Thickness of neck pocket timber?

[slowlearner]

Ok, so in my usual fashion, I refuse to do anything normal. I'm building a semi-baritone electric with a heavily chambered body. It's intended to be down tuned to D all the time (DGCFAD) with a 718mm scale (ie. Fender + 70mm or 2 frets). I've made the body out of vic ash top and back and a kauri pine core. The body is also SUPER thin. Ie. 27.5mm thick before finish sanding. This was sort of inspired by Jens Ritter's jazz guitar.




The body has a cut-out that goes along side the neck to give maximum reach, while the top bout reaches to the 14th fret.



What I'm wondering is how thin I can cut the neckpocket while keeping the neck joint stable and non-flexy? The kauri pine is pretty soft.

Could I go as thin as 10mm or should I leave 15mm of timber to support the neck?

[Phil Mailloux]

Hey Pete,

I've never used Kauri Pine and really have no idea how soft is it exactly but if its anything like regular pine 10mm is probably not enough, I'd definitely go with a much material as possible in the pocket. There's also the bolt-on design you're going with, are you recessing the bolts in the body or are you putting a Fender style neck plate behind the body? That will make a huge difference on the stability of the neck/body joint. Bear in mind you can always make the neck heel thinner to get as much body material as possible. Btw the body design looks good, your skills are getting better.

[slowlearner]

Thanks Phil, how funny it is, that the founder of the forum I didn't post this on answers me. The world is a funny old place.

But seriously, I was thinking about the neck plate thing too. 2-3mm of Steel can stiffen the heck out of anything. And I have some that would be just the ticket too. How thin would you go with the heal? 20mm? I was thinking I'd need to build some back angle into it as I'm using a tunamatic and tailpiece but maybe I don't after all.

Re the design; I shamelessly traced a lot of the design off my style 0 resonator. From there I just modded the up bout and added a cutaway. But I get you're point, things are looking a bit more organic than the "ikea bass".

[Phil Mailloux]

The tune-o-matic will definitely complicate matters. Its pretty high so you'd have to angle the neck which means you'd have to cut an angled neck pocket if you absolutely want to go with a bolt-on design.

For the pocket thickness I'd prefer at least 20mm but that is personal opinion only, I'd want to be absolutely positive that there's no structural issues there, especially if using soft wood for the core, on a 27mm thick body though this means your neck is protruding big time out of the body, like 18mm if you use a regular thickness of 25mm, that will look "off" and will be less playable, plus your pickups will be way up, maybe to the point where the baseplate is visible.

Honestly, looking at the design and features you want to have, you'd be better off doing a set-neck à la Gibson, you're able this way to use the thinner body and make the neck longer to have a larger gluing area and keep the neck, bridge and pickups at a normal height

[slowlearner]

Just had a long chat with my mentor. I think I'm gonna go set neck. Seems do-able and I've got Melvyn Hiscock's book in front of me as I type.