I haven't built to many guitars yet and the ones I have have all been different. I've carved most all the necks but plan to make a few more traditional cbg's with the neck through the box. My question to everyone is whether the neck is attached to the bottom of the box or to the lid? Please take into account that the lid will be the top and the bottom will face the player....well, their belly. Is there a sound/resonating difference or is it negligible? The first electrified version I made, the neck had contact with the top and the bottom. Are there advantages to keeping the neck from contacting one or the other? I'd like to hear some opinions. Thanks
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You know, its amazing that [at least those on this thread] can live and build completely isolated from one another and short of learning from others ad hoc, and can come up with exactly or at least very similar solutions to the same problem -- including modification to that such as the neck angle with shims.
Amazing
-WY
there is in fact an easier and less wasteful method which enables you to start with a smaller neck blank.
I know wes' little sketchup there is almost gospel around these parts, but consider this..
(forgive my dodgy illustrator sketch, i wasnt gonna put hours and hours into it, hopefully you get the picture.)
in practice the profiling in step 6 happens before you attach the box in step 5, this for illustrative purpose only..
the only other builder that I know of that worked this out for himself is jay of Tiny guitars..
PS I dont think Les made his log for sustain, fucker was playing 32nd notes !! it was about eliminating feedback at extreme volumes and articulation, same reasons fender and bigsby did it. it was the ability to crank the amp after eliminating said feedback that brought the sustain.
Badda Bing baby!. This method works REALLY well.
-WY
I kinda do mine the same - I trim the part of the neck that is inside the box from 5mm (tail) to nothing (where fretboard starts) to give some neck angle.
However, I dont use a cut out. Often my necks are touching the box lid inside, but are not fastened to it - they are screwed in from the back. I admit Im not concerned by acoustics so much as I always electrify them, and even if I were, I dont believe that a cut out is neccesary.
There are so many other factors that affect how your guitar will sound. Box construction, box size, soundholes (sometimes a box is louder without soundholes), strings used, type of bridge, string tension, neck construction... the list is endless.
If you took a scientific approach you would probably find that the ideal way of building and fitting a neck was different from one box to the other, so my advice would be not to worry about it too much!
"Not worry too much about it"....thanks for bringing me back to that mantra. That's why I haven't been building as much as I've been cyphering and a-thinking; the thought process is becoming the thing and my guitar rack is thin of work.
The responses have been incredibly helpful so far. Once I get home from this job, there's a load of wood acclimating to the shop air waiting for me to get off my ass and build. If I remember right, I learn a little something on each build anyway.
Kid,
I like your neck relief method (fewer cuts), and the illustrations are perfectly clear. There's obviously several ways to skin a ca...neck. Am I correct in assuming it also gives you the ability to get some neck angle, as a way to lower the subsequent string action, by varying the angle of the original cut? You can also do that by varying the shim thickness, I'm guessin'?
And not to get into a pissing match with the Kid about Les Paul's Log (boy, that sounds kinky!), here's a direct quote from the man himself about the whys of his midnight Epiphone build:
In the early 30s, the up-and-coming professional guitarist began burning his energies on this central vision: a guitar that would produce undistorted electronic sounds.
"What I wanted to do," Mr. Paul told me, "is not have two things vibrating. I wanted the string to vibrate and nothing else. I wanted the guitar to sustain longer than an acoustical box and have different sounds than an acoustical box."
Taken from the following article:
http://www.lespaulbiography.com/
Just sayin'...
OK, got ya. What I was thinking is that I could subtly affect both the fretboard relief and the angle, if needed or wanted, by different shim thicknesses at the tail versus where the neck enters the box (the join). I assume you've played with this some?
To amplify on what wes and Dan are saying (pun intended):
Attaching the neck to the top (assuming this is the lid of the box) stiffens the top, which is your soundboard. Stiffening the top can sometimes be a good thing (cf. tone bars, struts, sound strips, whatever you wanna call 'em, designed to enhance specific frequencies), but typically, you want the top to vibrate as freely as possible on these relatively small soundboxes, especially for an acoustic-only build. The vibrating top is responding to the string vibration through the bridge / saddle combo; it also is pushing the air inside the box volume, similar to the way a loudspeaker functions, causing the air to vibrate and transmit sound. Or so many luthiers believe and argue endlessly about.
Attaching the neck to the bottom of the box is one way of allowing the top to vibrate, without having to cut a neck relief, if your box is deep enough. You will also find people attaching the neck to the lid, because they have found on many boxes that the bottom actually has thinner wood. Thinner soundboards make for better vibrating and resonance characteristics, especially on acoustic builds.
Interestingly, Crow on his highly simplified, basic Uncle Crow builds, gets awesome acoustic resonance by attaching his necks directly to the top, but on the outside of the box! I believe, without having scientifically tested this, that coupling the strings directly to the neck directly to the outside of the box, in effect creates a gigantic bridge; this design is thus able to transmit a wider frequency vibration spectrum, and may also be maximizing the drive of the entire air volume in the box (because there's no neck taking up space inside, see?), somewhat similar to the way a standard acoustic does with neck attached only to a heel block at the edge of the resonating chamber (notice what I called the body of the guitar?). Ask yourself why commercial builders do it this way, instead of doing a neck-through design.
Obviously, this is not as important for an electric build, especially for ones fitted with magnetic pickups. Remember that Les Paul's original Log was a heavy pine plank, fitted with the split-down-the-middle body halves of an acoustic guitar, which plank was then fitted with a mag pickup. Essentially, a neck-through! And the reason for this was to increase the duration of sustained notes beyond what was achievable only acoustically. And the later Steinberger electric stick guitars are essentially Les Paul's Log, minus the side resonating chambers.
So if you are planning an acoustic or acoustic / electric build, relieving the neck to allow the top ( or bottom) to freely vibrate is a good idea. If you don't care so much, because you're gonna play amplified with a piezo or mag pup, then it don't matter so much.
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