Okay...so a year and a half later (geez...I'm either really busy or really lazy!) it's gonna get finished. Today I got this in my email:
UPS Ship Notification, Tracking Number 1Z97................
That's my neck. Well my neck is between my head and body, but it's the neck for my guitar. Thanks to everyone who followed along and encouraged me in this thread--not to mention helped me along the way.
It's scheduled to arrive next Friday, and I'm gonna clear the deck next weekend to put it all together. I've got to make a jig and drill the pocket, then put on the neck with these super-duper neck-bolt-inserts with inset-collar dealies--just a (hopefully) clever way to make the neck nice and secure without a neck plate (funky shaped contour heel gets in the way of a neck plate.)
Oh...and I have to do one serious piece of reworking before I can call it done. I had another neck to mess with when I built a Tele earlier this year, and I set it in the heel pocket of this one just to imagine it "done."
I realized I had done something dumb--the bridge pickup (in this case, the only pickup) is too tall! It's mounted right to the body, but I put the gold pickup ring on just 'cause I like that finished look. Anyway I did all that with Les Paul specs--lower pickup in front (which I don't have) and taller one in the back. But that set up is of course predicated on the neck being at a Les Paul angle. This one's not made that way. The neck is straight relative to the body. So if it had two pickups, they'd both need to be as low as the front one.
Which means I have to lower the one pickup in the back. I've got to rout it a bit deeper, and fortunately, when I bought the pickup ring, it was part of a Les Paul spec'd set, so I've got the short one that would be for the front. I'll just use that instead of the tall one that's on there now.
Oh, and the neck? 24 frets (standard length, just 3 fret on the overhang instead of one), gold fret wire (yes, it will be completely pimped out), compound 10-16" radius, black marker dots (figured it would play nicely with the black screws in the bridge and locking nut) all on "highly figured" quilted maple. That last one is what I'm nervous about. After I spec'd it out and placed the order, I got busy and forgot about it. I never asked to see and approve the piece of wood. I wish I had. Oh well--let's hope they picked a pretty plank.
I'll see in a week...stay tuned.