So
For the first time in my life, a complete stranger asked me to make a guitar for him.
He wants something of the dobro type. He wants "a tin guitar to play delta blues with"
I told him I could make a cigar box guitar with a resonator on it.
Problem is, I know nothing about the lenght of the neck. I mostly do ukeleles and mandolins.
Any ideas as to neck length?
He does not want it fretted.
Thank you
Replies
Dobro's usually have a 25" scale.
Hello guys, thank you so much for all the help. Finally what I did was take all of my prototypes to the customer, had him check each one, and he chose a fretless cigar box guitar with a paint can lid resonator. It will be a DAD . I will choose a 24 inch neck. Dont think I am ready to fret yet. I still have to do like ten more ukes or so.
To re-sidetrack the topic (you started it!) fretting is not super hard. Ukes are a good first try as they are flat and can be pressed in with a vise or C clamp backed with blocks of wood. I bought the gitty saw and some frets and it came out ok. The frets were sized for a tapered uke neck so only some minor filing was needed. The uke I did is one of the recent posts in the uke forum.
To come back to your question about neck length: the cbg resonators I have seen were relatively short scale (23 to 24 inch) and were tuned with high string tension (about ,026, .017, .013 for GDG tuning). Other opinions around?
To the question about fretting: a fret calculator is mathematically exact, but every luthier I know even for low action shortens the distance from nut to first fret for about half a millimeter, as is done with a correctly fretted fretboard.
Don't be afraid to turn down work if you feel you are out of your depth. Sometimes customers will ask me for unfeasible or impractical things, and I tell them straight that it can't be done..or at least I won't do it! There's no shame in being honest, and sometimes it reflects better on you to admit you don't know if you can do it, especially if you can point them in the right direction of someone who can.
Maybe you are on the better side taking an existing guitar as a model: the result will be more exact than the values of a fret calculator to be marked on the fretboard. If you find one with a big scale length the better, because you can shorten your template as you like: put the nut at the position of any of the frets and calculate the distance to the bridge twice the distance from the nut to the actual 12th fret. Do you have cheap e-guitars around? Yamahas are generally fretted quite exactly.
As he stated he is making an unfretted guitar,it doesn't matter,but i certainly would be inclined to go with wayfinders suggestion re a calculater rather than trying to transfer 3mm frets from an existing tapered neck to a new neck and trying to find the centre of the fret.It seems to have a lot of potential variance likely,a proven calculater,used well should have all marked within a pencil line thickness