I need a C-standard guitar

Good day to everyone!

Last half year I took a break from building my previous and almost finished Begoge guitar. But since a week I started again with the last finishing and setup stages of that guitar and rolled right into a new project. I don't know how long this new project will take and how extensively I will document it's construction, but i figured build photos are always welcome.

Lets start with the design. This time around I would like to build a double cut strat type guitar to complement my previous build.



The bridge, knobs and complete neck are the same as on my previous guitar, I just made a new body shape. I tried to mimic the "double bend" in the contour of the horns.



This picture has the actual wood added. Wengé for the guitar top, marblewood for the fretboard and headstock veneer. Not in this picture are the mahogany for the body and the black limba for the neck.

I hope you will enjoy this one.

Greetings,
Emiel

 

I think I'll keep the text on this thread a bit shorter. I struggle a bit to type something original every time.

Off camera I resawed, planed, edge jointed and glued the wenge top piece.


(with my non-final neckjoint shape)

And received some wood!


Ripped the greenish part off the neck blank, this will make another neck in the future.


Sawed and planed the scarf joint.


I sawed it in a non standard way to make the grain match up. A quick sketch:


And ripped a piece off the neck blank, one side is still straight for routing the trussrod channel. The grain match looks a bit off here, but on the bottom it's almost perfect. We'll see what happens when I start carving the neck.


Emiel

 

Thank for your replies.

Once it's finished I'm going to set it up to be tuned in C standard. I did consider a longer scale length, but after trying the tuning on my 25" scale acoustic with thick strings I decided not to. I will use a .011 - 0.054 set, normally I play 0.009 - 0.042 on this scale length.

I calculated the string tension of every string in my current setup and selected a set that comes close to it in C-standard tuning. So I think I'm good, might be wrong. Any thoughts?

Thanks for thinking along @crazydave911 and @Freeman Keller. I appreciate it.
Emiel

 

Hello @Freeman Keller thank you for double checking my calculations.

The 0.009 - 0.042 I normally use are on my electrics. My (only) acoustic has a set of 0.011 - 0.054. Used that for the test, it is tuned back to standard now. (But to be honest, I liked the lower tension. I'm not really a good player.)

We will see how it works out, if I don't like it I have a good excuse for a next build with longer scale.

Emiel

 

Since the last photo I glued on the headstock veneer. Today I did some work on the neck. Routed for the truss rod, shaped the headstock and trimed the sides.

 

Tonight I worked on the neck again. I fine tuned the sides and worked on the headstock.

Marked the tuner hole locations.


I set the depth stop of my drillpress so the brad point just pokes through into a sacrificial piece of MDF.


Which leaves nice markers for drilling from the back.


Resulting in clean tuner holes on both sides.





Concluding with a naptha preview.