The Luthier Community

So I get a lot of extended scale requests as all the Metal Kids here in town dig tuning down to low B. Well to be honest it's hard for me to wrap my finders around the 27 plus inches that Baritones usually come with so I use the 26.118 banjo length and I throw on some heavy "Jazz" strings (with a wound G) and tell them to go to town.

This is my E3 model. Which is basically a traditional neck trough electric guitar that I put a drop top in on but I don't book match it. I extend the height of the core wood and them book match up to the raised cores. It adds a surfy sort of look to it. But it was my first idea that I came up with then I thought of, "what would I build an electric like if I had the change to design something on my own." So I took a PRS, http://www.prsguitars.com/, a Fender Strat, http://www.fender.com/, and a Jerzy Drozd Bass http://www.jerzydrozdbasses.com/ and overlaid their center lines and found the places where they shared common points, used those as my starting points, and built my shape from there.

I was a huge fan of the Carl Thompson Rainbow basses that Les Claypool played and as MN guy I was a fan of the multi laminated neck that all the builders around here use. Believe it or not I emailed PRS and Jerzy to make sure it was ok to emulate their body shapes. I've got the emails to prove it, and with both companies blessing I forged ahead. My E3 is my response to a Strat-PRS neck through. Neither company builds them, and the metal kids want neck throughs that aren't of the Ibanez/ Schecter variety so why not me.

This is a build I did for a customer who asked me to document every step. It's now a habit. So here's the wing and neck wood 1/4 sapelle, which was not 6-8% humidity!!!



I milled out the neck wood.



And placed the fretboard on it to show perspective.



Note the grain direction. Here's the spalted maple for the cores.



Milled and ready.



Now the detail core wood, its Indian Rosewood, I changed out the Kiiat. I thinned it down to a light veneer; it was too soft with just Kiiat in the center core. Some of these next photo's show the before the split. But you'll see it after it's been upgraded.



Now it's ready to glue. So here's a photo of the final stack before gluing and pre mill.



Here's the gluing process. As you can see I've cut out my top plate insert to a rough depth at this point.





And when I finish gluing it all, I clamp it down tight.



Notice that I have to clamp the core wood on it's own as well, the Blue quick clamps.

I'll break here. I hope splitting these posts will help them load faster.

I took a simple 1 piece spalted with decent flame top and laid it out.



I pre cut the board and thicknessed it to my final thickness and then relayed out the top.



I then took it over to my band saw and pre cut the wing sides and I split it down the center.



The next night I took the clamps off the neck and jointed it square and jointed the fretboard surface. I then cut away the tool slab from the top.



And laid out my nut location



I then got my head plate ready. It's Gabon Ebony.



I then jointed my slab tool and took it over to my edge sander and put it to work sanding my nut angle.

There's a step that's not documented here so I'm going to substitute in from another build to show what I do to make this all square. So I glue my core together on its own. Then I glue whatever laminates are going to be separate from the core to the sides on their own. Note single Flame Maple core on the larger Indian Rosewood neck wood.



After gluing I precut the shelf. That way I can go back in with a router and route right up to the core to make my top inserts square.



Here's my jig. It hold the whole neck in with a couple of tension bolts. And it has my neck angle built into it so I can build my neck angle for my wrap around bridge right into the top.



Here's a closer shot of the finished route.



And here's the finished joint after gluing. You'll note that single Flame Maple Laminate acting as a separator to the Indian Rosewood and the top. It didn't make sense to continue it through to the top as Maple on Maple laminates show the glue line like its highlighted. See my cover page photo on my website. So I let the Indian go through to separate the flame top from the core and the maple separated the Indian neck wood.



More top work. So the next step it to mark out my cut outs. My inside has been jointed square so I could "book match" My 1 piece top to my center cores. I layout the top notch cut outs. I do this so I can keep as much of the bulk neck wood as possible. That way if I carve the back relief too shallow I'll still have a solid set/ joint right underneath the fretboard. I learned this lesson the hard way.



Here it is mocked up to show my customer, top and bottom photo's. It's all hand filed for fit. It's tricky when you have the jointed majority fighting with the other 3 surfaces of the insert. Gaps are not allowed.

Back to the neck. I route out my electronics run. As my instruments are neck through there’s no way to take a long drill bit and do the line before you glue the neck on. So I route at this point to make sure it's there.



I usually build in batches so here's the batch that this guitar was in for fun.



Back to work. I routed the truss rod slot at my router table. I've been using the stewmac "hot rods" but have had 3 of 10 of them break on me. This was the last batch to get rid of my stock.



And then I cut away my neck bulk waste




Now I'm ready to glue on my top plates. I could shape the neck here, but I wasn't sure where my transitions would be so I'm choosing to wait until I have the whole thing together. But the plan is to move toward shaping my necks at this stage. I start by gluing one side first. After that dries completely I glue on the opposite side. Here’s the 3 pics showing this step and yes I do remove the glue while it's wet.





After my tops are dry it's time to move onto the back. Where I test fit and also included an extra laminate in order to avoid the same wood on same wood glue seam look. Then I glued and clamped everything, both sides, at the same time.





