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I am building the second steel string guitar using a neck joint common to classical builders, where the neck and heel are made first, then the sides of the body are fitted in slots on each side of the heel block. I have a question for anyone else who uses this method. regarding the neck angle. Cutting the slot on the heel at 5% or less, from square with the top will set the headstock lower than the level of the top, but will also extend the neck past the 14th fret at an upward angle. Leveling the end of the neck past the 14th fret would be pointless since the fretboard would not be supported. Should a "pocket" be cut in the neck as I have done on solid bodies I have made? Classical builders using a solera have various methods of building angles of necks to tops but I can't understand how they handle the end of the fretboard entering the body. My first attempt using this method, I made a heal block, cut the slot 90% from the top for the sides, carved the exterior, routed the heal for the angle of the headstock to the bridge. I know some prolific builders use this method on steel strings, but I am missing something which is not too unusual for me.

Windell: Am aware of a reference book out there that shows building with a classical style neck and heel block combination but it should give pause to consider how any future neck resets will be handled.Building in this fashion is not common for steel strings and possibly be a bit of a turn off for any potential buyers. Not trying to rain on your parade but suggest you explore this a bit further.

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

Hmmm. Well I've actually buillt a couple of steel strings with Spanish heels and it just feels like before I go any further I have to ask, are you sure you really want to do this? And more to the point, why do you want to do this?

When I was studying with Al Carruth he preferred to use a Spanish heel on steel string guitars, that is no longer the case.

When I built my first guitar, Al was using many Spanish techniques in his steel strings. For example, the sides had a more traditional break angle. Braces were all arched but we didn't use any dishes. We used a traditional chin and foot in the heel.

Al didn't use a solera, but we started the guitar assembly with a traditional Spanish "paddle". The neck angle was cut into the slot for the sides in the neck. We set the neck angle by attaching a "temporary high bridge" of the height that set the appropriate angle and them clamping the "top/neck paddle" to a planed 2X4. Then the guitar was built up from there. All in all, it was pretty slick. If you're interested I can tell you a lot more about the methods we used. And explain what I just said in more detail.

By the time I started my second guitar Al was into dishes and that changed things a lot. We still started with a paddle, and we still clamped the paddle to the 2 X 4 with the "temporary high bridge" But the domes from the dishes added complexity and Al's, way of joing the fingerboard to the dome was to match the bottom of the fingerboard to the shape of the dome. If you're interested I can tell you more about these methods.

I suppose we could take a look at the guitars too.

I believe Cole Clark guitars are all built this way .. a good friend is the NA rep for them, and they do sell .... how they plan to fix them is a different matter .. I guess once the warranty runs out (not sure its lifetime, or even if it is ----) you get another one ...

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Neck resets are going to be a serious problem with that approach.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Nooooo problem at all. Frank Ford has it all worked out.

Actually 2 ways to cccomplish lowering the action of a guitar with a spanish heel:

http://www.frets.com/FRETSPages/Luthier ... eset1.html

or

http://www.frets.com/FRETSPages/Luthier ... wedge.html

You gotta love the bone saw.

I always wondered why that thing only tickled when the cast was cut off my leg in the 7th grade.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

I've built guitars, on and off, since 1975, and I haven't seen one that needed a neck reset yet.
The need for neck resets on luthier-built guitars is overstated, way too much fear of resets going on.

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https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008907949110

David, what about the guiitars Frank Ford was working on?

Classical neck joint will also present a more complicated finishing process.

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

hi everyone...........when i was at my college i had a guitar come in for a neck reset.....it was a steel string guitar with a slipper heel made by an irish maker....it was made in 1977.........it was a very nice guitar......but did not have bindings on the back.........and had a very thin french polish finish and the grain was not filled.....it looked like a lovely old scabby fiddle......so i hot knifed the back off and jigged the guitar face down and put shims under the fb to set the proper neck geometry and the re fitted the back and heel block and when i animal glued the back on the guitar......the neck was re-set.....so when i make ss with a slipper heel i dont bind the back and glue the back on with animal glue to make a re set easier..............i would rather do a dovey or a bolt on though.......slipper heels are so nice to do though.....joe

Did anyone serioulsy look at what Frank had to do on these guitars ??? .... he still had to heat and remove the end of the fingerboard, (or even the entire fingerboard) .... hmmm .. same as I have to do on my glued down FB, bolted heel version.

Then on the 70s BC rich .. he heats the FB ext ....he cuts the neck off .. and then turns it into ... you guessed it .. A BOLT ON.

As for never seeing spanish heels that need to be reset .. even on classicals .. I see them all the time. Most are not worth fixing.

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

How seriously does one have to look at it to get the idea. I mean, once the bone saw comes out .....

While all of the information available to builders today make it pretty obvious that a Spanish heel on a steel string has some serious drawbacks- and very few advantages, if you like building in the Spanish style, are tooled up to do so, want to try building a few steel strings, realize and accept that they will be subject to ridicule by, well by most everyone who knows anything about guitars and many of those who don't, don't mind, in fact, may even like the idea, that at some point in the future, perhaps long after you're dead, someone will need to do some pretty intimate work on the guitar- or just trash it, then build away.

