Will.

Ah, never thought about it that way, so really the skunk stripes main purpose is to make a decorative feature of an essential cut that was needed.

Thats cleared it up for me at least.

Could I ask however why on my maple neck do I have a skunk stripe, even when the fret board is glued on, is it for aesthetics?

could a neck with a truss rod also have a one piece fret board/neck (all in one piece)?

I've been thinking that if I cut the guitar in half I could fit it in the planing machine. I could then remove the layer of wood, cut out the pickup section, make the new piece and glue it all together again. I could then glue on the top and it should be fine. Any comments on this crazy process?

It's all a matter of opinium. It's like saying a black guitar is better than a red guitar. It doesn't matter and as long as it is done well then it's up to the person who plays/owns it. At the end of the day it really is an artwork in doing it but people who dislike reliced guitars don't buy them.

You are right, that seems like the logical thing to do, however the thing is that i'm not to keen on RG style guitars with pickguards since they enhance the aggressive shape. I wouldn't mind putting on a normal strat pickguard but would it look ok?

Cheers, Will

Oh and I should add that i've got a vintage fender tremelo that I want to use for it and the routing is for a floyd rose, this helps to show why I want to cover it up when I fill in the spaces.

On this site there is a like to using fabric to finish the guitar. I assume that you could go through the same processes to achieve a similar effect. The best thing to do would be to try on a small piece of scrap wood and then see what happens.

Hi, to give everyone an idea of my project i'll write a brief overview.

Right, I'm building a strat style guitar because I want to get the sort of sound that I hear artists like John Mayer and Clapton have. I descided however to go for an Ibanez Jem style body however because I like it more in terms of aesthetics. The body is made of African mahogony and has a very red colour( I know that this would not give a typical strat sound but I really like mahogany and it was either that or basswood). Unfortunately this guitar is wrouted for two hummbuckers and one single coil. I wanted to go for 3 single coils since I already have a Gibson Les Paul custom that would sound similar.

To overcome this I thought that I would route out the entire pickup area, like the swimming pool cavity that are on some strats. I would thiem fill this with a block of magohany and start again (I should add at this point that I want to use a maple neck that I have but is slightly to small, so this conversion would involve replacing the neck socket with the mahogany).

The plan was then to plane the top of the guitar down (by about 5mm) and putting another wood top over it (about 5mm thick) to cover the filling.

However when I measured the width of the planing machine it only goes to 30cm and my guitar is 32cm.

Could someone tell me how I should remove this wood so that the surface will be flat and easy to attach the top. I have access to most hand tools and also a power belt facer, however these wouldn't give as good a surface.

I should also add that the colour of the new mahogany that I will use is very dark since it is old Brazillian Mauhogany, completely different to the red colour.

I would also like to do a sunburst finish.

Any advise on the project would be really useful. Thanks.

Thanks, how does having a hollowbody effect the sustain? and also, how hollow does it need to be, should it be very extensive over the guitar?

Cheers, Will

Thanks very much, it's good solid advise, something that I really appreciate.

Hi, I am building a guitar and I have made an Ibanez style body that I am using. It is made from mahogany and is very heavy. I was considering creating cavities in it like I imagined Gibson do with some of their les pauls to lower the weight. And then when I was on the Warmouth site I saw a hollow strat. http://www.warmoth.com/banner.cfm?itemID=6

I should add at this point that I am aiming for a strat sound with this guitar and am using a maple neck and fingerboard. My three questions are:

What effect to the sound would hollowing the inside of the body have?

Are there any particular ways of doing it. i.e. are there any templates that I should follow, or depths etc.

And would it work if I was to route the cavities and then apply another wood top, such as ash or alder etc?

Any advice or suggestions would really be appreciated. Cheers, Will.

Hi, I bought an Ibanez style jem body with a quilt maple veneer with the idea of building it up in a similar way to a stratocaster. The reason that i bought it was because it looks absolutely fantastic, made from great materials and I got it at a very good price. The trouble is that the wrouting is made for a floyd rose tremolo system, which as you will know is completely different to the fender style ones. The reason I don't want to use a floyd rose tremolo system is because of the expense and I don't know enough about them to differentiate between the difference in quality.

The whole point of this post is to ask if anyone has any suggestions on how to fill the gap (so I can fit a fender strat style tremolo) whilst keeping the original veneer. I expect this is a mission impossible but i'd appreciate any feedback. Thanks.