Hi all,
I know I know, this really belongs over in the resonator area, but most of you probably never look there, and I thought this would interest more than a few reso builders.
So .... A local jazzer who has an 8 string electric wondered if I could change his 6 string reso into an 8 string multiscale, ala Charlie Hunter. I said, sure why not !!!
So here it is in all its glory, finished, set-up and delivered today. I created a completely new neck, 3 piece, mahogany with a 3/16 wenge centre strip. two 1/4 x 3/16 Cf bars and a 2 way truss rod. If you have never seen how a reso neck attaches to the body, its fairly bizarre - there is actually a chunk of maple that is dowelled into the heel that then goes into the body all the way to the end, and the tailpiece screws into it. The bottom of the cone well also screws into this piece, and then there are in this case, three screws into an internal piece of baltic ply under the fretboard extension. The bottom scale is 29 inch, the top is 25.75. The striaght fret is somewhere atround 12, but the scales had to be calculated and laid out from the biscuit bridge - it was the only way to do it.
The onwer was blown away Monday when he came over for a quick try out to see how hte neck felt, and then I put a quick wipe on poly finish on and did the final setup. The saddle had to be lengthened a bunch, and I reinforced it by tripling its width above the biscuit. Its very solid. The nut had to be made from two acoustic saddle blanks CA'd together, and the width is about 2 5/16+.
Amazingly, the bass sounds pretty strong, and hte tone is even across the spectrum. The guitar overall is very loud, and sounds amazing in this players hands. He is off with it now to get used to the size of the neck - he also has an 8 string electric, but its a plain old 25.5 scale straight fretter. Oh yeah, the strings are tuned low E, A D, (105, 90 and 75 gauge) then its a stock A to E guitar tuning with medium phosphors.
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