Headstock, Neck Angle

[ozziebluesman]

Hello everyone.

At present I have two 12 fret, concert guitars on the workbench. I am using neck blanks that I bought already cut to shape on a bandsaw. I decided to make a template of the blanks for future use and noticed the break angle is only 13.5%.

Is that ok as I believe 15% angle is the norm?

Would you consider a different angle to suit a dready or a 12 string?

Also thickness of the blanks at the first fret is 18mm. I thought it was a bit on the thin side and was considering making the template more like 22 to 25mm.

I would appreciate any advice.

Cheers

Alan

[Craig]

G'day Alan,

Yes Cumpiano states 15 degree in his book for steel strings, but I have seen them down to 12 degree ( not slothead ).

I use a 14 degree which gives a little more glue surface area than 15 when doing a scarf joint. Your 13.5 will be O.K.

18mm. should be fine for the blank considering the shaft will be brought down to around 15 mm. finished and around 12 mm for the peg head.

I can't see why a 12 string or dready should have a different angle Alan

[Dennis Leahy]

Hi Alan,

Slot-head, or paddle style? The reason I ask is because slot heads gain several degrees of head-break-angle by the fact that the strings dive at a steeper angle to get down into posts within the slots.

For a paddlehead, if you're worried, Gotoh makes a number of their tuners in a "HAP" designation that stands for Height Adjustable Posts, so you can get the string post holes down closer to the headstock, and that will increase the head-break-angle a little bit.

Dennis

[jeffhigh]

I use 14 deg on a paddlehead.
As I recall Gibson used to use 16 up to the end of the 50's before reducing to 14.
The higher angle gave shorter grain and was more vulnerable.
Things to avoid if you think your angle is too low are
- do not thin the headstock too far so that the tuners protrude too far.
- do not use a thick headstock face veneer to make up for a thin headstock.
it is worth checking tuner shaft length before deciding on headstock thickness

[woodrat]

I was talking to the guys at Gilet guitars and they use 12 degrees for their headstock angle. They didn't say whether that was for slotted or paddle though.

[Hesh1956]

Frank Ford on his excellent site Frets.com indicates that when he is cutting nut slots he takes the headstock angle and halves it shooting for a nut slot back angle of in the 7-8 degree range.

Even with a 13.5 degree back angle on your head stocks you can still cut your nut slots in the 7-8 degree range so I think that it's fine too.

Mind you the 7-8 degree nut slot angle does not have to be this precise or even at this exact angle range. But what may be useful here is that 7-8 degrees works great and with your 13.5 degree angle there is nothing stopping you from using the 7-8 degree nut slot range.

[ozziebluesman]

Thanks gentlemen for your thoughts.

That's a very good tip Hesh regard altering the nut slot angle.

My concert guitar is a slotted headstock and I'm following the Scot Antes Concert Guitar plan so the shallow angle should suit. That was good luck and not good management.

Cheers

Alan