Knowing now that I was just never putting enough tension on the strings I pulled out CBG #1 and just kept cranking until it was tuned. Wow, sounds a LOT better, imagine that!

Of course that also put enough bend in the neck that it looks more like a bow than a guitar. Fretting is all but impossible, but with a slide it seems to really sing now. I may have to go get some low tension strings to try it :D Neck bending on #1 was why I decided to use Oak instead of Poplar on #2, oak being generally the stiffest hardwood I could find easily.

Now that I've got a few basic scales and chords figured out - still trying to learn the right hand stuff, considering it's generally my good hand I have a hard time believing how unwilling it is to do what I ask it to when there's a guitar in front of it. But I'm starting to be able to do some basic things that I'm not totally embarrassed to pluck away at around friends who've been drinking. Nothing quite regular or predictable enough to be classified as a song, but at least generally all in the same key and usually not hitting notes/rhythms that make me cringe even if they don't make me want to get up and dance. In other words I can listen to the guitar itself a little without finding someone else to play it for me. A big help.

I've also found that my tuner isn't a piece of junk, I just wasn't tuning in the right range. Tuner seems to work pretty well once I learned that. So I used it to check the intonation a bit - not very good at all. By the 12th fret things are almost half a semi-tone off it seems. Oddly enough strings 1 and 3 are sharp while string 2 is flat by almost the same amount. Of course the bridge and nut both being temporary I wasn't too surprised, they're bot sitting a little high on the scale compared to where I plan them on being eventually.

But it did better when I did the same test right after it's first tuning. It was just a little bit off that evening when I tested it. I also noticed today that the action is starting to get higher. So I guess that would make sense about throwing off the intonation. I did plan on the neck bending a bit when I built this. In fact I put a few degrees of back angle in intentionally, but I may not have put in enough. I could put a bit more in since nothing is glued together yet.

I see a couple different ways I can deal with this on the current CBG, just too many variables for me to pick a method and try it.

1) Take the neck off and resand the neck attachments to put more back angle in. Except I don't think it would help much, and I'm not sure how much more bend the neck will develop or if it's at it's limit. I'm not sure this is the best solution - but until I glue things together (if I end up gluing things) it's on the table. I'm thinking it's more of a last ditch hack than a prudent first reaction.

2) Glue the fingerboard. Just having it screwed on I don't think it adds as much strength as it would if I glued it. It's not laminated yet, just attached.

3) But while the fingerboard is off maybe I can just add a stiffener. I have a router on hand, Except putting something down the middle would prevent my screws from mounting now. Unless I put it deep and covered with a bit of wood. Or put wood in with the grain going the other way as a stiffener. I could try to add a real truss rod...dangerous path here...but a path I want to take eventually since I do think I want to attempt building 4 and 6 strings in the future. With any of these ideas the problem is I already have a bend. Will any of them let me reverse it - or just keep it from getting worse?

Or - it could be this is as much flex as it's going to get and I could just lower the height of the bridge a bit to compensate. Except when I lay a straight edge across the fretboard now there's almost 1mm of gap in the middle, maybe a bit more. - originally it was flat. So I think I should do something to correct it. If it is as much flex as the neck is going to take I could reshape the bottom of the fingerboard to compensate.

For now I think I'm just going practice playing it and think about possibilities while I wait to see how much more it flexes. It's a lot easier to play with a slide now than it was originally, the action is still very playable and I've got several ideas brewing on how to deal with this if I choose to do so. And I've got plans brewing for how to approach #3 with the lessons I learned on #2....