As a guitar repairman, I glue a lot of headstocks back onto guitar necks.  In many cases the guitar has been dropped, or has fallen from a stand, and the headstock has snapped on impact.  More often than not, it will be hanging on by its headcap.

This diagram represents a side view of a one-piece neck.  As you can see, the grain is aligned with the direction of the neck. So when it comes to the headstock, the grain is very short and can snap easily.  To compound the issue most acoustic and many electric necks are made from mahogany, which already has relatively short fibres.  This means that the area around the headstock is really weak.

Another way to construct a neck is to use a scarf joint.  This way, you have good, long grain in the weakest point. The neck is therefore much stronger.

What I don’t like about this joint is that you can see the “shark’s nose” shape that the joint leaves on the neck.  Most players won’t even notice it, but I’m fussy when it comes to joints. I prefer to hide them.

This third diagram shows the method that I use for the custom guitars that I build. By doing this, I am able to hide the joint with a rear headcap.  This headcap also adds strength.  I figured that if a broken-off headstock often hangs by the  headcap, then a rear headcap is likely to help prevent it breaking in the first place.

I also think it looks great.  This rosewood headcap hides the joint nicely, and really accentuates the contour of the volute.

What do you reckon?

A few months ago I was talking to Ervin Somogyi: a luthier whose guitars I love.  We were discussing various woods and generally geeking out.  Following a tip off, he had produced a guitar body out of Wenge (pronounced weng-ee).  Now I’ve made a few bass necks out of Wenge, and I know how hard it is.

The four neck stringers in this six string bass are Wenge. Truth is, it cost me a fortune in saw blades to cut them.  So I knew that the wood was very dense, but I had never considered building a guitar from it. This was because although Wenge has a dark, rich colour, it has almost no figure.

This guitar body he showed me was just an unfinished soundbox.  No neck attached.  I tapped the back and was astonished by the sound that emanated.  It is difficult to describe sounds in words, but this one was a clear, sustained, bell-like ring.  I don’t profess to predict the sound of a guitar just from tapping a piece of wood, but I do know what I am looking for.  A “lively” sound.  Proof that the wood has the ability to produce a note.  If it can do this, then the chances are that you will get a good guitar sound from it.  This guitar definitely had that – and some more besides.

In the case of Wenge, the properties of the wood that make it look boring are the very properties that make it sound great.  It has very tight, very straight grain, like the grain found in softwoods.  This uniformity means that it lacks the character, say, of a wild curly piece of maple. However, Wenge’s uniformity makes for a great-sounding guitar.

So I decided to experiment. I went out and bought the most perfectly quarter-sawn piece of Wenge I could find, joined it up to make a back plate and thicknessed it so that it would be extremely thin.  It’s a hard, stiff wood, so I can get it pretty thin; this should allow the back to move a lot.  This will add even more to the sound.

Now I’m thinking I’ll put some inlay in the back, to liven this guitar up a bit before it goes on sale.  I like my guitars to look a little exotic and, although I think this one will be perfect for the tone junkies out there, I also want to make it as striking as possible.

Here I’m gluing braces into the back.  I want this back to work as a single unit, hence the asterisk-style bracing.  As usual, I’ll be carving these braces to shape once they are on the guitar.  It’s so much easier to detect what influence your shaping is having on the guitar if they are attached to it when you work on them.

I’ll let you know how it sounds when it’s complete.  Obviously, for an independent view, you’ll have to come by and try it yourself.  The way the woods are sounding when I tap them, I think you’d probably better bring your cheque book if you do…

The Good:

Gibson is without doubt one of the most important and innovative brands when it comes to fretted instruments.

Gibson has made the world’s most sought after banjos and mandolins.

The Gibson Les Paul has been a staple of the electric guitar market since it’s very inception. On top of that, the Les Paul is my favourite electric guitar. It may be back-breakingly heavy, but I think that all that mahogany is what helps it sound better than any other electric.

The Bad and the Ugly:

In my opinion, the litigious behaviour of the Gibson Guitar Corporation has become increasingly bizarre.

Gibson failed in its suit against Paul Reed Smith after PRS released its single cutaway electric guitar. It appears that Gibson believed that it infringed their copyright on the Les Paul.

From left to right: a Bigsby Merle Travis, a Gibson Les Paul and a PRS Single Cut.

Now it strikes me that all three of these guitars are similar.  Admittedly the first has a more pointed cutaway, but in essence, they are all the same.   Certainly compared to a Strat, or even a Tele, which is a single-cutaway guitar.

The years that these three were released go, from left to right, 1947, 1952 and 1998.  Now I know that the PRS and the Les Paul do look similar, but the concept that one guitar company might have the copyright on single cutaways is ludicrous.

Even stranger is Gibson’s lawsuit regarding the sale of guitar-shaped game controllers for Guitar Hero style games.  What is the deal with these people?

As a guitar repairman, I’m also cross with Gibson because the company no longer using a parts distributor in the UK. Instead, Gibson has decided that it will only sell parts to authorised guitar retailers.  In other words, if a repair shop wants to replace Gibson parts on Gibson guitars, it must now stock a range of Gibson instruments.  I didn’t ask what my minimum stock requirement would be – but even if it was just a couple of guitars, it would be a heck of a lot of money to spend just so I could replace a green tulip tuner on an old SG.  The result: I now must go to a guitar shop and buy parts at retail in order to fix people’s guitars.

This is more than inconvenient; it demonstrates an attitude towards fans, customers and prospective suppliers that baffles me. When I was at the NAMM show in California a couple of years ago, Gibson would only allow “authorised dealers” to view their guitars.  I was there representing an independent guitar store in Oregon and was therefore a potential dealer – but although other exhibitors were extremely welcoming, Gibson was just the opposite.  It’s all so odd.  The Gibson Guitar Corporation is like an elderly relative whose behaviour is getting more and more eccentric.  You feel like you shouldn’t mention it, because they’re such a staple. But it ticks you off all the same.

All that said, when I win the National Lottery here’s my shopping list:

Gibson F5 Mandolin

Gibson Mastertone Banjo

1952 Gibson Les Paul Gold Top.

The online version of the Guardian article is here.

I like the picture, too.  A bit scary, though.