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Been reading a lot about the subject deciding what id like to do. Think seam development, if you've chosen wood that is dry, stable, could be a function of the right glue. In the counter and cabinetry world as well as guitar world theres tons of talk about adhesive , if everything else was done to spec. Apparently urea type adhesive in most products has extremely low creep, because it doesn't move, hard brittle. There are a few types of it. Need to dig deeper. But glue choice, many just buy the one that says its strongest on the label. Say Titebond 1 2 and 3 for example. The strength stats and water resistance of 2 and 3 are higher, but it can move before it breaks. So titebond 1 is the way to go, 1 to 3 hundred pounds of strength isnt worth the creep when the original is rated to 3 and a half thousand psi already. Having well prepared glue surfaces, properly bonded with a hard glue.

I've had something similar happen with epoxy. It almost feels like there's a greasy coating on it. After wiping it down with some cleaner or solvent though, it feels smooth and is indeed hard.

I've played many acoustic and electric guitars throughout my 73 years, and what I can state regarding neck shape is that some guitar necks seem to FIGHT me. Others are like a match made in heaven. I can literally play them for hours. My 2010 Epi Dot neck has that meaty D shape with thick shoulders that give my fretting hand a cramp in minutes. My Jimmie Vaughan Strat neck is a lot easier to play. But when I tried a Strat Player neck at GC, I could have played that for hours. I have a Martin D35 12 string that was always a beast to play. A luthier friend lent me a Washburn 12 string back in the late 80s that played like a dream. So here is a possible idea ..... maybe others are already doing this: Send someone a Tele body, preferably a contoured one like from Warmouth, and then something like 7 different necks. The neck that the buyer likes the best, either go with that contour, or send 3 more like that one that are a bit different. Think of it like the optometrist that dials in one lens after another, asking which one is clearer.. That way the neck is tailored to that player's hand, style, etc. There is no "one size fits all" neck profile. It will be great for a handful of people, and god-awful for everyone else.

While I used to really appreciate the aesthetic of a set neck guitar, I now prefer bolt on necks only because I can swap out necks if I want a specific neck profile on a particular guitar. And I cannot really tell the difference in tonal quality between the 3 types of necks. Thank you for your video.

Como dicen en mi pais: "con buena picha, bien se jode"

Nice! Chris, have you ever tried to finish a neck with BriteTone? Are there other water-based finishes that would hold up to wear better?

Chris, I don't recall if you had shared that Brite Tone tip about using a hair dryer before. I guess I have wasted a lot of unnecessary time waiting for coats to dry. Will try it on my next project.

That hair dryer trick is a new one! I might have to try that when I get into my new workshop. Although, I’ve noticed that bright tone does better when you can let it “level out” for a bit Between coats. In this heat that means use a good amount of retarder.

Did you give up on your qualspray spraygun? I’ve been wanting to save up for a qualspray for a while.

What spacing did you use between the strings on the bridge? I bought the same one, but the axial bearings have an external diameter of 11mm, which means they will be different from the usual 10.5mm standard. Good luck to you!

I also use BriteTone. Its a great product, and here in Canada we have Anthem which is a high solids waterbed poly. Both are fantastic.

Okay, what? I'm sitting here absorbing the content, and you let drop: It's about 100 degrees here? Holy.... I live in Vegas. I'm used to that stuff. But you? Aren't you in CO? How is it 100 degrees Fahrenheit where you are??? (I ask because my fantastic cousin may live [I think] around your part of CO.

Have you always been working in that garage? I thought your workshop was much bigger!

It’s going to be a beautiful guitar. Can the same results be achieved with a rattle clear? If so any advice?

Chris, did you always plan to use Crystalac over the Zpoxy? I got the feeling from your earlier videos you were going to buff out the Zpoxy itself...

I like Brite Tone. Love the company. That said, I only use 2K Clear now. I like being able to sand it in 2 days. I think the only advantage of the Crystalac is that it's water-based.

Hey, Chris! This is super helpful. I’m adding it to my Guitar Building playlist for future reference. Thanks!

Greetings Chris.

I have one ibanez bass with a jotoba neck- 3 piece. I was skeptical when I first bought it, thinking it was going to be a bad neck, etc... The wood is heavy, but I'll say this: that stuff is stable- like, ironclad. Just another example of somewhat recent introductions into the build material cache that work out just fine.

What's a tone pot? You guys dont just wire your pickups straight to volume then output jack??? 😂

I want to do this to my acoustic with my friend’s artwork. If I was careful with the moisture I applied to the top, would it work? And could I then seal it with tru oil instead of what you used here?

You miss one thing when talking about tone. Paint and coating. Certain company says certain type paint makes better tone. Personally, I believe paint may impact tone in small amount, but I won't buy a guitar based on paint alone.

