Building my own guitar, part 2
Table of Contents
building my own guitar - This article is part of a series.
TL;DR:
Received the neck… too bad it’s not exactly the one I ordered :-)
The neck #
For the neck, I wanted a 24 frets neck and found one that I liked online.
Upon delivery today, I realized that they didn’t ship the correct one, but a 22 frets neck instead (see picture above). So while it still looks very nice, it’s not exacrly what I wanted, and it also doesn’t fit quite right in the body despite an announced compatible size: turns out that in guitar making, millimeters do matter.
I decided to go with a more traditional PRS neck and ordered this one:
which I will try to customize it with other inlays if I manage to. I should receive it in a few days, I’ll post an update then.
In the mean time I’ve started looking into three things:
- the tuners
- the bridge
- the pickups
I want the tuners to be locking tuners, I’ve read good things about the Schaller M6, they are currently at the top of my list but I’m still looking for alternatives. When I make a decision and receive them, I’ll post a more lengthy article on why I picked these.
For the bridge, I want a floating bridge that is NOT a floyd rose because I already have one, I like them but the drawbacks makes me want a different design for this additional guitar. I currently am looking into Gotoh 1502 and 1802 tremolo bridges, haven’t decided yet if I’ll stick to this idea but I will also post a more lenghty article once I settle.
Finally, for the pickups, I have not decided yet, but I’d like passive pickups and would like them mismatched: the neck pickup should be suited to jazz / blues, the bridge pickup should be suited to metal. Ideally if they are split coils, all the better. I came up with a list of pickups to investigate, but since they are the most costly part of the guitar, I’ll defer the decision for later in the process depending on how the project is going and if the build quality is decent enough to invest in good pickups.
What’s next ? #
Waiting for the new neck to arrive, more investigation on tuners and bridge, next post should have more details :-)