I need a C-standard guitar

[E-miel]

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

 

[E-miel]

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

 

[Peegoo]

Looks good!

 

[crazydave911]

A "C" scale? Aren't you doing a long scale neck? Maybe 26 3/16"?

 

[Freeman Keller]

^^^ That was my question - are you tuning to C standard? If so give some serious consideration to scale and strings. One of my 12 strings is designed to be tuned to B or C, it is 26.5 scale and strung with cables.

 

[E-miel]

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

 

[Newbcaster]

11's in c standard?? on a PRS scale? thats gonna be flubby as hell man. I tried 11's down to D silde tuning and my glass slide would bottom out so bad, even on a larger nut, those metal temporary ones that go over the regular nut.

Brothers Landreth play in C standard i think and they use 15-16's.

i put my 15's on a Dillion Strat copy. tuned to d. barely holds up my gob of glass.

11's in C....maybe on a 28inch scale. Just my 2 cents. YMMV.

newb

 

[Freeman Keller]

E-miel, you are correct, on a 25 inch scale a set of 9 - 42 is right at 86 pounds at concert, your 11 - 54 is 83 pounds tuned down four semi tones. I am surprise that your acoustic works with that low of tension - that is roughly half what a normal set of light gauge acoustic strings pulls at concert.

Anyway, it will work. I ran the compensation wizard and for a 0.054 string tuned to 65 hz you will need at least 0.340 inch of compensation - make sure you have that much travel.

My experience is with low tuned acoustic guitars and in general they are much happier with longer scales. Good luck with yours.

 

[E-miel]

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

 

[crazydave911]

Somewhere in the 26" range at least. Better still, and the only Fender Tele I've owned is the 27" Subsonic scale. Easily made and played, I had it in C most of the time. Wish I hadn't sold it

 

[loopfinding]

my classical is 26" and handles C standard with those floppy nylons okay. i wouldn't want to go less than 25.5" for clean playing. if it's going to be a metal machine i don't think you really have a problem, a little floppiness is part of so many bands' sounds, despite modern taste for combatting it.

 

[E-miel]

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.

 

[E-miel]

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.

 

[E-miel]

I did some work on this guitar again. During the week I glued up a body blank, saturday I cut it out and started on weight relief. On my last build I only drilled weight relief holes in the body, this time I'll remove more wood.



Designing the chambers, doing it upside down to be able to align the template to the body. Leaving 15mm (7/8) around the perimeter, this way a wild guess, maybe it could be thinner. You can vaguely see how I almost screwed up the input jack location.


Drilled most of it with a forstner bit. (Halfway picture)


Using my "router table" to route the chambers. Unfortunately a bit sloppy in some places, but it will do. (Also halfway through the process)


Current weight without the cap.


Then bandsawed the top and glued it on.



I am afraid I have to put the neck aside for another project, it is to short for this guitar. After laying out the parts I found that the tenon will only be about 42mm (1 1/2 inch) long. It a bit strange, going back to old measurements it should be 75mm but now it's much shorter, maybe the rabbits ate it...


Emiel

 

[Slowtwitch]

Some fine work there E-miel