About 5 guitars in and some higher-than-usual action on my builds, I'm trying to wrap my head completely around the idea of angled necks/heels. As near as I can tell, the idea of angling a neck pocket, or using a shim, seems to really come into play if you want to use a bridge that sits higher off the soundboard than the fretboard + frets (for example, a banjo). Then, while I looking at some of my cheap Strat/Tele copies, I realized none of them utilize an angled neck pocket. I had one of those DUH moments : if it's possible to design the neck/fretboard so that it sits far enough above the soundboard to match the height of the bridge, why do luthiers bother with angled necks? Am I completely missing some design flaw that an angled neck fixes, beyond matching for high bridges?
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This discussion on angled necks has me thinking about my tunable bridge again. The problem it had was it was too tall off the soundboard, so the action was too high. But angling back the neck may be the answer to this problem. Thanks for the idea.
-Rand.
haha mine arent so nice on the inside, they have a little sticker that says 'what the fuck are you doing looking in here?'
:D
MichaelS said:
What do you need to sand it for Jef, the part you cut is hidden in the box, unless the inside of your guitar is as nice as the outside, mine aren't.
With my first attempt the action on the Cookie tin banjo was way high, but I was able to steam off a fretboard off an old guitar and add 1/8 ply under it making the action spot on fro frailing. More luck than judgement and th combination strenghtened the oak neck, the end result was easy to use as well.
here is the banjo from the first of those necks in the pic I put earlier with the scarf join in the body end, i dont know if you can see the neck angle right, i may snap another later.. but you can see how tall the bridge is and how low the action :)
Scotty
Thomas Humphrey built the Millennium classical guitar with a radical neck/body angle. He built the Millennium this way because it increased the guitars volume. I personally think this design pulled on the guitars top more keeping it more taught which resulted in the guitar being louder. Kind of like a drum head being tightened to a higher tension versus a drum head that is not tightened enough. There is a point that a drum head will not sound good and it will sound dull if it is not tightened enough. At the 35th second in this video they show a side shot of the guitar showing you the neck angle in relation to the guitar body.
Acoustic guitars that have a tail piece holding the strings at the end of the body (I have a cheap Kay acoustic with this design) and then route the strings over a bridge sound different than acoustics with a bridge glued on the top of the guitar which also holds the guitar strings(like a Martin). Both of these designs change where and how much tension is on the acoustic guitar top and it changes the sound.
Many CBG's I've seen run the guitar strings from the end of the neck/stick and then route the strings over a bridge on the top of the cigar box so most of the tension is not pulling on the top of the cigar box( I like the tone of this design). If all of the tension was pulling on the top of the cigar box it would have to be built in a way to handle the string tension because many cigar boxes just could not handle it.
Scotty
Thomas Humphrey built the Millennium classical guitar with a radical neck/body angle. He built the Millennium this way because it increased the guitars volume. I personally think this design pulled on the guitars top more keeping it more taught which resulted in the guitar being louder. Kind of like a drum head being tightened to a higher tension versus a drum head that is not tightened enough. There is a point that a drum head will not sound good and it will sound dull if it is not tightened enough. At the 35th second in this video they show a side shot of the guitar showing you the neck angle in relation to the guitar body.
cheers boys. tuning is regular 3 string tuning with octave pairs, in this case its gdg which is pretty much my standard at a 600mm (23 5/8) scale. this is pretty much my standard setup and tuning, its what I talk people into if they dont know what they want, uses a regular set of 6 strings, no waste.
the tail is a bit of scrap galvanized sheet steel wrapped in leather off an old sofa and with a bit of foam rubber padding between to give the leather an upholstered / cushion type of texture and pad the heads of 4 screws which dont go through the leather. I needed a conductive tail to ground the mag pup to. Im pretty happy with that tail, i'll be doing more like that
Josh
Acoustic Guitar Magazine ran an article on this guitar many years ago. Later on Martin guitars made their own version of this guitar with the builders blessing and released it on the market. Personally I thought it was extremely cool for such a new and original design.
Imagine building something like this with that neck angle? Now that would be incredibly hard.
Josh Gayou (SmokehouseGuitars) said:
I'm not typically a bad mouther but that looks horrendous. On the other hand, I bet its extremely comfortable to play because it would keep your left wrist at a much more natural angle.
haha mine arent so nice on the inside, they have a little sticker that says 'what the fuck are you doing looking in here?'
:D
MichaelS said:What do you need to sand it for Jef, the part you cut is hidden in the box, unless the inside of your guitar is as nice as the outside, mine aren't.
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