Neck Gets Ears

Just a quick post here. I'm making a neck for someone. It's going into a Flying V style guitar (not one of mine) and the builder wanted to 'outsource' the neck. This is understandable. Necks can be scary on a first guitar. I confess, I bought an aftermarket neck for the very first guitar I made and it's a fine way to go.

Making a neck for a non-standard guitar that's been designed and built by someone else can be a bit of a challenge. A one-off neck to fit a body made by someone else needs quite a bit of care and requires some pretty exacting measurements. Not to mention accurate cutting of the tenon (it's a glue-in).

To be honest, though, I'm quite enjoying it. It's nice to do these one-off jobs from time to time as it pushes you to 'keep your hand in'.

In this case too, I've had to modify the body mortise in the body I was provided in order to allow for a longer tenon and try to prevent any weak-neck-joint syndrome.

That's down the other end though. In this photo, the headstock gets its ears. In common with many Gibsons, the billet this neck was cut from needs some additional wood to be wide enough for the headstock. Gibson have been doing this forever and it makes sense - if the entire neck blank was as wide as the widest part of the headstock, there would be a lot more wastage. Glueing on 'ears' avoids that.

Let's hear it for the ears.