Wednesday 8 January 2014

Les Paul Florentine: She's Got Neck

So, who says that I can't glue a set-neck? Not me. Well, not anymore at least. Today, after 2 days of waiting, I released the clamps holding the neck joint on the Florentine. The Titebond glue seems to have produced a very strong join, although to be honest I haven't driven my car over it.


One thing that did worry me is that upon inspection the angle of the neck seemed quite shallow compared to my Epiphone Les Paul. Worried that I might end up with action out the wazoo, I immediately fitted the trapeze tailpiece and the E strings to check the string height. Thankfully, using the bridge but without the bridge posts fitted, the E strings are just touching the neck at the highest fret. I'm hoping that once the bridge posts are in, this will leave just enough wiggle room to allow a nice action to be achieved. That's the big trouble with these set-neck builds - once it's in, it's in! Not being able to shim the neck to fix the action brings me out in a cold sweat..

Anyway, apart from the neck angle (which is, well, fine actually) everything else looks good. With correct bridge post placement, the two E strings can be aligned so that they sit over the outermost pickup poles and travel nicely up the neck to the nut. Yippee!! The next job is to drill the bridge post holes (carefully, carefully!!) and then finalise the finish so that the wiring can begin. She's slowly nearing completion, although her wiring promises to be a real pain in the grunions. Fun times ahead - stay tuned for that one!

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