I'm building my first license plate guitar. I'm making the neck now. I have a 1x2 mahogany piece as the main neck with an ebony fret board. I want the fret board to extend a few inches over the license plate.
It feels like a stupid question, but do I cut out a section of the license plate or lay the fret-board on lop of the license plate?
thanks,
Daniel
Replies
JL:
Thanks I'll check out a capo get some heavier strings next time.
Grandpa:
Yeah, I made the neck 2" too long in hindsight, but I wanted to use all that beautiful ebony I bought! I made the body myself out of 1x3 mahogany and it is a righty (most people have told me I mounted the license plate upside down).
-DN
Let the fretboard overhang onto the plate by a fret or two. Setting the neck in the box so that the fretboard has a little bit of height above the top of the box is always a good idea as then it will give you a decent bridge height and a good string break angle over it.
Don't cut the plate, you are only making unncecessary work for yourself.
Great, thanks! Just built of the neck exactly this way.
Regarding cutting the plate, I plan on putting in a mini-humbucker at the neck and another at the bridge. I assume I need to cut the plate for this?
You can do either, but it will reduce the plates resonance a little, can you lift the neck just a little to let the board float over the plate without touching? Or even take a little off the underside of the fretboard where it goes over the plate. If i was to do either of your 2 choices, i'd probably go for cutting the plate, and coming up with some way of making it look ok, maybe something like a contrasting colour mesh glued under the plate, and use it as a soundhole by making it a little wider and longer than the necks footprint, that's just my take, someone might have a better idea
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Ok, great idea. I pretty much did that last night. What I did was NOT glue the portion of the fret-board that will go over the license plate. Actually, I slid the license plate under while the rest was glued.