I completely agree with your outlook on it. I also think Paul's argument isn't very well crafted. KDH's video about it brought to my attention how much Paul is gaslighting people. I think PRS guitars are great and in general Paul seems like a genuinely nice guy but his position on this topic is just strange and misleading.

Nope, feeler gauges are elegant and amazing and have been for 100+ years. Hyper consumption.

Great video! I've been building from kits since 2019 and have abt 11 guitars to my credit. When I started, I was watching a bunch of your videos and they were very helpful. As to today's video, I fully agree on electronic parts. As to wood, I agree, but give wood choice a little more credit. You did offer some good points on capacitors and pickup ingredients. When it comes to switches and plugs, I think it's more a question of quality. For example, a cheap Chinese made switch vs a well made Switchcraft, which I would say can last the life of the guitar vs a few months or years. Thanks for a good heads up!

It just doesn't make sense to level frets with string tension, necks are going to move some bit, also what if you change string guage? Another factor is won't you be taking more off the top of the frets near the nut because of relief? I'm not a Luthier but this is brillaint knowledge and advice..

I build mostly set-neck, double humbucker guitars with a tunomatic style bridge and stop tailpiece. I’ve found that with that simple recipe that nothing will affect the tone quality of the finished guitar as the distance between the bridge and the tailpiece. I normally put the stop tailpiece twice as far from the bridge as it is on a Gibson Les Paul. This does two things that I consider very important. First, it fattens the tone a lot. Second, it softens the action, enough that a set of 10-46 strings will fret and bend almost as easily as a set of nines. I’ve found that if a guitar sounds thin there’s not a whole lot you can do about it. A lot of people think well I’ll just boost the bass and cut the treble on the amp, but all that’s going to do is muddy the sound. If that fat but hard sound isn’t there in the first place then playing around with the EQ probably isn’t going to help very much.

And YES! The audio world, and guitar world, are so affected by false preconceptions... CNC is the way! CNC guitars are hand finished anyway...

YES! Someone finally speaks the truth about "tonewood" and "finish" on solid body electric guitars!

Wow, I'm glad I stumbled on this video and the comments. I was " " this close to buying the Fret Maestro. The guy seemed a little odd, but I was taken in by his explanation. I hadn't considered the variations in the fretboard. I'll stick with the trad fret leveling method, but add a Stew Mac Fret Kisser. Thanks!

I build my guitars out of plywood and JB Weld with the best $3 pickups from Ali Express. I keep hearing over and over that tone comes from the fingers. So I figure tone is all on the player’s skill level. (Funny enough, I haven’t actually sold any guitars.?.)

Has anyone changed the magnets on the Dirty Fingers pickups? What did you do and what was the results? Thanks

Thank you for the information. WOuld have enjoyed examples.

Why would my black stained finish look cloudy? Getting a mirror shine, but the black underneath the Solarez is cloudy. Any idea? Thanks!

I found a jacked Harmony acoustic guitar and made a new 4 piece top from a cedar fence post and fretboard from a piece of old cherry moulding( long grain). The guitar sounds great and the wood has not deviated at all in a year. And I'm in Colorado! It's fun going "against the grain" lol

DANGER, BE AWARE! Boiled linseed oil generates heat as it dries, which can cause the spontaneous combustion of materials contacted by this product. Oily rags, waste, and other oily materials contacted by boiled linseed oil can cause spontaneous combustion fires if not handled properly. Be very, very careful with the waste as many houses have burned down because of spontaneous combustion of rags or paper towels with boiled linseed oil on it.

Have always respected and appreciated your advice this on is particularly pertinent to me at the moment as I’m trying to put a simple liteweight guitar together for myself to re learn to play after failed surgery has left me in a mess. The section on the circular add on to the drill press will doubtless cause me some head scratching and re running of the video. Because I also have some memory problems. But thanks again

100% Chris! I'm finding this incredibly difficult and i was in construction for 40 years. Off topic: will you have a booth at the luthier show in Parker on 6/29?

Thank you! I’ve been searching for an answer to this question.

cool vid👌, 5:25 the "board dependant" statement is about as succinct a way to describe what most folks are struggling to understand/or the main semantic hurdle that most will just use as a debate like pivot point. Also the thoughts on sustain you briefly made at the end is certainly something I hope enters more into the discourse.

