Love that straight edge, I fell in love with it when I was out there. I remember watching you use the pin router for months, thinking how sweet it would be to use one. Then I used yours...and bought my own. Lol.
Yes it is. Wish every aspiring builder had a chance to experience your pin router. It might prevent people from losing interest in continuing their passion.
The way I do my neck pocket with a hand router, Make a template with 3/8" thick Acrylic. Route with a 1/4" top bearing bit. I've only done set neck with long tenon with 2.5 degree angle on the neck for a tune a matic bridge. Your pin router is freaking awesome though!
@@bevo65 Yep, nothing but blue collar class at Texas Toast. I wish I had discovered these guys before I bought my 2016 Gibson SGHP with the stupid giant photon torpedo case that weighs twice much as the guitar.
Hi guys. I'm not a luthier. Maybe an intermediate guitar tech, but mostly a guitar player. I just bought a couple of sub $200 T Style guitars. Out of the box I am trying to set them up. With One of them it looks like the rosewood fingerboard is up higher by (without any measurements taken) about 1/16 to 1/8" on one corner than the other corner. One corner seems like it almost sits on the body top, but not the other. I took the neck off once to look at everything in general. Cleaned some very small wood chips out of there and put it back together. I am pretty sure that their fit must have been like it is now before I took it apart and cleaned. I wonder if the manufacturer cut the neck pocket at an angle or if the neck heel is cut at an angle? I do know that after I filed of rough fret ends and cleaned and polished up the frets and set the relief on the neck to get ready for playability, it is not ready to be played.. I found that about 4 or 5 frets back from the end of the fingerboard at the neck joint, the bottom 3 strings (G
Can you please explain how to measure the needed pocket hole depth, needed neck heel thickness and needed angle. ? I understand everything about guitar building except this to start working on my first project. What references do you use to fit it perfectly?
Hey bud I'm doing a Tele style body right now out of knotty pine what angle should I rout the neck pocket at and how deep should the neck pocket be? I'm probably gonna just get me a neck from Warmoth unless you will sell me a cool neck? Oh and can I do this all by hand I actually want my first to be by hand no machines?
Thank you for this video! It seems like masking tape is the solution for a good fitting neck. I got a question: How thick should the neck pocket be for it to stay stable? It looks like you're leaving around half inch but maybe it is possible to go even lower?
We use tape to shim things on tools all the time HAHAHA The Fender neck pocket is 5/8 it seems plenty stable I don't think you need to be overly deep but our design is such that we wanted the heel to look a certain way
Matt you need to get sponsored by a tool supplier. Since i stated watching your videos a couple years ago i noticed that my shop is starting to look alot like yours from the pin router to the bandsaw and your ridgid jointer (dont have the spiral cutter yet) and just bought the string thru jig on your recomendation .
I live in the same town as the corporate headquarters of Grizzly (the owner is said to be a guitar nerd) and have often thought about approaching them with the idea of sponsoring you guys, but I don't think they'd listen to a shmoe off the street like me...
@@TexasToastGuitars crap... why did I say anything?! Now I gotta actually DO something.... well, let's see what happens (I'm not on, like, a time limit, right?!)
@@TexasToastGuitars Here's what the founder and president, Shiraz Bilolia does... (It's been awhile since I've been to the Grizzly showroom but they used to have a wall displaying the guitar, ukulele and mandolin kits...plus you could buy tuners bridges nuts etc there) ... www.grizzly.com/the-presidents-guitars
The prep work of making all the fixtures for all the steps before this process and the following steps makes for ease and repeatability for building the final piece whether it is Ford, Fender or Ferrari. Even the most customizable, hand built masterpieces need a great solid platform to start. Another great video for building excellent instrument!
Hey guys, I've been playing since '87, and tinkering since then too. I just started full builds over the past year, and I learn sooooo much going over your past library. I would love to take your class in the future. (Dad-cation!) Thank you so much! You guys are awesome! PS: My wife likes misses toast off camera!
Your neck pocket jig is awesome 👍 But I still not understand about your angel jig. Cause I see you route the angel much far than the neck pocket. Please explain me how you fix it 😅
Great video guys. The jigs and tools are one thing, but I really like how you have standards for everything. 1" deep neck pockets, 1.5deg angle etc. Makes me realize I really need to do that. Thanks!
We realized that everything was different on every guitar and that seemed like a lot of silly work. We standardized things and it made life a lot easier
I would rather have my neck parallel to the body, no angle in the heel, if you want the strings higher just make the heel thicker, intonation thing, as soon as you angle the string they are taking a longer path to the bridge, I guess if you compensate for this somehow it works? but I do prefer top mounted bridges, but with the strings parallel to the body . . . the way your doing it you could just do it traditional then if you want to angle your neck so the strings rise to the bridge you could use a wedge shim.. that way the guitar can still be setup low and parallel to the body for those who prefer the traditional style set up?