I'm not ADVOCATING building a spanish heel steel string, just saying that if you do, you don't need to stay up nights sweating bullets.
I've found that there is no "perfect way" for anything, but I choose to continue to build. I have made up my mind that if I make a mistake, I will take responsibility for it, and repair or rebuild it as needed.

I like the idea that after I'm dead, a repair guy may curse me. It may be the only fame I ever have.

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I like the idea that after I'm dead, a repair guy may curse me. It may be the only fame I ever have.

what a fantastic comment

Definitely one of the advantages of building this way. Althugh, there's always the chance you won't be dead.

Thanks for the responses, especially Platko, but since I understand what I see better than instructions I read, I still am concerned about the extension of the neck past the joining of the body at the 14th fret. Might as well put it together and find out what works or not. To the question of why spanish heels on steel strings, I like the guitars I have made and played which do not have fasteners at the neck joint. And looking at guitar construction over the years it seems to me that the change from a single builder making the entire guitar, to bodies and necks made separate, then joined, was to increase production. After my first build of spanish steel string, while vacationing in Albuquerque, I visited the shop of the Pimentel family of guitar makers.www.pimentelguitars.com/. Three brothers build classical, but Rick has made steel strings with spanish heels for 30 years and has a four year backlog. He was very helpful, but our time was limited and they do not allow photos of the shop. Really nice guy who does amazing inlay; I just couldnt think of all the answers I needed. and he was busy on an outstanding guitar priced like a new car. I bet he would find worry about neck sets amusing. We talked about that. Maybe I need to spend more time in New Mexico.

I'll explain in more detail how I constructed my first guitar, Windell. If you're interested in traditional Spanish style construction details I think that guitar comes close to what you would want to know.

The main feature that seperates this guitar from the second one that I did with a Spanish heel is that the sides (ribs) of the guitar were straight on the edge that meets the soundboard. Also, as I remember it, the upper transverse bar was also straight (it wasn't arched). These two features made the whole upper bout take on a less arched profile. The less arched profile in the upper bout greatly reduced the problem of matching the fingerboard extension to the soundboard.

My second guitar used dished workboards to profile the sides (ribs) into a spherical shape. I think we arched the upper transverse brace too. Everything was spherical. Now the fingerboard extension presented more of a challenge. Al Carruth's solution to this was to carve out the bottom of the fingerboard extension to match the spherical shape of the domed top. Done well, (his guitars), this looked really good. Especially when he put a few veneer lines under the fingerboard. The veneer lines of the fingerboard extension disappeared into the dome of the top and it just looked like the two surfaces just fused themselves together. It was pretty cool.

I think though, you're going for something more traditional so I'll explain my first guitar. We can do the other next if it turns out that you're more interested in that style.

Here's a very rough diagram that I drew that tries to explain the construction. I'll be happy to add more diagrams to help clarify anything that needs it.

The top, the diagram shows rough neck construction. It's pretty traditional Spanish Heel with the addition of an adjustable truss rod. The truss rod is accessed from the sound hole. I had an old Gurian truss rod that we used. We put it in on a taper that followed the taper of the neck.

The slot had about a 3 degree angle so that the neck would angle down from the soundboard while keeping the heel perpendicular to the side. (this is a reverse angle from most Spanish construction)

The chin of the heel was cut to the depth of the soundboard so the two could me joined flush. Again, exactly the way a classical maker would do it.

The second diagram down shows the soundboard assembly (braced and tuned) joined to the neck chin. This combined neck-soundboard assembly is what Al called the "paddle". (It looks like something you could paddle a boat with. At least that's what I think he meant by paddle. hmmm. now that I think about it, it could also mean ..... nevermind- you get the idea)

The last diagram shows how Al established the correct neck angle with the soundboard. He put a temporary shim at the loaction of the bridge which was the correct height, taking frets and string action into consideration so tht the strings would be at the correct height over the soundboard when the guitar was finished. As the diagram shows, he then clamped a 2 x 4 that he ran through his jointer to the neck. The 2 x 4 held everything in allighment until the sides were in place. We might have had the 2 x 4 in place until the back was on, I don't remember- it sounds like a good idea though. Of course, you could also just use a solera with the correct neck angle, Al didn't use a solera at the time.



I don't have any good quality pictures from the time of construction. Here's the best that I could come up with.



One of the things Al did to help stabilize the neck angle for the long run was to extend the sound hole brace through the upper traverse brace and into the chin of the neck. This feature doesn't show up too well on my picture so I drew a few lines on top of the braces to highlight what I'm talking about.

Here's another shot from a diferent angle. Again, sorry for the quality, this was long berfor I had a digital camera.



I'll take a few pictures of the guitar and post them.

You're thread made me take a look at the guitar today. It's still doing well. It has been in my basement for the summer and it has been very humid here so it must be wet. The action is a tad high but not bad. If I lowered it to normal standard action the string height at the bridge would still be fine. I'm guessing the middle stings would be about .5" off the soundboard, they're a little be higher than that now. I started building the guitar in 94. We strung it up about 3 years later. I'm pretty sure I'll be dead before it meets the bone cutter. And, since Al tuned it, it doesn't sound too bad either.

