Semi Bolt On Semi Neck Through?

[Maiden69]

There are a lot of neck thru with caps on them, it is realy easy to do if you know what you are doind.

The drawback is that you pretty much have to use direct mounted neck pickups

Greg this is not necesary right, you can rout the depth of the pup, and then just do the holes on the side for the adjustment screws, I'm playing with this idea to make my next guitar, but Iwon't make a bolt on, I plan on doing a set neck the way that Perry did his Superstrat. I loved that joint.

And ain't the saga PRS kit done like that? I'm pretty sure it is, Here

[fryovanni]

I don't see any reason why you can't build a neck and cut body's to work. If the design integrates the pickups, bridge, and controls into the neck (effectively making it a complete guitar less the body). That would allow you to attach different bodys, shoot you could hang anything you want off it or nothing at all. That all is cool if you are wanting the guitar to look like several different guitars. The key is look. you may get some change in tone from the body you attach, but if the bulk of the wood, bridge, and more importantly pickups don't change. The sound will not be that different. Now if you attach differnt pickups and control circuits to different bodys and just swap the neck. I could see a big change in the sound, but I guess you can allready do that with bolt ons.

Peace, Rich

Lots of good creative ideas! This is a cool thread.

[crafty]

I also remember reading(cant remember where) that the reason prs' have insane heels is because they need it for holding the neck still in cnc millers. I think they should then have somebody hand carve off the heel, I saw one of ed roman mods once and he makes prs' the guitar they were meant to be.

I'm not quite sure who to believe on the heel issue. According to PRS, the heel was lengthened to add mass to the neck to reduce dead spots. According to Ed Roman, it was done so the CNC could hold on to the neck as it's being carved. Seeing as how PRS used duplicarvers before they switched to CNC's, I highly doubt they purposely added only a 1/4 inch of material just to make a machine hold onto to the blank better. I think it's mostly ER shill just to sell his neck mod. From what I've heard, it's not worth the money.

$3700 for a PRS Custom 22 is insane. I priced one a week ago at $1600.

[GregP]

Greg this is not necesary right, you can rout the depth of the pup, and then just do the holes on the side for the adjustment screws

I admit, every time I've sat down to think about it, I've gone a bit buggy. I need to make a mock up and actually physically see what I'm dealing with before I could pass judgement. Once upon a time when I was considering bolt-in for my project, I had a discussion about it, and I still wasn't quite sold.

In other words, I believe you're probably right. If that's the case, it makes bolt-in a better contender for future projects.

Greg

[MOJO]

i'm always amazed at how much of ER B***S*** some people believe

First of all the the Heel on PRS 24 fret models has only increased by 1/4 of inch from the earlier 24 fret models

ed's famous comparison picture is a sham...what he did was put an original short heel 24 fret model next to the larger newer model 22 fret model ( the 22 fret model always had that sized heel..it never increased in size at all) to make it look like there was a large increase in size then there actually was) now if he had put a newer 24 Fret model next to the older 24 fret one you would see the size increased very little from the original 24 fret models

its pretty simple if you want the smaller heel buy the 24 fret models..its that simple

the larger heel has absolutely nothing to do with how the CNC machine holds the neck in place

{picture proof}

http://www.eastcoastmusic.com/prstr005.gif

as you can see the neck heel is not even carved facing heel down ..its carved face up with the heel on top like the picture shows with the exact same sized tenon on the end like the original models

the real reason paul decide to go with the large heel for the newer 22 fret models was due to the fact that many of the shorter heeled 24 fret models were turning up with Dead spots in the upper region (notes that were either not ringing properly or decaying prematurely

i have owned both the older short heeled 24 fret ( had 2 dead spot on both the 13 an 15th frets) and a newer 22 fret model ( which has no dead spots at all )

so i know this to be absolute fact.....

the upper fret access on the newer models is still better then the fret accesss of either the LP or your average Fender strat

and the biggest myth of all ( as someone mentioned earlier ) ..that PRS guitar before 1995 were hand made..no they were not... the bodies and necks were carved on a duplicarver which does exactly the same thing as a CNC except alot less accurate..

to get a PRS that was truly handmade you would have to have a 1986 model or earlier ...

if you actuallly go on the PRS factory tour ( which i have been) you would see that other then the initial CNC carving of the bodies and neck and 1 stage of finish buffing everything else is pretty much done exactly the same way as the old days

by hand ..but just in a larger scale

regarding the PRS set design VS the longer neck tenon (wonder who they got the idea from for a longer neck tenon...PRS most likely) that Mcnaught and other use ..the longer neck tenon can be great as long it 100% done accurate and you make sure your wood is completly dry ( no potential of neck warpage or twisting or extreme movement or have the neck broken in an accident )because if that happens you might as well throw the entire guitar in the fire place and buy or build a new one... it's unfixable ...you'd have to saw off the off the entire Top wood of the guitar to get to the rest of the tenon

with a PRS if theirs a neck problem its a much easier procedure and the neck can be replaced if it need to be, you just have to remove only the neck pickup to get to the the tenon, while leaving the rest of the face of the guitar as is...

