Bit of a challenge here

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I collected this last night.

Someone here may recognise it, or parts of it.

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It was offered to me (when I was looking for a neck or two suitable for Gibson-style bodies) as a neck with a guitar mis-attached, with a suggestion that I could cut the neck out of the body and dump the body.

This shot gives an idea of why ...
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I've not measured it all properly, but because the neck was set at the wrong angle, I'd need a rather tall bridge.  OK, a very tall bridge.

I was fully aware of the problem, but I thought I'd cunningly fix it by putting a tapered cap on the guitar, thin at the neck end, rising to quite thick around the bridge point, and then dropping away again towards the edges of the body.  

Problem 1, the body is already rounded over, so I'd need to remove that amount of thickness to create a sharp edge before fixing the cap.
Problem 2, there are no cabling holes or cavities drilled, and doing that with the neck already in place is obviously a bit of a pita.


So, I could try cutting the neck out and trashing the (1-pce Mahog) body, but that seems a bit wasteful.

Current thinking is some sort of centre-piece cap. which might look a bit odd, but would allow me to do the top routing for wiring and then hide it under the cap.

But that's not too elegant either, so I thought I'd throw it out there to the wise makers & modders for other suggestions.

There's no rush - I'm unlikely to get time to do anything about it this year ...



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Comments

  • paulnb57paulnb57 Frets: 3044
    Thats a real shame cos its a good looking guitar......won't the neck joint steam apart?
    Stranger from another planet welcome to our hole - Just strap on your guitar and we'll play some rock 'n' roll

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  • TTonyTTony Frets: 27341
    paulnb57 said:
    Thats a real shame cos its a good looking guitar......won't the neck joint steam apart?
    I really don't know.  I've never tried doing that.
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  • paulnb57paulnb57 Frets: 3044
    edited October 2014
    Me either, but I've seen it online somewhere..... 

    Stranger from another planet welcome to our hole - Just strap on your guitar and we'll play some rock 'n' roll

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  • TTonyTTony Frets: 27341
    The body needs to be thicker - a lot thicker - rather than thinner.


    @WezV - any thoughts?
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  • WezVWezV Frets: 16541
    long time no see.  I remember making that neck

    this guitars neck is its twin - cut from the same blank and made in a very similar way

    Have you measured how high the bridge would be sitting?


    ps - i hate that one of my side dots was out of line :(
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  • WezVWezV Frets: 16541
    edited October 2014
    but i still love that headstock inlay

    and just so people know, i will take responsibility for a misaligned side dot - but i only made the neck here and was not involved in joining the neck to body

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  • TTonyTTony Frets: 27341
    Sorry @WezV - didn't mean to imply or suggest your involvement in anything untoward!!

    I'll measure it properly in the morning.
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  • WezVWezV Frets: 16541
    edited October 2014
    nah, i don't mind.  Tbh i am trying to remember if I put any angle on the bottom on the heel or not.  My work could have led to the steep angle even if  I was not responsible for fitting the neck.  


    I see two options -

    go for a tall archtop style bridge and tailpiece and make it a bit quirky

    or route the body down 3/8" and and a top that tapers from 3/8-1/2" thick - not too difficult to do if you have a router thicknesser set-up
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  • TTonyTTony Frets: 27341
    That was my original plan. 

     I'll do some proper measuring tomorrow and see what's feasible.  I can do router thicknessing, and have a few bits of wood that could be used as caps.
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  • GSPBASSESGSPBASSES Frets: 2335
    tFB Trader
    Have a look at the link below it show how I did more or less what you might need to do.  

    Your life will improve when you realise it’s better to be alone than chase people who do not really care about you. Saying YES to happiness means learning to say NO to things and people that stress you out.

    https://www.facebook.com/grahame.pollard.39/

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  • TTonyTTony Frets: 27341
    GSPBASSES said:
    Have a look at the link below it show how I did more or less what you might need to do.  

