For many guitarists the shape and feel of a guitar’s neck is crucial to how comfortable it feels when played. I have heard many people complain that they love the sound of a certain guitar but just cannot get past the feel of the neck. On the current guitar I am working on this came up as we were planning its features and the client confided that he absolutely loved the feel of his Gibson electric guitar. He had played a recent example of my work and didn’t have any real complaints about that neck but for him his current personal guitar was exactly what he wanted. I had him bring it by and took a look to see if it would be possible to work it into the guitar I was building for him and it turned out to be no problem. Here are a few of the issues I considered in trying to match elements of his electric neck onto his new acoustic guitar.
The first thing I checked was the neck depth. Specifically, the thickness of the neck and fingerboard taken from between the first and second frets and from between frets nine and ten. Not surprisingly, his electric guitar was a little thinner than most acoustic guitars are, it checked in at about .81, or 13/16 of an inch. My thinnest necks have been in the .84-5 range but it is not out of the question to go a little thinner. I could feel that the neck was shaped in a C-D shape meaning that from its thickest point it stayed thick as it formed the half round shape. Many other acoustic guitars have more of a V shape. The thicker shape of his electric would allow me to add more reinforcements along the shaft of the neck and keep it stiff even as I made it thinner.
The next thing I checked was the neck width along its length and the string spacing at the nut and the saddle.
These measurements allowed me to put the correct taper onto the fretboard and to maintain the same distance from string to string and from the side of the board to each string. Again, not surprisingly I found that the electric fretboard was a little bit thinner than what I normally use but not so much as to be strange. I generally prefer something just over 1 3/4″ fretboard width at the nut and 2 1/4″ string spacing at the saddle and his guitar came in a bit under those dimensions. I had shaped the fingerboard blank and laid it onto his existing guitar just to check things out and it was a great match.
There were 2 things we discussed and decided not to change on the guitar I would build him. One was the scale length. I have been having great luck with my 25 5/8 scale length and he didn’t have a problem trying out a longer scale. I also have been using a roughly 12-20 compound radius on my fingerboards and he had no objection to this either. While these things will effect the feel of the neck we felt that in copying the spacing, widths, and neck shape it would still feel very much the same as what he was used to.
While I had the guitar I took the opportunity to make some quick reference cauls at different positions along the neck. I had my target thicknesses that I would be shooting for but I wanted to be able to match the exact shape as closely as I could. To do this I first marked 2 spots where I wanted to get shapes from and marked them off with lacquer safe tape.
I took rough measurements at these points and then cut pockets into some scrap pieces to approximate these shapes. I then proceeded to lay them next to the taped off areas and mark where they were making contact. A few strokes on a spindle sander and a few re-checks later I had some nice cauls to work from when I shaped his new neck.
The last thing I did was to take a reading of his guitar’s action and found it to be nice and low. No wonder he likes playing this guitar! Interestingly, he had it set so all of the strings were the same distance off of the 12th fret. On acoustic guitars I like to taper them slightly with the thicker strings having a bit more room to vibrate without buzzing on the frets. I expect to be able to match the action very closely though.
It will be interesting to see how he feels about the 2 guitars once the new one is done. It may sound a bit abstract but sometimes it just takes a guitar to sound a little different for it to also “feel” different. We will see!