Edited April 22, 2005 by MOJO

[mledbetter]

I don't know what to think about the PRS thing. You dont' have to convince me of the Ed Roman BS factor.. but.. your picture of the CNC doesn't necessarily prove anything.. Both sides get carved.. When you turn it over you have to have smoething for the vacuum jig to grab ahold of..

I just think the heel is ugly looking.. to say it limits fret access is pretty silly.. it's still thinner than anyone's aanj (and apparently, ed roman holds the trademark for the all access neck joint on his quicksilver ) i guess he was so busy badmouthing ibanez he failed to notice they have been doing AANJs for quite some time.. What a goon. But anyway.. ugly as it may be, the prs still lets you get up to the very last fret without having to wrap your hand around the heel of the body and contort your arm to reach them.

Greg.. the bolt in thing with the pickup.. you just have to work with a thicker neck stock.. Your neck is probably 1.75" thick at the heel so by the time it's bolted or set in and you route the pickup, there is still 1/4 to 3/8 of the tip of the neck left for screws to grab into. You can see it in the saga pictures.. (note to self.. don't bolt before you route ) I think whether bolted or glued, it's a superior design as you can totally eliminate the heel.

[MOJO]

I don't know what to think about the PRS thing.  You dont' have to convince me of the Ed Roman BS factor.. but.. your picture of the CNC doesn't necessarily prove anything..  Both sides get carved.. When you turn it over you have to have smoething for the vacuum jig to grab ahold of..

←

You bring up a great point, what i'm trying to say is that the actual final size of the heel is not even formed yet when most of the front work such as truss rod channel routing is done ( so when ED says the large heel is the result of doing it this way. he's full of hot air ), if you look at the neck furthest on the CNC( the heel part has not started being finally formed yet) their is a larger squarer piece of wood that the vaccum grabs a hold of when the the front work is being done ( you would need to have that regardless of whatever the final heel size was) know what i mean?

the picture i posted is actually the last stage of a neck being formed by the CNC

the front of the neck has already been routed for the TR channel, the headstock wings added and carved to shape, the tuner holes drill. the final 2 thing that are routed are the actual neck shape and then the heel ( if they wanted to they could easily have the CNC make the heel a shorter one if they wanted to at this stage..remember they already do 2 different types of heel carves.... a shorter one for 24 fretters and Longer one for the 22 fretters..wouldn't take much to change a couple of number in the CNC parameters for the newer 24 fretters models to make an original even shorter heel or even carve the last 1/4 inch by hand ( i suspect they do it one of those 2 ways for the PS program if that what the customer wants

[GregP]

Nobody should need convincing of the Ed Roman BS factor. It should be taken as a given that the man is full of ****.

Edited April 23, 2005 by bluespresence

[Pr3Va1L]

i've just found this... exactly what i was thinking about.

totally by mistake but it's exactly that.

[jnewman]

That looks pretty interesting... where's it from? Are there any more pictures of it?

[Cracked]

Man, there a a few people doing it!

http://www.mcnaughtguitars.com/

and here's the link for the site that the last pic was posted from.

http://www.manne.com/eng/mgpeng.htm

[brian d]

Man, there a a few people doing it!

http://www.mcnaughtguitars.com/

and here's the link for the site that the last pic was posted from.

http://www.manne.com/eng/mgpeng.htm

←

The McNaught concept is for set neck, not bolt on. The mortise is cut into the body wood before the lam top is put on, and not all the way through the body. This means you don't see bolts, and you don't see the neck tenon either from the front or back of the guitar. There is a similar concept on Zon basses http://www.zonguitars.com/zonguitars/necks.html . It seems to offer the same advantages as through necks in terms of carving the heel for access to the higher frets.

How high (thick?) would the neck tenon need to be? If you have a 1 3/4" total thickness of guitar, say a 3/4" lam top, that leaves one inch of body thickness. If you leave 1/4" of the back, that leaves only 3/4" of tenon thickness. Is that enough? Can you leave less of the back wood under the tenon? Do you need to use a thinner lam top in a case like this to allow a thicker tenon?

Brian D.

[Pr3Va1L]

manne guitars is the one doing that pic i found.

and i REALLY like that neck joint on the zon guitars thing...

set neck: