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Post by Tinkerer on Jan 6, 2020 22:27:34 GMT -5
I posted last week on the Forum about a double neck guitar I built where I made a "fretless" neck out of rectangular aluminum tube to serve as a dedicated slide neck. I ended up making a bunch of modifications to the pickup position, wiring, and appearance. Here is the before:
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Post by Tinkerer on Jan 6, 2020 22:32:09 GMT -5
and here is the after:
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Post by Tinkerer on Jan 15, 2020 14:20:39 GMT -5
I have continued to work on this thing. I decided to try and add a 6th string, but because the slide neck is only 1.5 inches wide, I had to come up with a way of decreasing the string/saddle spread at the bridge. I modified a saddle to accommodate two strings, so there 6 strings going into a 5 saddle bridge. The guitar is tuned E-B-B-E-G#-G#. The slide neck is 15 fret, 22 inch scale, and the string guages I am using for this scale and tuning are .050, .037, .015, .011, .019, .012. The intonation on the two string saddle works fine. It sounds great, and now weighs a hair over 7 and 3/4 lbs. The current slide neck is made from 1/8" thick aluminum rectangular stock, and I'm thinking about making one out of 1/16" stock to shave some weight. My only concern is whether or not it would thick enough to resist deflecting under the string tension. The action on the neck is set very high so some deflection would not be an issue, but I wonder if a neck made from 1/16" thick stock would be stable enough to hold tuning as well as this neck does. The other thing I am considering is swapping out these pickups - which are GFS Vintage 59's wired in parallel and no controls, for a set of Lollar hum buckers that I have in another guitar I built but rarely play. I think this double neck is going to be my main guitar. I think the GFSs sound really good in this, but I find myself thinking that the Lollars would have to be better (my own version of pickup elitism), but this guitar is an odd ball to say the least- neither the GFS bridge pickup (on the standard tuning neck) or the neck pickup (on the aluminum slide neck) are in the position that they would typically be relative to the bridge, so who knows if the Lollars would be an improvement over the GFS pickups that really seem to work in this project.
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Post by Peegoo 🏁 on Jan 15, 2020 16:15:40 GMT -5
That is a great solution!
GFS makes really good pickups. I've never seen junk from 'em.
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Post by Tinkerer on Jan 15, 2020 16:57:57 GMT -5
Thank you!!
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Post by Tinkerer on Jan 20, 2020 9:35:44 GMT -5
Final update - this puppy is done I think!! I got some 1/16" thick aluminum rectangular stock and made another neck to try and shave some weight. While I had it apart I also replaced the GFS Vintage '59 neck pickup that I was using on the slide neck with another GFS Vintage '59 bridge pickup to warm the sound up a bit. The guitar now weighs in at 7lbs, 7ozs so the thinner neck material reduced the weight by 6 oz. I can feel the difference in my shoulder. The thinner material is not deflecting under string tension and is holding tune well. Instead of "staining" this neck the way I did with the previous aluminum version, I tried using wood grained contact paper. I marked the fret positions on the side, so from the front, it looks fretless. Using a bridge pickup on that neck does sound warmer and is an improvement. As it now looks:
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Wrnchbndr
Wholenote
Posts: 353
Formerly Known As: WRNCHBNDR
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Post by Wrnchbndr on Jan 20, 2020 13:11:07 GMT -5
That is way cool and really evil in a good way. Seriously.
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Post by Tinkerer on Jan 20, 2020 14:57:06 GMT -5
Thank you Wrench!!!
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Post by Peegoo 🏁 on Jan 20, 2020 16:44:55 GMT -5
That looks great! Watch out, Junior Brown!
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Post by Tinkerer on Jan 20, 2020 19:05:04 GMT -5
Thanks Peegoo!!
When it comes to slide playing, I am the poster boy for the descriptor "Rudimentary" - Junior Brown has absolutely nothing to worry about!!
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Post by Stratluvr on Jan 21, 2020 11:44:12 GMT -5
Wow, that is really neat. I'm sure it makes the weight much less than a traditional two neck guitar.
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