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
No worries, happy to help!
Excellent info Richey. Even after 100+ builds I can find useful stuff from your posts. I'm gonna go back to your bridge making post to see what I can steal since yours are so very nice looking and sounding.
good stuff - I learned some of this the wrong way on my first couple builds. I'll definitely use the nut slot depth and string tension tips.
Richey - thanks for this great post. I never considered the angle neck until I read this. So last night was looking at my Taylor GS-Mini - and the neck on that guitar DOES angle back slightly and noticed that under the portion of the fret board that overlaps the body - they do use a very small - angled shim - maybe 1/16 inch to fill in that gap. But true - violins and other stringed instruments float that portion of the fret board.
When you angle the neck back - and you want the fretboard to hang over onto the box itself - do you add a shim under that portion of the fretboard? How do you deal with this gap?
good stuff man
Thanks Richey.
some very useful info here, Cheers m8 =o)
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