LMI Pre-Carved Classical Neck - Luthier Tips du Jour Mailbag
In this episode, Robbie O’Brien discusses the advantages of using a pre-carved guitar neck, demonstrated with a pre-carved classical guitar neck from LMI.
Video Transcription
[on-screen text reads: Luthier Tips du Jour Mailbag]
Mailbag question: I've watched your classical guitar building course videos and I still feel intimidated about carving the neck, is there another option?
Robert O'Brien: Today's Tips Du Jour Mailbag question comes to us from New York. "Dear Robert, I'm watching your online classical guitar building course videos and feel a bit intimidated about carving the neck. I don't feel I'm quite ready for this step yet. Is there another option? Steve in New York."
Well, Steve, I have good news for you. LMI is now offering a Spanish cedar pre-carved classical guitar neck. In fact, I just got one into my shop a few days ago, so let me show it to you.
Advantages to using a pre-carved neck
So Steve, here is the Spanish cedar pre-carved classical guitar neck, now available from LMI. It's actually two pieces of quarter sawn Spanish cedar that have been joined or laminated together, and this adds strength to the neck. It also allows better use of the Spanish cedar with less waste.
The peghead is designed to accept standard 70 millimeter tuners. It's also elongated, so you can come in and customize the top of it with your own personal shape like I do. The peghead thickness itself is just a skosh oversized, allowing you to customize the transition from the neck into the peghead and make it a custom volute if you want.
The width of the neck is also just a little bit oversized, allowing you to customize the width of your fretboard. Once you've glued your fretboard to the neck, all you need to do is just remove the small ledge here and this makes a smooth transition right into the side of the fretboard.
The neck is made to be used with a standard 650 millimeter classical scale length. It also incorporates the traditional Spanish foot or heel and slots where the sides go into when attaching the neck to the body. The only thing you'll need to do is remove this area. This is the glue surface area for the top. Remove it the thickness of the top so that when the top is glued on, it's on the same plane as the rest of the neck.
The heel has been roughed out, but not quite the final shape. This allows you to still have some fun with your rasp and sandpaper to get it to the shape you desire.
So as you can see, there's some definite advantages to using a pre-carved neck. For one, it makes the pucker factor go way down, especially if you feel a little intimidated about carving your neck from a neck blank. Also, there's a huge time saving when using a pre-carved neck, and in my case, time is money.
So Steve, I hope this has answered your question and keep this pre-carved neck option in mind. It might be just what you're looking for and happy building.
[on-screen text reads: More Luthier Tips and online courses available at www.obrienguitars.com. Private and small group guitar building and finishing instruction available.]