Excellent video as always , Matt !! My question is ... Is 1.5° the perfect angle for doing Gibson style stop tail bridges ? I've always been leary of trying a stop tail bridge because of fear of getting the angle wrong .
Gibson's, LPs specifically are all over the place between 2 and 4 degrees. That's why the TOM can end up so high on some and not on others. But remember they have carved tops with the fretboards right down on the top of the guitar. Generally the carve will determine how much angel you need but if you had a Fender with the board at the top of the guitar you need also need an angle.
Awesome Matt! I needed this info. Is there a schematic listing neck angle and height based on types of bridges? I plan to make three guitars all three with different bridges. Hard tail, vintage strat tremolo, and a Floyd Rose. Thank you for any advice you may have but, thank you guys for all your videos.
Incidentally, if I have to refit a Fender style neck to a body , I use a 1.5 angle when recutting the neck pocket by hand and then use the rifle action bedding technique to fit the neck ( use sellotape and wax polish to mask the neck and screws , glue a shim at the back of the pocket [ a bit of maths helps here ] , check level of neck with DGI , and epoxy resin kevlar flock bedding compound and screw the neck into position recheck with DGI and allow to set ) , so that when the neck is removed from the pocket sellotape removed etc., the neck screws back into position with the most accurate joint that could possibly be created ( - 0.001" for the thickness of the sellotape)and the tilt of the neck removes the 3 miles of saddle height adjustment screw after setting up the guitar. The result ? Sustain as good or better than any set neck guitar and no nasty lumps out of the playing hand from the saddle screws . I do this on every bolt on neck from a £45 KCC to any Fender etc that needs the neck fitting properly and of course target rifles that need an action bedding job to shoot accurately . The principles are exactly the same in both for different reasons and in both cases to do with harmonic response of neck and body and barrel and action . As far as I know , no one else fits or refused a bolt on neck like this , but if you want to understand the method look up bedding rifle actions as apart from angling the neck , the process is the same . Use slow set epoxy until you get the hang of it , then you can use the fast set types. The resin compound is tougher than the wood itself and wax the attachment screws well .
@@TexasToastGuitars Unless asked for Tusq Graphtec or original bone ( I always ask about bone because of a lot of guitarist can be vegans or simply dislike the idea )I make a brass nut from flat stock profile and cut it , file to height and naturally bed it the same way whether it be a cambered or flat based nut . You can buy both 3mm and 1/8" thick flat for metric and inch strat types pretty readily . The benefit of brass and bedding in this way is absolutely stunning. Brass is also self lubing and if the string grooves are nicely finished , which is pretty easy to do as you only need 50-60% of the string diameter to stop it riding out , it aids the older Strat trees to return to tune much better .
Question at 11:50 right when you say "alright!!!" Lol. Once your neck is good to go and fits properly, then you take a lot of wood off the back and get ready to shape or profile the back? At that moment in the video it looks like a lot of space between the neck pocket and where the back of the neck starts... hard to explain... but I assume all that goes away anyway, correct?
@@TexasToastGuitars I'm positive that I didn't explain what I see correctly...I think it's just the extra wood that gets shaved off... since that neck is still rough... not shaped or profiled or whatever. Lol. I didn't mean the end of the neck that's in the pocket. Lol. Doesn't matter... good video anyway as I was one previously asking about neck angle. Cheers
Thanks again Matt! Dumb question, is this neck angle unique to your Challenger guitars? I have two strats and a tele kit guitar, I have not noticed an angle, I’ll have to measure it somehow, looks really cool and complicated lol, thanks again for impairing your wisdom Matt!
Have you ever thought about extending the neck way back into the body and getting rid of the heel / protruding joint at all ? Especially on those single cut bodys it would make so much sense, considering 24 fret necks are quite normal these days. I've seen it on 80s bolt on PRS guitars and with the ultimate execution on the Yamaha 1200 superstrats or teles. Bolt in instead of bolt on.
For us guys with a router table, while it may be a bit on the pricey side, mobile solutions has a really cool tool I've been eyeballin' for awhile. It may be the trick for some of the angle work you do with your aluminium taper jig on the pin router. A video of it is here on youtube at ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-T042QNTq0G0.html
hi Matt, is there a reason you angle the neck rather than neck pocket as 1 process I have seen is luthiers using a hand plane on the body to create the break angle and then obviously the router follows that angle, just curious
I have found that it is easier and more consistent, for me, to do it the way I demonstrate in the video. Of course the tools that I have are not necessarily the same as everyone else has. I developed the process we use after many years. You should make plans to attend our set neck guitar class and I'll show you in greater detail why this technique works so well. Check it out...www.texastoastguitars.com/copy-of-build-a-guitar-class
@@TexasToastGuitars oh man I wish I could believe me, I'm in Australia and that cost to travel and the course on top, just not possible at the moment, I have a hard time travelling with my disability as well dude, you really create some great content here and I love the channel man.
