Hi folks,
I thought I'd share a few of my tricks and techniques which I employ on my builds to make them sound and play better. Obviously to some of the more experienced builders out there these may seem obvious, but that aside these are all things I wish I knew when I began making these.
1. The nut
The nut is an extremely important part of any guitar's construction, and has a huge impact on the intonation and the clarity of the tone. All of my guitars are fretted so I set up my builds to play with fingers rather than slides. Some of these steps are unnecessary if you intend to only play with a slide.
My tips for nuts would be:
2. The bridge
Much like the nut, the bridge is very important for both intonation and allowing the strings to ring out as they should.
I use a floating bridge for all of my builds, as they are super easy to set up and I like the way they look. There is good information on setting bridge intonation all over the internet so I won't go into that here. My tips for bridges:
3. Back angle
I started using a back angle on the neck on roughly my 12th build. The difference in playability compared to a straight neck is huge. It is actually quite easy to achieve and well worth a try.
As you can see, using a back angle on the neck allows for a much higher bridge, and the action stays nice and low all the way up the neck.
4. String gauge
Although it is standard CBG building practice to use strings 3,4 & 5 from a 6 string set, I have found better result using strings at equal tension, which is probably more important on instruments without truss rods to prevent the neck warping over time. I also find equal string tension easier to play.
Well, I hope this is of some help to those of us just starting out with this rewarding hobby. I suppose my best tip would be not to think too much about it, otherwise you'll end up like me :(
Cheers!
Richey
Comment
Good post, I never thought of equal string tension before, thanks for the link to the calcuator also.
What's your preferred action height?
all good points and well explained- the how and why...thankyou..
Thanks!
yup .. ps .. nice bridge on that build ;-)
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