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I was wondering how one might make a Rick Turner or Laurent Brondel style tilt neck. It seems kind of complicated but I really like this neck joint. When I order my Brondel (hopefully before the end of 2011) it will have a tilt neck.

Apparently I have deleted the drawings I made of the neck joint. Bummer. I built a guitar using Harry Fleishman's neck joint - a no-brainer because I was building it at his school. I'll try to describe it.

Picture this. The body will have four pieces of hardware: two small set screws in threaded inserts and two bolts. Picture them in a T-formation: the top of the T consists of a set screw, a bolt, and the other set screw. The vertical part of the T is the two bolts.

The neck also has four pieces of hardware in a T-formation: the set screws line up against two small strike plates (some sort of brass insert) and the bolts line up to two threaded inserts. The set screws control the side-to-side alignment of the neck. Once adjusted, these shouldn't need to be changed.

The top bolt gets screwed tight. On the body side, the bottom bolt has a small recessed area where either a strong spring or some washers (belleville washers would do the trick) provide resistance against the body so the neck won't wobble. The bottom bolt controls the neck pitch.

To adjust the neck, loosen the top bolt, adjust the bottom bolt to the desired pitch, and tighten down both bolts.

John: How do you balance this off with the dovetail joint only folks...???What is your feeling re: sound transmission or loss...? By the way I think there is no differance between dovetail and mortice tenon in this regard but am a bit more concerned about the type of joint you have discribed. Thanks for your time.
Tom

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

I'm currently building one in the Fleischmann style, but I'm not concerned about sound transmission. Rick Turner builds in this style (in terms of only a few points of contact between body and neck) as well and it works just great.

The strings don't have a dovetail to transfer their vibration to the soundboard through, just a tiny point of contact.

The guitar Laurent Brondel had at Woodstock sounded pretty amazing...

I agree with the folks above... I've played guitars made by Harry, and I know folks who own guitars made by Rick, and they sound great. I'm might go as far as to say that the sound transmission/tone transfer could be better in guitars made with these joints because there is absolutely no wiggle room, no possibility of any gaps or pockets that could arise in a poorly-fitted dovetail.

Of course, the test is probably to build 5 of each, using consecutive sets of wood for all the tops, backs and sides. And ignore all the other factors that could influence any tonal differences. Maybe if I won the lottery...

Can't get any simpler or easier than an original Stauffer with the clockkey adjustment?
Well actually Yes.
I incorporate a strap button as the head of the mounting bolt.
One Bolt, No tools, Instant external adjustment
Just pull the neck back against the string tension and turn the strap button with your fingertips.

I've always wondered how the Stauffer joint works - how do you adjust the neck pitch?

How does that work? That is really cool

Well theres a threaded insert set in the headblock
The black strip at the top of the recess is a 3mmx1mm strip of Carbon fibre as a bearing pivot point.
The recess is about 5mm deep and the fretboard extension which has a steel stiffener floats above the soundboard.
Tighten the bolt to lower action etc

Brian, my system is virtually similar to Rick's, and I use it with his permission (and encouragement).
The neck has 3 points of contact with the body: 2 lateral set screws under the fretboard, and one bolt at the bottom of the heel. Action adjustment is done with the middle bolt, the bottom one locks things in place.

I didn't know a dovetail was necessary to transmit sound.

Jeff, that's a nice add-on to the Stauffer neck joint, although I really like the clock key.

On my "regular" guitars I use a bolt-on neck (with glued fretboard extension). I actually switched after converting 4 early "dovetail" guitars to bolt-on(s). Absolutely no loss of tone, and if anything, an improvement.
However I do use HHG, but not for tonal reasons…

The only issue with the tilt-neck lies with the fretboard extension, but that would be true of any "floating" fretboard extension. If not reinforced underneath with some "mass" there is a loss of sustain up there because the fretboard itself is so thin.

The Carpathian/cocobolo B-2 with tilt-neck I showed at the Woodstock Invitational was purchased by Sharon Klein, whom I hired to do a mini concert with my guitars. She couldn't part with it.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/