Semi-Scratch Built Long Baritone

[G-Axe]

Hey all,

It's been a while since I've built anything, but the hunger has returned. What started out as a plan to build a classic Tele quickly spiralled out of control when I discovered the baritone necks on the Pit Bull store. I love the look and sound of Lzzy Hale's pewter Les Paul Studio Baritone, which has a 28" scale length, and on suspicion that a 27" will be not baritone enough, I started researching and designing around a 30" scale length. I've reassured myself that I can string it and tune it from B1 or A1 rather than the E1 of a Bass VI by watching some youtube clips of people who have done so with the Squier Bass VI reissues from a few years back, and plotted in detail how it's all going to fit together.

So having done all that, I pulled the trigger last week, and yesterday this beauty arrived in the mail:



Looks good on inspection. There's a bit of tear-out around the drill holes for the tuners, but nothing that will be visible in the end product. I'll be using this method (link) to route the neck pocket - but before I do that, I need a body blank to build on. At risk of causing some consternation:



I've gone with the tone-iest tonewood I could find. Then I chopped it up, roughed up the flat bits and glued it together to make it even tone-ier. At last count, I spotted 25 tonewoods, each more vibrant than the last. And of course, we've had nothing but stormy weather since the glue went on, so I'm going to have to let it cure for a long time.

Next up, routing templates!

[Andy40]

I lost it at "each more vibrant than the last"
soo good.

[Andyxlh]

If there's that much vibrating goodness this thing may not require an amp at all!

[CascadiaGuitarGeek]

So much tone. You'll have to get a special extra high quality pot for your tone knob to keep that beast under control.

[G-Axe]

Here's a close up. Very keen to see what kind of tones I get out of that yellow stripe. Hopefully it's more "Mean Mr Mustard" than "Big Yellow Taxi". I've planed the edges and squared it off, but I'm going to let it sit for a bit longer before I get into routing a neck pocket.



But anyway, the more exciting stuff - I hit up the kids at the big blue shed to print off some A2 CAD drawings, which took a couple of attempts because I didn't allow for the margins on my first go, and everything was out by about 2.5%. Then it took a decent chunk of time to very carefully cut out my shapes with the good scissors and get them laid out on some MDF:



If anything, doing the rough cuts on my (newish) bandsaw was a bit quicker. Or that might just be that apparently cutting shapes on a bandsaw is an absolute joy, so the time flew by. Something about that skinny little blade slicing through wood like butter is weirdly satisfying.

So here are the template pieces arranged together somewhat like an actual guitar. Albeit a monstrous chimeric blend of a few different designs. It's got a few more pieces than your average. In short, it will have a plywood core, and anodised aluminium wings with more plywood sandwiched in between them.

Ergonomically speaking, the Andreas Shark is the biggest influence, though I won't have quite as much contouring, or the super slick aluminium fretboard. Then there's the Iceman horn, and a similar top horn that I'm hoping will prevent neck dive, given the lighy body/long neck. The rest is "Rick-Toone-on-a-budget". If this works out, I might make a future variant with a standard neck, carbon fibre sheets and some nice Queensland Maple I have sitting around.

[JohnH]

This is gunna be wild!

[brisboy]

Woah. "What started out as a classic tele" seems to have taken a few wild turns. That's going to be a gnarly baritone.

Sent from my SM-J120ZN using Tapatalk

[Andyxlh]

I think you might be turning into Prince...

[G-Axe]

I think you might be turning into Prince...

Smells like... progress.

It's been hard to find time in around a couple of other projects and the silly season in general, but here's the highlight reel of the last few weeks.

So my easy task was to clean up the edges of my templates with the homebuilt drum sander I put together for my first build. No pics, because it's really not that exciting - but they should make for some nice smooth routs when I get to that point.

The more crucial part is the neck pocket. I measured the centre line of my body and neck, aligned the two and clamped hard. Then using a random scrap of plywood (from a washing machine box, go figure) I cut two pieces that I then clamped to the side of the neck, and also the body. Lastly, I cut a bit of mdf for the base of the neck pocket (and a shim to pack it out really tightly) and clamped the. The result being:



I kept everything super-snug - the neck is unsupported but fits tightly enough to keep itself in place.



And then it sat like that because I couldn't find a top-bearing flush trim bit at the green shed and had to order one (along with a few other toys) from Carbatec. My five-year-old also decided that the bandsaw is the greatest thing ever and hijacked it (and my extreme supervision) to make Christmas presents for the family.

I did managed to cut out a serviceable humbucker template, using this as inspiration (link). It's cut a couple of slightly wavy edges to even out, but should do the job:




The little insert will let me rout the deeper leg pockets.

[continued]

[G-Axe]

Eventually I found the time to dust off the router and fire it up. Here's the nice clean 15mm* deep pocket, after a bit of chisel work to tidy up the floor:


There's a tiny bit of tear out, that will hopefully go unnoticed in the final product, otherwise I'm very happy. Most importantly, it fits the heel like a glove. I can gently persuade the heel in with a clamp and it holds firm without being impossible to remove again.


So next step is to rout for pickups and shape the body blank - and hope Santa brings some nice hardware!

* Intentionally a bit shallower than standard for reasons that will become clear later.