Looking for pics and guidance on laminated neck build

[FSJazzGuy]

Hello helpful folks.

I'm moving in the direction of making a neck, problem is, although I have a fair amount of wood (mahagony, walnut, zebrawood, paduak) most all of it is 3/4 - 7/8" thick. I'm fairly certain some of the Ibanez necks are multi piece laminates (3 pc, 5 pc maybe?) with the fretboard a seperate and single piece, but haven't been able to locate any pics or other builds to support this plan.

Has anyone done or seen a neck build this way and can offer comments or suggestions??

Thanks much.....

[guitarbuilder]

Gibson used to make 3 pc laminate necks with the center piece reversed from the outer two for stability. In the 70's, multipiece set necks were the rage. I'm assuming you would be gluing the wood edge to edge and you are not talking about face to face? A fingerboard glued to a 7/8 thick board would give you plenty of material to work with for a Fender style neck which is around 1" thick and sometimes a bit thicker.

[RodeoTex]

I've seen a lot of necks glued up from several woods and veneers in contrasting colors. Check out the old Alembics with 'hippy sandwich' necks. Some are quite impressive.

[FSJazzGuy]

Originally Posted by guitarbuilder

Gibson used to make 3 pc laminate necks with the center piece reversed from the outer two for stability. In the 70's, multipiece set necks were the rage. I'm assuming you would be gluing the wood edge to edge and you are not talking about face to face? A fingerboard glued to a 7/8 thick board would give you plenty of material to work with for a Fender style neck which is around 1" thick and sometimes a bit thicker.

Actually, face to face had crossed my mind as a way to utilize a nice 3/4" thick mahogony plank I've had for years. After reading a discussion regarding flat sawn vs. quarter sawn, seemed like it was worth trying. Bad idea?

Originally Posted by RodeoTex

I've seen a lot of necks glued up from several woods and veneers in contrasting colors. Check out the old Alembics with 'hippy sandwich' necks. Some are quite impressive.

Thanks for the heads up, I'll search around for pics of those. The headstock is where I think it might end up looking goofy.

[LocustPlague]

I believe Ibanez made 9 piece laminate necks and even more, but I can't find anything to back that up.

I know some people will actually take a flat-sawn board, strips as wide as you want the blank to be thick, then glue them up face-to-face to put the grain in the quarter-sawn dimension.

This has been done quite a lot and has yielded great results, so I'd say go for it. Most people tend to use odd-numbers of cuts, I imagine due to counteracting twist and to have the layers look symmetrical, so I would keep that in mind.

[chezdeluxe]

Face to Face seems to be the norm in my experience.It allows for headstock angle and Heel/body depth.

[joe desperado]

I build mostly archtops but have made a few strat/tele necks that are laminated. Honestly, flat vs quarter is not as important as you might think. One is stiffer than the other and has a different feel...but not one better than the other.

Here are a few laminates I have done:






Hold on...I have a few more images...

[joe desperado]

The problem with a laminate fender style neck is the asymetrical headstock. Some like the look, others don't. I like them both ways...uhm...the necks. Tele's are much more forgiving with laminates than strats:

[joe desperado]

[FSJazzGuy]

LocustP and ChezD, thanks for the input, much appreciated.

Mr Desperado, WOW, thanks for taking the time to post all the pics. Awesome. Precisely what I was hoping to find and then some.

Do you have a website showing some of the archtops you've built, dunno about the hardcore Tele guys, but I'd love to see them. I'm in the process of selling off a few archtops now (nothing of note, cheap crap), but having spent a fair amount of time with them in the past, I have to chuckle whenever I see someone complain about a Tele not being comfortable.

Gotta go through my wood stash now and fire up the table saw.....

[joe desperado]

Some necks in progress:

[joe desperado]

Originally Posted by FSJazzGuy

LocustP and ChezD, thanks for the input, much appreciated.

Mr Desperado, WOW, thanks for taking the time to post all the pics. Awesome. Precisely what I was hoping to find and then some.

Do you have a website showing some of the archtops you've built, dunno about the hardcore Tele guys, but I'd love to see them. I'm in the process of selling off a few archtops now (nothing of note, cheap crap), but having spent a fair amount of time with them in the past, I have to chuckle whenever I see someone complain about a Tele not being comfortable.

Gotta go through my wood stash now and fire up the table saw.....

No website. LOL. Your about the third or fourth Tele guy who has asked. In the end, a great Jazz guitar is a work of art. Tele's are cool, play and sound great, but craftmanship on archtops always blow me away. DAngelico, Benedetto, DAquista.... wow!



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3.../IMG000881.jpg

[joe desperado]

[joe desperado]

Sorry for the hijack... I enjoy sharing pictures...He h he ehehe

[guitarbuilder]

Nice archtops! I started one a million years ago. It is still in the basement in the form. Someday....

[FSJazzGuy]

Wow. Awesome. Thanks for posting those, very nice work. Yeah, I agree, building a good archtop is on a whole 'nother level, not that building a Tele (a good one) is easy, but still...

[joe desperado]

Rock on guys! Anyway back to laminated necks.

I have made about 12-14 strat/tele necks and many were laminated. I like laminated necks for one reason. They are strong and stay very straight. They can be a bit stiff, but thats not a bad thing. Lighter woods are more resonant than hardwoods....generalization. So you can combat stiff with lighter woods. For example, I made a three piece mahogany neck out of Luan/maple. Its very light, yet the two mahogany and thin maple strips made the neck fairly stiff. I also made a Luan one piece neck that has some flex to it. It feels great when playing, but is not near as twangy and stiff as a maple neck.

Flat vs Quarter...no a problem. I just re-fretted a one piece maple Fender neck off of a 1976 Lake Placid Blue Strat. It was flat sawn and it the most resonant Strat I have ever played. I just gave it back to my customer at lunch. I almost did not want to give it back. Yet...for some reason, we think quarter sawn is much better. I don't buy it. I have a walnut neck I just finished that is quartered and another almost done that is flatsawn. I bet they will perform simular and both sound spectacular.

[RodeoTex]

Here's a picture of the Alembic 'hippy sandwich' I mentioned above. You can See that the neck is at least 7 pieces, then has several layers on the front and back of the headstock. Very stunning design.

[turmite]

Here is a link to a build that has a very beautiful multi laminate neck.

http://www.luthiersforum.com/forum/v...=10123&t=21584

Mike

[Nick JD]

The cool thing about building laminated necks is you can do a lot of the shaping before the glue up.

This:



Becomes this:



To this:



Then this:

[RodeoTex]

Well now Nick is the man who knows how to do it. Looking at the finished neck you'd easily miss that it is laminated.
Nice work Nick.

[FSJazzGuy]

Rodeo: admittedly I can be a bit slow at times, but is there a particular significance to the term "hippy sandwich"?

turmite: thanks for the link, I spend over an hour going through it.

Nick: that's a great idea, looks like using a vertical template for the shaping could save lots of shaping/scraping down the road. Was the neck pictured part of a neck-through Tele build you have posted someplace? Aside from this, have you tried a wood/graphite laminate on a neck? I've seen some of the pics you've posted with composite builds. Very impressive.

Thanks again guys. Quite a brain pool here.

[RodeoTex]

I assume it was because Alembics came from San Francisco(?) and were used by bands like the Greatful Dead.