A few years ago I built four cbg,s three acoustic anyone PIezo with volume and tone pots. Now I am about to start a 6 string electric. A few questions
1. Pots, seems like most folks use 500k pots on electrics, but I have red in several places that if you’re using a single coil pick up at 8 to 50 K is best. Thoughts?
2. I will be using “light” electric guitar strings on this six string Electric. My neck is three, quarter-inch pieces of oak laminated together with a fretboard laminated on top of that. I have never done a truss rod in my 3 string ones, do you think that will be strong enough do you think I need to run a truss rod to work? I intend to build another so I would not be devastated if it did then but of course I wound prefer it not.
3. Suggested height/space between single coil pickup(it has a cover on it) and strings?
4. The capacitor on the tone pot, I read .047. Is this good for this setup or a .22?
Replies
I've built four 6-stringers. A metal body resonator a wood body resonator and a couple of solid body "Travel" guitars. Based on that, I say step up and cut the 1/4" slot for the truss rod. It not only helps keep the neck from bowing, it allows you to do a quality setup using the truss rod tension to adjust the neck relief for the best action.
A router and a simple jig will allow you to cut the slot quickly.
Good luck with it.
I'll second the idea of adding a trussrod. Nothing bums you out more than spending the time to build an instrument only to watch the neck ramp, twist or warp later.
If you don't have a router, you use a table saw or hand held circular saw with the depth adjusted to the right depth and a jig or fence. I used a hand drill with Forstner bit once when my saw quit working and cleaned in up with a sharp chisel.
Hi, I agree one can get away without a truss rod. Adjustable truss rods and more recently two way adjustable truss rods have not always been available, so building a good stable neck, back in the day, relied on a number of things.
The guitar pictured is 38 years old and the fingerboard is still as flat as the day I built it back in 1980. The action is 2mm bass and 1.25mm treble at the 12 fret. Good for an old acoustic. Why?
This is the way I built this and all my necks. There is less strain on 3-4 string necks, but I feel the same principals can apply.
Quarter sawn timber, if not on a good 1/4 [grain runs off to one side] I will book match two pieces with an centre piece, and sandwich these together. In the neck shown there is also a steel bar 1/4 x 1/2 for added strength, I had nobody to ask back then, so that's what I did. Added to that is a 1/4" ebony fingerboard. Neck timber in this guitar is Honduran Mahogany.
Taffy,
That last pic is exactly what I'm talking about. That is exactly how St Wishnevsky builds his necks without a metal trussrod. With a fingerboard on top, that would be real stiff.
Thanks for posting!
Interesting neck material you describe .,., with a neck laminated vertically you can do with out the truss rod, and I like a dead flat neck.,.,many people are so used to the idea of a truss rod, they think it is necessary, but I have found it is more of a personnel preference.,.,adjustable truss rods do not always have the desired effect.,.,so your neck stock is three 1/4" pieces of oak laminated horizontally? Did you laminate them yourself ? .,,.
True that not all necks need a trussrod. Most 3 string gits can get by without one.
Some woods are more likely to ramp under string pressure, some Pine, Cedar and Poplar species are really weak.
The more strings added and longer scales like 25.5" or more add a lot of stress pressure, especially for a Bass.
There are things you can do structure wise to strengthen that don't involve a trussrod, but I feel that doing a simple non-adjustable trussrod is very easy to do and I'd rather go an extra mile to prevent having a useless git. But that's me.
The grain runs the long way, meaning from body to head and is not a bolt on, but will run all the way to tail of the cig box without going out the back. Glued and braced inside the bos. I took the three .25” thick oaf pieces and applied tite bond glue to them and clamped them together with multiple clamps for 2 days. This is how I did my other 3 stringers.
A single coil pick-up normally uses a .47 cap and a 250k pot. A 500k pot and .22 cap will darken the high frequencies.
Singles use the 250k pots/.047 caps to darken the already bright toned single coil pickups, which is why the reversed is used(500k pots/.022 cap) to brighten double coils because the 2 pickup coils wired in series darkens the tone. Why double coil humbuckers have that full and fat tone that's different from a Fender Stratocaster using 2 coils in parallel to buck hum - no as fat, full or dark, but a bit brighter.
So to be clear, it's low value pots(250k) and high value caps(.047) for darker tone. Higher value pots(500k) and lower value caps(.022) to brighten tone.
It can all be a bit confusing and when you get into building you own amp circuits it gets more confusing.
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