Today was quite a day. I finally received my scalloped neck in the mail today;
but came to a grim realization...
The neck was perfectly scalloped, exactly to my specifications, however the woodworker I sent the neck to forgot to:
1)Correctly cut the tuner holes for the string tuners (there is a small locking bar that requires a tiny hole)
2)The frets themselves were not sanded down
3)The string trees were not drilled in
4)The neck was not pre-drilled to be screwed onto the body as originally planned
A minor drawback, so I decided to document the 5 hours it took me to get this neck clean, outfitted, and ready to play :]
I did not use a wide array of tools for this project, all I really needed was:
A set of Phillips-head screwdrivers
one adjustable clamp (for the tuners)
a power-drill
a hammer
a pair of needle-nose pliers
a pencil
a steady hand
and A LOT of patience
Who says you need a lot of fancy tools to work with guitars? ;]
The first order of business was to get the guitar sanded down. I used three sheets of 220 grit sandpaper and carefully sanded top to bottom the headstock, individual frets, and the sides of the guitar (they were very splintery)
Approx. section time: 20 minutes
The second item on the agenda was to get the tuners in. As you can see from the picture below, right next to the pre-drilled tuner hole I needed a very tiny hole. The tuners had some kind of a bar that was used in place of a screw to hold the tuner in place (i.e. keep it from freely rotating in the hole)
So the first thing I did was lined up each tuner in the hole and pressed down hard enough to make a small indention in the wood, a reference point for where the small hole should go
First I took a very thin nail and pounded it down, very slowly and carefully, into the reference point. Afterwards I used the power drill with a very small drill bit (hence the nail, my first drill bit snapped trying to break the wood surface)
Approx. section time: 2 hours (It took a great deal of brainstorming ^__^)
Even with the drilling and hammering, the tuners refused to slide into place. To remedy this, I took an ordinary adjustable clamp, positioned the tuner, then tightened the clamp slowly until the tuner was forced down into the correct position
Repeat and redo for the rest of the tuners
Approx. section time: 40 minutes (The clamp did not always want to work
)After the tuners were installed, the next things to add were the string trees. This required a lot of precision and accuracy, as they needed to be perfectly placed for the strings. Using an old tape measure and the old neck I had on the guitar as a reference point, I used a very thin-leaded pencil to make access points, then grabbed my trusty drill with the thin drill bit and drilled the holes into the headstock. From there I simply placed the string trees carefully into the drill points, replaced the drill bit, and began to drill the trees down. Easy enough no? :]
Approx. section time: 10 minutes
The next thing to do was to get the neck drilled to be attached to the neck. This gave me a lot of grief as I was very nervous about drilling too quickly and splitting the neck (then it would be $150 down the drain
)The access points were made by actually positioning the neck in the neck pocket and very carefully drilling the original screws until contact was made. Afterwards, the screws were pulled back a bit, the neck was removed, drill bit replaced, and holes were drilled. Only what space was needed was added
Finally, the neck was set in, screws drilled down, and the neck was finally done!
Approx. section time: 20 minutes
The final order of business was to string up the guitar and get to playing!
Although this step would be much harder than I anticipated.
The adjustable bridge clamps (the little stands with the adjustable screws that the strings sit on) somehow managed to screw up as far as how they sat on the bridge. The stringing process was easy enough after the clamps were set to the proper height and screwed back in
Approx. section time: 30 minutes
And that's it! Hope you enjoyed this little adventure
-MattE
Forgot to add my critique!
Initial playing was a lot easier than I anticipated. The feel of the neck was amazing, even compared to my Ibanez ARX320 neck, which was my main guitar. The original rumor I heard about difficult chords was quickly dispelled, as I found no issue at all. I also, suprisingly, noticed a 20 bpm speed difference! Could this be practice, or the neck? (I'm banking on practice, but at first I was shocked and thought it to be the neck
)Anything else you would like to know, just ask!
See you all around,
-MattE
