Mahogany T Style Build 2

Neck on!  Always one of the jobs that fills me with dread, if you screw this up... Well it's likely to remain bits of wood resembling a guitar rather than an actual playable guitar. Once attached I was able to line up the bridge and check I'd not screwed up the scale length etc.  All looks good for now.

Now the Eagle eyed will have zeroed on the headstock.  One of the "unique" features on this build is that I've gone for a Musicman style 4+2 headstock.   I've never owned one myself but I like how it looks, how it allows straight string through the nut to the tuners (like Fender) but that it does away with the fiction friendly and stable tuning's nemesis the dreaded string trees.  So I thought I'd give it a go.  This limited choice of buying a neck. The neck I got is a Kimese product I ordered directly from China via ebay. It took ages to arrive as I ordered it just before the Chinese New year and then Covid-19 bit China. But after some weeks it duly arrived with my friendly postman at my front door. Stuff like that still impresses me more than it should do frankly.

So far I'm impressed with it. It feels nice and smooth the shape is a modern C feel unlike other replacement necks I have used which are a fair bit fatter than this. The fretting looks and feels good no noticeable sharp ends etc, again not always the case. Given it was under £25 including its intercontinental journey I really can't moan.   My only criticism is that the shaping at the body end starts a bit earlier than maybe necessary but maybe that's MM spec I remember seeing their guitars with a longer 5 bolt neck plate in the past. 

You'll see I've used a shaped neck plate to allow a shaping of the body where the dusty end of the neck starts. Initial feel is that's a success like on my blue thinline where I did the same. Surprisingly a very  little work here makes an enormous difference to feel.

For this build I bought "vintage" ferrules as they have a lip which hopefully will cover any tear out. The "modern" ones I used on the blue thinline are OK but a little tear out is visible.  However I didn't realise the vintage ones need an 8mm hole.  Guess what size brad drill bit I haven't got.... Thank goodness for Ebay and the Royal Mail in these lockdown days. Anyway a little hiatus as I'd rather get those holes drilled before I start finishing.