Number 8

[Will Reyer]

O.k., so frets are installed on the fretboard, but not leveled or even trimmed to length. Holes drilled in headstock for tuning machines. Bolted the neck back on the body. Laid straightedge on frets and measured down to body at bridge location, and it looks like I'm on target for a 5/16" thick bridge (crossing my fingers) as intended when I set the neck angle.

For this guitar and the previous one I jointed and planed a piece of osage orange to .289" thickness. This is, theoretically, the thickness of my .250" fretboards plus the height of the StewMac fretwire, .039". I can then set this on the neck before a fretboard is installed and put the straightedge on top of it and aim the straightedge at a desired bridge height to determine the neck set angle.

And closeup photo of the neck heel, as promised; from 6 ft away it looks lovely, hah!

[bftobin]

Call the heel 'an artistic design innovation' and charge extra for it !!

Brent

[Herman]

Good work Will,If they win prizes with building like this, You are good to go!

Herman

[Will Reyer]

Hey, good one, Herman - and I actually do admire that building, hah! And #8 is now strung up:

The fretboard and bridge are (plain-sawn) walnut, per the old Acosta guitars made in San Antonio. 25.4” scale, 14 fret guitar, OM body. Zero fret is StewMac #0152, frets are #0148.

Had my luthier friend here, Kjell, come and install the JJB-Electronics piezo pickup that John Joyce told me about, $75 versus the $150 K&K that Northfield Mandolins here use. I'd gone thru the installation motions, without glue, that the instructions called for and didn't think I'd ever get the piezo's in the proper place before the glue dried. Both Kjell and John Parchem have different but much more useful methods. I like Joyce's method of installation before the back goes on the guitar, if I can get precise enough for the locations to work.

I added the pickup because the intended recipient of this gift guitar is easily an order of magnitude better guitarist than me and I know he'll want to be able to play it plugged in, as well as acoustic. My personal thoughts are that acoustics ought to be mic'ed rather than plugged in as I'm hoping some of my builds will outlive me, without being implanted with obsolete electronics. I've lived thru 78, 33, and 45 rpm records, 8-track and cassette recorders, and now mp3 et al digital recordings, just in my lifetime.

Made a Corian false nut (since there's a zero fret). I'm still thinking maybe it's a little easier to use a zero fret than going thru the tedium of making nut slots deep enough but worrying if one more stroke will make them too deep. My zero fret is .009” higher than the frets and works just fine.

Made a 1/4” wide trial wood saddle with no intonation. Strung up the guitar. Relief looked good after one quick minor tweak of the double-action truss rod. Didn't like the neck at all though it was made to the same pattern as my #6, the neck of which I love. False nut was slotted wide and deep enough, but was too tall. Looked like the saddle should be 1/16” lower, and then, as well, the bridge.

Took height off the false nut with my disc sander. Likewise the trial saddle. Planed a 1/16” off the bridge. Took off the neck, reworked the profile and thickness, added wiping urethane. A 4mm Allen wrench removes the two 1/4-20 UNC KD fastener screws that attach the neck, and I don't glue down the fretboard extension on the soundboard. In fact, I aim for a 1/32” height gap at the end of the fretboard on the soundboard before stringing up to concert pitch; the string tension pulls it right down.

Strung it back up with the wood trial saddle. Action height looked right on my spec. Made Corian saddle to height of the wood one.

Did the intonation Saturday afternoon with my old Seiko tuner with the big long needle. Sounds awful to me like they all do before the parts figure out they need to work together and the strings decide to hold pitch. Expect it will sound just fine after some playing in – cedar does that lots quicker than spruce. Sound file when it gets ready for prime time.

[John Parchem]

Nice! My guitars usually disappoint right after I get them strung up, and sound a lot better after a few days.

I never tried to make a stacked heel out of a laminated neck, I always go with non laminated wood for the heel, like my ukulele. But I find that solution a little funky as well. I balance it with a non laminated headstock but I would really like to have a completely laminated neck, without having be a single piece neck.

20201022_120457.jpg (141.66 KiB) Viewed 698 times

[Will Reyer]

John,

I like the .25" center stripe carrying thru just as a visual, even if I can never manage to glue up a stack precisely in line. And I like the stripe as a guide to routing the truss rod channel.

And I left all the leetle molecules strung up to concert pitch all night and until this afternoon, and they've already started to figger out what they're supposed to do: attachment, #8overnight.mp3

This guitar is supposed to be a secret from the recipient, but I'd like to play the heck out of it for two weeks and have all the locals come and play it for me and make recommendations for the setup, as I've got it where I like it, but I don't play up in the cutaway. Otto had a guest one night in his music room when I had #6 along, and his take was that the action was too high for playing up the fretboard, a valuable insight as about as high up as I go is to play an E chord using my little finger to reach the first string E at the octave.

But I think this one's gonna be a talker, and J.Joyce, the pickup is excellent, I'm in yer debt.

[Will Reyer]

Sound file didn't show up, this hopefully fixes