Thanks for your continuing rational contributions to these discussions. Some players want to believe that major guitar manufacturers do things like TEST wood for bodies and necks to determine what will produce the best sonic "marriage". There is no evidence that they do that. And there is no scientific basis on which they could. Although certain manufacturers like to use smoke and mirrors to create such a mystique (PRS and FCS). I know you don't believe in body "tonewood". That's consistent with thirty years of complex measurements of real guitars by independent guitar scientists (eg Fleischer, Zollner, Pate). Guitar manufacturers don't make any of those measurements. So take anything they say about the supposed characteristic "sound" of solid body wood species with a grain of salt. But I noticed you did say that there is a small effect of the "piece" of wood. That's a common belief among some body tonewood proponents (although they often attribute more sonic significance to said piece of body wood). But what they're really saying is that they found by experience for example that alder doesn't always "sound" like Fender's marketing dept says it should, and likewise for ash. So someone dreamed up the "piece of wood" theory. Not that there was any direct evidence for that. It was just that guitars sounded different in ways that didn't track with species. But it doesn't follow from that common experience that it must be due to the "piece" of body wood. There are many, many things that have been measured to influence the sonic profile of real guitars. Many not well known to players. So when you say regarding the "minimal" effect of solid body wood on tone that "the tone of the wood isn't species-dependent .. it's board-dependent", I think you should really be saying, when your 5 slabs of mahogany produce slightly different sounding guitars, that you don't really know why those guitars sound different. It does not follow that the heard sonic differences are due to the particular "piece" of body mahogany (there is however evidence of wood-related variation in a neck's sonic properties). Unless you did the complex measurements of literally every other part of the guitar known to be sonically influential. You also talked about how pickup specs like pickup wire, magnet type, wind count, etc. determine the pickup's tone. But the thing you really want to know is the resonant frequency and Q factor. But pickup makers don't tell you that. So we're left grasping at straws, trying to figure out how the component parts affect the tone - that should really only be relevant to a pickup designer. It's indicative of the dismal state of the pickup industry that they don't provide proper specs, leaving their customers to buy largely blindly. If speaker or microphone manufacturers didn't publish full frequency response plots, they'd be out of business. All pickup makers should publish bode plots (many measure them internally). Regarding capacitors in tone controls, the first half of a tone circuit's response (from 10 down to around 5) is all due to the pot's resistance not the capacitor. The capacitor effect only kicks in for the second half. So if you never dial your tone control down that far, messing with the capacitor value is pointless. Your separation of sustain from "tone" is not really correct. Anything that affects the relative decay of different frequencies in the signal is going to affect the overall tone. Sustain is just the "last man (frequency) standing". Note that it has been shown that sustain can be accurately predicted from the string properties and the neck's resonant modal frequencies (Pate et al, 2014). Not really a practical approach for luthiers, but an important indication of the relevant physics. Zollner has additionally shown that individual bridges for example can reduce sustain at particular frequencies (and therefore the overall relative tone produced by the different frequency decay rates), by absorbing those string frequencies.

A plek machine is far superior than human in fret leveling and filing and consistency.the plek machine does not miss anything…. Believe that….. to the finest detail. That machine is stupid crazy when you see one in action.

All very relevant for acoustic guitars, but solidbody electrics? I have played many different electric guitars and whilst feel and response differ greatly, they all sound like guitars and the difference in "tone" is next to nothing, or nothing that can't be eq'ed easily.....i'll just shut up now and play my guitar🎸🤘🏼🎸

I have a question that I have not heard asked in relation to tone of a solid body electric guitar. If wood selection makes a difference; has anyone considered the body shape effect on tone given the same wood selection??? 💜💜💜💜 Sarah xx

The moment a customer says that to me is the moment I refuse to build that guitar.

I had that exact concern, but I figured stewmac would never mess up something that basic

Don't forget the glue. Huge impact on sustain and tone.

I know this doesn’t relate to this video particularly, but would you mind possibly doing a video on how you use and maintain your hvlp paint gun? I know there are other videos out there but I love the way you explain things and it’d be geared more towards guitars rather than cars. No problem if not, just throwing it out there in case you’ve ever considered it!

Dear Chris, instead of using just one capacitor in series with a tonepot one can use a bunch of capacitors ranging from a few hundreds of picofarads to a few tens of nanofarads. (may be you can even omit the tone-pot). Furthermore instead of using the standard 5-way pickup switch, use a 3-way 2-pole toggle switches on-off-on. So it's possible to make any combination of single coil pickups in phase or anti-phase. That's what Brian May does, albeit with slider switches. By doing these two things You get the most versatile way in changing the sound of your guitar.

great video. I like what you said about the tome of the wood. I'll add that for solid body guitars, I think that we notice the "tone" of the wood mostly when playing the guitar unplugged. Once the guitar or bass is plugged in and cranked, then the pickup and electronics far outweigh the woods. I select woods for weight, stiffness, and looks. As for nuts, I prefer a zero fret and the nut only serves as a guide for the strings. Great video.