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First build help

Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2018 12:30 pm
by Jgordon12364
I bought a Ammon headless guitar KIT. I am having trouble on how to glue the neck in straight due to the fact of the neck pocket machine oversize and neck has some sideways movement when placed in the pocket. Tried contacting company and no response. Any help appreciated. JIM

Re: First build help

Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2018 7:46 pm
by tippie53
make a shim or two to help keep the neck in position. Is this a bolt on neck?

Re: First build help

Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2018 7:49 am
by MaineGeezer
Shims! Use pieces of veneer, or saw off thin slivers of a board to get the thickness you need. It's a lot of trial and error to get the neck alignment correct. You need to get both the up/down angle and the left-right angle correct. Do one angle at a time. It's easy to end up chasing your tail. Also note that small changes make a big difference, so proceed slowly.

Re: First build help

Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2018 10:16 am
by Jgordon12364
This has a glue in neck. I am the world's worst carpenter so hoping for the best lol

Re: First build help

Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2018 11:19 am
by MaineGeezer
So it's a tapered dovetail joint?

John has some good videos on YouTube that explain how to fit as neck. Here are some random thoughts about doing it.

I get the left-right angle correct first. Don't touch the dovetail socket in the head block! Make all adjustments to the neck. Sand the faces of the heel to change the angle of neck. It helps to chisel a relief channel about 1/8" in from the edge of the heel so you're assured that contact will be along the edge of the heel and you won't get a visible gap between the heel and the body.

Get your shims adjusted so the neck pulls up tight and seats at the proper depth (i.e fingerboard extension is just resting on the top, assuming the guitar is built so a wedge ins't required between the top and fingerboard extension.)

Find centerline at the tail end of the guitar and mark it on a piece of tape at the edge of the top. Put a straightedge down each side of the fingerboard and mark where the straightedge crosses the tail end of the top. Those left and right lines should be equidistant from the centerline mark you made. If they aren't, lightly sand the side of the heel face that you want the neck to tip toward, re-fit the neck (with shims as required), and check alignment again. Repeat until it's correct or you want to take an axe to it. In the latter case, leave it alone for a while and come back to it later.

Once you get left-right correect, fit the neck and put a straightedge on top of the fingerboard that extends to the bridge. This is a bit of a guess because you don' t know for sure how much you need to allow for movement due to string tension, but I find if I fit the neck so the top line of the fingerboard (with frets) is about 1/8" above the top of the bridge it comes out about right when strung up. Again, sand the faces of the heel to adjust the neck angle.

When you get that right, with shims, and the depth the neck seats is correct, go back and check the left/right angle to be sure it si still correct. Adjust if required, either by adjusting shims or sanding a bit off the heel face, or both.

The first time you try to do this, you will quite likely go completely bonkers. Don't despair. Patience will get you there