Once that all dries I route away the bulk neck waste and the top neck waste. Now I leave the sides and the neck thicker then I need because as you can imagine it's hard to keep everything square. So after I route the bulk away I run the back through my thickness sander and take the back evenly down to thickness. I don't worry about the top as I can route say 5 inches flush and the rest, if uneven, will disappear when I carve the top.

So now I start to route the shape. My Plexi template has 2 screw hole that are located right where the PU cavities will be so I screw that onto my top and flush route in 5 passes from there. The first photo is an obvious attempt to make my customer laugh.





The next step is to preroute my carve line into the top. This helps to insure that I leave my 1/4 binding even around the entire body of the guitar. I'm going to insert another photo from another build to show how I do this. This may happen during the course of this as I'm realizing that I am missing some steps. This is the same but I use to route the electronics channel shown earlier.




My next step is to build in the belly carve. This step is actually my favorite. I take the guitar over to my 6" wide belt sander and hog out the bulk material. It's Soooooo Fun!!!! It's tricky as you have to watch/ be aware of three different planes as you sand. I pre draw all of these first. The planes are the top/ depth line. The side depth line and the 3rd is the curve/ taper between the 2 lines. Your depth and curve changes as you go so you have to be on top of your game. It's not something you should do at the end of the night. Once the curve is sanded I hand file to get rid of the remaining bumps. Then I go back and sand the curves to make smooth transitions.

As you can tell my customer likes a deep "beer gut" belly carve. Fretboard time. To be honest I don't cut my own fret slots for this scale yet. I just order from LMI. So I cut for length, lay out my center and taper lines, cut the waste and sand smooth.






I'll now route for my pickups. I start by flush routing my top pop up. By neck/ body angle starts at the end of my fretboard to there’s a little pop up to get rid of.



Once that's gone I'll layout and route for my PU's







Up next the Top carve.

Carving tops: Here's the keys

1. Use a sharp chisel.
2. Carve with the grain and/ or up to a 20-35 degree angle.
3. Carve a little, sand a lot. This ones Key.

So I hand carve my electric tops. I know guys who route them and or drill them a la Bob Ben style but that just doesn't work for me. And now that I've finally done enough of these I actually have the muscle built up to where it doesn't bother my arm. Yes I still take breaks and occasionally whimper a little but it burns in a good way now.

So I start buy carving the bulk at the bottom of the body first, the with the grain portion of the top. And carve really isn't the right word because what really happens is just plane ugly. I've gotten to the point where I know exactly how hard I can push the wood before it'll tare in a way I don't want it to. It's literally 15-30 attacks then this much is done, and yes it is maple here.




It's at this point I grab my sander, I'm now on my 3rd one, after 54 guitars, and start to work shaping the top. It's just 60 grit paper that I buy in contractor packs and change out whenever I start to see sand paper grains start to fall out. This is where all the shape really sets in. I'll do about 5 to 6 passes per section and I section the top into say 8 sections. Make an 8 piece pie out of the top from center and it's about right. So I carve bulk and sand to shape. A whole top will take maybe 1.5 hours. Maybe 2 if I'm not pushing.






Now as I carve I'll find that my gluing process has left a few slots to fill so I'll power/ dust them in and soak them with glue to fill in my gaps. Then I'll go back to carving and shaping (sanding) until that section is done.




One thing to mention here is that your fingers and your eyes are your most important tools. I'm constantly drawing my fingers across and around my tops, trying to feel for waves, dips, or bumps. I try to keep everything on the bump side of things that way I can go back and sand to a smooth plane. I say that your eyes are important because I'm also constantly watching the profile of my carve change and evolve. I'll start on one side, with my eyes at binding level and follow the curve around to literally look for waves and shape changes. It's tricky to get used to or even know what you’re looking for/ at but it comes with time.

Now it's time for the neck to get a little more attention. The headstock needs to have the relief cut out for the trusrod. The head plate needs to be glued on as well as the fretboard. I start with the head plate. I'll glue that first and then I'll insert a dummy nut and glue the fretboard on from there. My dummy nut is a well waxed bone scrap that I butt my fretboard against and then after I clamp it I'll remove the spacer and wipe away the glue.










After my fretboard and head plate are glued on I'll then route away my headstock.




Once that's done I'll move on to the neck. While I've got my headstock shaped I need to even out my neck before I shape it and take my head stock down to final thickness. It's pretty low tech, but because I like a neck that doesn't tapper in thickness from the nut to the body I can just clamp my headstock and body to the table and set op some scrap and route my neck thickness all the way down the neck.




I can now route my relief into the back of the neck/body. I use a round over bit and template that I double stick onto the back and route my curved bottom curve into the back. I'll then readjust my template to protect the routed curve relief and switch bits to my flush pattern cutting bit and route away the waste. I then can work on the transition from the neck to the body, routing away the bulk until I get to the point where I need to carve and shape.






I'll take a 1/2 inch round over bit to the back.



Now it's time to start shaping the neck. I do mine surf board style with some gloves and a few rasps, files, and a sander. I matched this neck profile to my customers Gibson Les Paul Studio. I took curve shapes from every odd shaped fret and copied those curves to his guitar by filing a little here and there and matching the curve at each noted fret. Then I worked to smooth out the transitions.