As I was having dinner I realized that I left something out of my post:

the fretboard



The height of the shim needs to take into account the fretboard, frets and string action.

Thanks John. The diagram cleared up the main problem I was having trouble understanding, or thinking thru the neck joining the top, and now I see the reason for using the "paddle". As for setting the neck angle it does the same as a solera. The pictures are plain enough to help. Everything is ready to assemble as soon as I cut those slots in the heel. If it comes out right I post it.

John:
Thanks for taking the time to explain and diagram that.

I basically stopped doing the Spanish heel method shortly after John finished up, and now use plug-in necks on everything. What convinced me was the point that not all of the distortion that leads to neck resets is in the neck; some is in the body, too. The A-brace up into the neck block helps with that, but we're dealing with wood here, after all.

That said, I can think of a few steel strings I built with Spnaish heels back in the 80s that are still going strong.

Some anthropologist pointed out a while back that if there are a number of ways being used to do the same thing in different cultures, it means one of two things: either it has to do with fashion, or there's no good way to do it. This is most clear in lutherie when you talk about finishes: there is no 'good' way to finish a guitar, all of them have some pretty serious drawbacks.

Somebody on another list pointed out that the most common failing he saw at Healdsburg was poor neck fits: very few people seem really to have a handle on that one (makes me feel a little better!). The Spanish heel does solve the angle problem, but introduces other issues, of which long-term stability is the most important, followed by the difficulity of finishing in the corner in an era where the standard of finish is 'perfection, period'.

In the end, you pay your money and take your choice.

It sounds like your in good shape.

I'll make it easy for you to post your pictures, even it doesn't come out right, by posting some pictures of my first two guitars. The one that had the flat side profile where where sides join the top is rosewood. The one with the very spherical top is koa- that makes it easy to tell the two apart. It's hard for one pictue to tell the story so I'll just post a bunch.

First the rosewood. Some side profiles.







Here's a close up of the fret board extension.



As the picture shows, there wasn't much need to do anything drastic with the fretboard extension. I think we just made sure that the fingerboard would fit flat on the neck and soundboard. I probably used sandpaper on a block. I iimagine that Al would have used a few strokes of a hand plane.

The next one, which I started around 97 used dished workboards in its construction. By this time Al had stopped using the Spanish heel but he still liked it and encouraged me to use it, so I did.

Here are some profile shots. Hopefully you can tell that there was a lot more arch going on here.







Here's a close-up of the fingerboard extension. At the time, it was common practice in Al's shop to carve the underside of the neck extension to match the dome of the top. I imagine we did it by putting chalk on the bottom of the fretboard and then putting sandpaper between the soundboard and the fingerboard extension and then pulling it out. Carve away where there is no chalk, repeat as necessary.



As the pictures show pretty clearly, the saddle is shaved low, and the strings sit low to the top. That's not something time has done to it, that's pretty much the way it came out. The guitar doesn't have strings on it at the moment but for most of it's life it's been under tension. I was in a pinch for bridge pins a little while ago and this guitar had just the pins I was needing. The good news is, when I set it up with this low saddle the action was really low. Still, if it was something that I could easily adjust, I would. It would be easy enough to adjust the neck angle a bit by tapering the fretboard, in fact the fretboard has a bit of a taper in the other direction so a lot of adjustment is available but the fretboard has abalone strips running down the sides so it's a substantial job.

You might want to start your guitars life out with what is pretty standard in the Spanish world, a fingerboard taper from the the nut to the end of the fretboard. Then, if the guitar moves with time, if your lucky, about the time it needs a fretjob, you can plane off the taper and you'll be good for a while. Anyway, that's what I would do if I ever built another Spanish heel steel string.


It does highlight the problem you can run into with a Spanish heel on a steel string- especially if you're hung up on getting a certain string height above the bridge.

Soundwise, I like both of them. The koa one has more of the "Carruth" sound. It's rich, it's balanced and it has the strong low end that Al likes to get in his guitars. It has an X braced back and was tuned with Al's magic. The rosewood is less balanced but I think a lot of people find it more interesting sounding. The back is braced normally and it was not free plate tuned. (Altough I think Mark Blanchard recently turned Al on to doing that) The back was tuned clamped to the soundbox though. The top was glitter tuned. They sound better then people expect from a student guitar but, then again, they weren't just built by a student, Al always put a lot of himself into his student guitars. Tom Knatt also had a hand in my first guitar too.

Good luck on the guitar, can't wait to see it.

John

It's always fun to remeber those class days and share a little bit of it with other folks, Al.

I am still very fond of the classic lines that your older techniques built into my first guitar.

From a structural standpoint, the domed top seems to have held up better, it's shape hasn't taken on too many dips and wrinkles. The flatter one has more dip and wrinkle, it's got a lot of character. The varnish doesn't look to bad either. No one would ever confuse it with a factory guitar, and that's just fine with me.

Maybe Windell will start a new fashion.