    I remember watching that thread at the time!  That place is a great resource ... I don't spend enough time over there nowadays.
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  • ThePrettyDamnedThePrettyDamned Frets: 7472
    edited October 2014
    I quite like the idea of fitting a rather ornate bridge arrangement - something that would sit atop a piece of rosewood, with a bit ol tailpiece.

    However, that might take as much work (or more? I remember someone, maybe ash at oil city, struggling to find a suitable bridge piece for a guitar project) as a new cap.

    A new cap would also cover the one piece body... Which seems a shame.
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  • monquixotemonquixote Frets: 17485
    tFB Trader
    I think a Gretsch style bridge and tailpiece might do the job.
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  • WezVWezV Frets: 16541
    edited October 2014
    the fretboard dots are aluminium tube that was filled with black filler, side dots are the same.  For the headstock inlay i drilled a large hole in some aluminium and hand cut the outside edge for the ring, then i used 2 normal pearl dots for the hydrogen detail.  simple but really effective.  Si had a good idea with that one, and being a watchmen  fan I was happy to make it work

    it does look like they might need some polishing.  ebony has a tendency to shrink and obviously the aluminium won't, with 5 or 6 years of no wear  it will need a bit of TLC



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  • ICBMICBM Frets: 71950
    You could cap it and then rout the edge to a 'German carve' like a Mosrite, Westbury or Rickenbacker 381 - that would solve the problem of fitting a cap to the rounded edge. That would put the join about halfway up the carve, which should look OK.

    The German carve is unusual, but surprisingly comfortable in use even though it doesn't look like it will be!

    "Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski

    "Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson

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  • TTonyTTony Frets: 27341
    Done some measuring.

    The edge roundover is about 8-10mm "deep" - ie I'd need to take that much off the top of the body to get a sharp edge before putting a cap on it.

    Putting a straight edge along the top of the frets, and extending that to where the bridge would be, gives a height of 22mm - ie the bottom of the straight edge is 22mm above the top face of the body (before I take 8-10mm off the body to get the sharp edges!).

    So, 8mm + 22mm = 30mm

    I'd use a wrapover bridge, height of bridge unit c15mm.  So, allowing for me raising the bridge off the body by 2mm to create the string clearance above the frets, that means I'd need a 15mm (30mm - 15mm) depth of cap at the position of the bridge.

    I reckon that's doable.

    Using some sort of extended height bridge wouldn't really work - it would mean the pickups would also have to be raised a long way out of the body to get them anywhere near the strings.  


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  • Hadn't considered pickup heights, obviously could work but you'd need to dress it up a bit to make it look good...

    Hmm.

    Cap it is then? I'd be very interested in how you get on, and how you go about doing it all :)
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  • TTonyTTony Frets: 27341
    ICBM said:
    You could cap it and then rout the edge to a 'German carve' like a Mosrite, Westbury or Rickenbacker 381
    Just googled that ... I think this pic shows what you mean (I know the pic is of the back of the body, but the front seems to be pretty similar)

    image

    My reservation about that is that the body is mahog and the cap will be something else, so I'd have a definite "what's that all about then" 2-tone effect all around the edge where the mahog was still visible ... although it does have the attraction of being a bit easier than thicknessing the body!
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  • monquixotemonquixote Frets: 17485
    tFB Trader
    You could put filtertrons in it to get the height up
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  • TTonyTTony Frets: 27341
     I'd be very interested in how you get on, and how you go about doing it all :)
    Yup, I'm going to be quite interested myself!

    In theory, it shouldn't be too difficult.  I've got a simple thicknessing jig that I've used a couple of times.  Here it's being used to de-Wudtone a body where the finish hadn't taken properly, and rubbing down hadn't established a sufficiently clean surface to re do it, so I took a mm off the body's thickness;

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    image

    So - in theory (again) - the process should be pretty much the same, the only complication being that I'd need to make sure that I leave plenty of safety space between the router cutter and the glued-in neck!
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