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Hoping to sort some ideas out about scale of neck.

Hi everyone, I haven't posted much except a little bit when I joined. I have already made my cbg amp from a radio, now I want to get my cbg started. I have a 3 ft. piece of red oak. I want to put my Shane Speal tuners on it. I want to put finish nails as my frets. My question here is, I want to put my piece of oak into the cigar box, as in cut the middle of the cigar box out and put the board in between. I don't know how to do the scale of the neck.

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Permalink Reply by Slow Blues Dani & Ol' Grey Bear on August 27, 2016 at 10:19pm

Hi Anne and belated welcome to CBN. Three feet of neck should be plenty. Try a guitar scale length of 25.5". Maybe you'd prefer a short scale length of 22". Or something in between. The choice is yours really. If ever there was a standard scale length for guitars then it'd probably be the 25" or 25.5". I'm sure you're aware that scale length is measured nut to bridge so you're a good ways to knowing what you're doing. Any other questions I'm sure there'll be plenty more knowledgable people than me willing to help. If you need to figure out your fret marks then try googling stewmac fret calculator too. Great resource. Enjoy your build!

Bear.

Permalink Reply by Fomhorach on August 27, 2016 at 11:34pm

We talk about scale meaning the scale length. This is the measurement between the nut and the bridge (its usually about 25 inches but can be anything.. How long is a bit of string?).

The scales, doe ray me fa so la ti do.. Etc, are determined by the fret positions.

So if it's the length of the neck through the box, you want 4-5 inches for the tuners, about 25 inches for the neck that will run through the box and about another 5-6 inches to get a bit to poke out the bottom of the box to attach the strings.

We don't know the size of your box so let's say 10 inch. So.. 5" (tuners) 18" (fretboard) 7"&3" (box/bridge/box) 2" (heel/string holes)

If your asking how to calculate where to put your frets, a lot of people use online fret calculators. You put in the scale length (distance between the nut and the bridge) and it tells you where the frets should be.

I prefer using a calculator (scale length in mm x 0.9438743127 = fret 1 x 0.9438743127 = fret 2..etc) but I'm just used to doing it that way.

Traditional CBGs don't use frets at all and are played with a slide, can have any length as a scale length and any number of strings you want. So don't let any of the things that seem complicated put you off from jumping right in. Just go for it, get some strings over a bridge and onto a nut and that's it. Refinement comes from time and confidence.

Permalink Reply by The Bane on September 5, 2016 at 1:48pm