This is fucking genius. Iv been trying to hunt down ideas for how to do the angle on the neck heel / tenon rather than body pocket / mortice. Everyone else is either doing bullshit with shims or complex neck pocket routing. Your jigs are smarter than others people's. I love your compound radius fretboard jig too.
Thanks Tom We decided that putting the angle on the necks was considerably easier than on the body. We have done several double neck guitars and having the angles match is really important when they are right next to each other.
@@pedroreyes4670 Learning by doing, not saying a course won't help but it will help more if you fixed up a few beaters. To experiment, take a look at the instruments that get thrown away and see what you can do with them.
Well... with no angle the neck would have to stick out of the guitar quite a bit to work with the bridge I will be using. Since that would suck the angle is the really hot set-up
Wait! Wait! When you put the neck in the neck angle jig you didn't say "Clamp it, Jed"! Seriously (rim shot), that neck angle jig is cool. I never thought about doing that. I've never had a neck angle problem with either bolt on or glue in solid body guitars - only acoustics with dove tail neck joints.
Do you use a center-line type method to index the neck to make sure it's square on the angle jig? Or just eyeball it? Also....beloved pin router needs a beloved dust shoe ;D
The pin router has a dust collection thingy it just doesn't work that well. See the angle of the bit changes often in relation to the piece, almost 360 degrees on even something like the neck pocket.
You are so considerate, making Jesse's clean up job easier! :) :) It's great you gave him a nice feature spot to do his reveal the other day, he did a fantastic job. One question: did you always use a neck angle on the Challengers, or (as I suspect) it was a later development?
As a recent subscriber and someone who will be attempting to build their first ever Explorer guitar soon, I find what videos of yours I’ve watched so far very informative. Keep up the good work mate!
Hey Matt…. If I'm using a .125 Hipshot string-thru hardtail bridge is it necessary to angle the neck…. I have put together a few bolt-on neck guitars using this bridge and a standard Strat pocket which is .720 deep but with no angle…. If I want to glue in rather than bolt, do I have to angle the neck ??? or can I just substitute glue for screws ????
You don't really NEED to angle the neck or the pocket but you will need to figure out what height the strings have to be to work with that bridge. You can adjust the neck depth, as you have done already and sort it out that way. I think that if your neck pocket is done properly you should be able to interchange glue for screws and back again. I used to use Fender style necks and glue them in all the time.
I could indeed, we used to save every little scrap of wood but there is so much of it now that we have to throw it out. There is a guy who heats his house with our scrap wood
@Texas Toast Guitars. If you have to route something very exact with your method, check out the foil tapes from 3M. A few years ago we needed a steady increase of thickness on a wind tunnel model of a material that won't compress/deform under pressure. The tape you use will do that a bit so this might give you the extra fine tuning if you ever need it. Necks fit just snug enough. The amount of too tight neck pockets out there is too damn high, well done.
@@TexasToastGuitars I think most people believe it at first, it's like everyone hits you over the head with it. "Look how tight it is, I can lift it, can't put paper/feeler gauge between it." A few moments latör: Why is my paint job cracked? EDIT: Holy shit I really wrote "very exact"...cheesus qwist. If you see Dan again, maybe you can go to desert brutality together. Would be so cool to see you go through a course.
It looks like your geometry results in the string plane being quite high above the body. I'm wondering if that might be a little uncomfortable to play.
@@TexasToastGuitars I'll pop right over. See you in about 24 hours ;-) Oh wait I can't cos' of covid. I mention it because this is one of the things that Leo Fender did. The Tele and Strat have the string plane 10mm at the neck and 12mm at the bridge above the body. On my G&L Legacy USA its 13 to 14mm. It's a beautifully made guitar which I have never really bonded with and I think that's partly because of the little bit of extra string height above the body. This isn't just because of the way I have the G&L set up, the neck pocket is shallower than a Strat and the fret board surface is 10mm above the body (on a Strat it's 7mm). I think he did this to accommodate the height of the parallel floating vibrato bridge.
I mustache you a question, don't you leave like a little overhang for the fretboard, to hide the joint? Cause then the bridge location moves as well and so on
If you look at the heel end of the neck, the fretboard and neck both have nearly an extra inch beyond the last fret. This then gets routed away as part of the neck pickup cavity, making for a clean and nearly invisible neck joint.
