El Cuba

[kells80aus]

Tks Nick.

I nearly bought one of those Maton's Lute's when they were new. But I was put off by the F-hole sticker. I bought a Maton Wedgtail instead for $230 back then and wish I still had it.
The Lute shape was big in the late 60's. The Late Brian Jones of the Strolling Bones played a Vox one.

Cheers PK

[gavinturner]

Very interesting scratchy PK! How did that neck pocket come out? More pictures please! I am watching your build with keeninterest!

cheers,
Gav.

[kells80aus]

Hi Gav
Still got ot go a bit deeper. and it's about a 1/4mm narrow at this stage. That itself does not represent any problems.

[kells80aus]

Neck Route

PK

[kells80aus]

This is a very long neck route at 90mm deep. I did think about going 100mm but it would stuff up my planned pickup alignmnets, I'd already drilled some locating pilot holes for them.. DOH. The up shot is that this body will take this will take a B3 or B6 Bigsby.
The edges of the route have come out perfectly with no edge chips.

PK

[kells80aus]

Neck pocket route finished with a 2mm taper to set the neck height at the bridge.
Should be about 15-16mm at bridge so pretty happy with that as that's with a rule set on the top of the frets. Some might say why didn't I just taper the neck heal, well the heal on this neck only has about 2mm above the actual neck D shape. the neck is about 23mm deep at the front of the heal.

There is the tinyest of gaps between the neck and the route. I expect this will disappear with just a touch more sanding, and when the neck screws pull it in.

Now I am trying to decide whether to put mini humbuckers in this or full sized.
If I go with Mini's then I will need to make a routing template for it. as I only have full sized Humbucker and a P90 route template. But.. making a mini humbucker template isn't hard it's just time and effort.

PK

[stan]

dual p90s!

[kells80aus]

Hey Stan have you been reading my mind.

What's your pref Dog ears or soap bars

Thing is I have two mini's that I can't use on the Doubles as they have pre routed pickup pockets While the Mini Hums would cover the routes, the pup ring screw holes are actually inside the route. My thought htere was If I have to route em I can route em the right size



PK

[gavinturner]

hi PK,

Tough choice between soapbars or dogears. I personally would go soapbars if you can get the route perfect.
A really nice job with the neck pocket. Can you explain how you routed the 2mm taper into the pocket? Did you simply jack up your routing template at one end?

cheers,
Gav.

[kells80aus]

Hi Gav,
Yes I did jack up the routing template about 3mm witha Bunnings Paint Stirer. I put it back far enough that the clamps were over it. so that at the gap between my route template at the back of the neck slot was about 2-3 mm.
I then put the router into it's big a$$ed plunge jig and set the depth to the back of the pocket. so that it was hard down on the depth stop. I then released the brake and moved the router to the middle of the neck slot, started it up and plunged it into the heart of the neck slot. Then rotating clockwise around the neck slot till all the excess is removed. It is important to rotate clockwise other wise the bit will rip lumps out if you go the wrong way. Same goes for pickup routes.

Cheers PK